JASONC MILITARIA COMPENDIUM


THE DOCTRINE OF THE ANNIHILATION BATTLE - FREDERICK TO NAPOLEON TO MOLTKE TO HITLER

Napoleon explained that "there are many fine general officers in Europe, but they all see too many things. Whereas I see only one thing - the main body of the enemy. This I crush, confident that secondary matters will take care of themselves".

Before Clausewitz, in the late 18th century, commanders and statesmen steeped in the Englightenment were already beginning to think of warfare in attrition terms. After Bunker Hill one of the Founding Fathers (perhaps Franklin) noted the number of British regulars lost and said it had so and so many thousands of pounds to get them to Boston for the battle. He then counted the Americans lost, and concluded with a remark that "in the same period" so and so many children were born in America, a figure far exceeding US losses in the Boston fighting. His point was: Britain would go bankrupt trying to fight so many, so readily replaced, from so far away. What actually won the American Revolution though was the French fleet. The battle of the Chesapeake, indecisive though it was as a naval engagement, led directly to Cornwallis' surrender at Yorktown. A previous loss of an entire British expeditionary force at Saratoga had not had the same effect, since it hadn't been caused by loss of control of US waters. So a war of attrition includes both forces in being, plus the possibilities of replacement / reinforcement.  If Washington had any virtue as a general is was his focus on keeping his army alive, and his indifference to holding ground.

Standing German army doctrine was to seek annihilation battle, the objective of which was always the complete destruction of the fielded forces of the enemy. That is what they thought of as "decision" in warfare.  The Prussians had it hammered into them by Napoleon at Jena-Auerstadt and they never forgot.

Napoleon was in turn indebted to Frederick the Great and studied his campaigns with care. Nevertheless it is clear Napoleon significantly improved on Frederick's methods, which were utterly inadequate by Napoleon's day.

Frederick had employed oblique infantry order, but as part of basically linear tactics. Nearly the entire front covered, he was deliberately thinner on one wing and in (2-3 times) greater depth on the other. Such side weightings go back to ancient times and aren't revolutionary in themselves. Frederick noticed how they interacted with gunpowder warfare in an age of linear tactics.

There were two dominant tactical considerations in that era. All armies could line their fronts with muskets. We would say, force to space was always high. Artillery was not strong enough yet to force men to spread out. And this has curious effects on firepower efficiency.

You might think - and they in fact thought at the time - that the way to maximize combat power was to put men shoulder to shoulder so as many as possible could fire, and then fire massive volleys. But men shoulder to shoulder maximize enemy hits as well as friendly shots, because hits taken are pretty much a straight linear function of men exposed to the fire (shots were unaimed, in effect - "area fire"). Crowding more men on the same frontage increase both enemy losses per unit time, and friendly losses per unit time and per bullet fired. For rapid decision that may be necessary. But it is not optimal for fire combat, as only really became clear during the wars of the French revolution.

Any formation that puts men across the same frontage in the front line generates the same mechanical firepower. If the men were 2 deep they all fired.  If the men were 9 deep, the 2 front ranks fired (occasionally the third, but only occasionally). No edge possible.  Next consider a formation in open order at 5 yard intervals instead of a line of battle with 2 men per yard. Being a thinner target helps as much as having fewer shooters hurts. Both sides will in fact bleed evenly. But if the skirmishers are replaced as they fall, the skirmishers will outlast the line in pure fire combat. Why? Because firing and missing is worse in the long run than firing less. 

Since you could inflict the same losses per unit time with fewer men on the frontage, and keep it up longer if you did it with fewer bullets shooting bigger targets instead of lots of bullets shooting sparse ones, open order beats closed for fire combat. Open order allows full use of cover, stretching this edge, but the basic effect does not depend on cover. It depends on per shot accuracy rather than per time loss rates. A skirmish line can keep up the fire longer, and it and the line it skirmishes against bleed about the same.

This was discovered essentially by accident by the French revolutionary armies, which lacked the discipline of their predecessors. The men were either voluntarily willing to advance into the "hot zone" and trade shots, or they were not. Most were not, at any given point in time, and hung back from the fray in loose mobs. A more spirited crust traded skirmish fire with enemy masses. Professionals were shocked to discover though that the loose mob with crust lasted longer and inflicted higher losses overall, than the neatly drilled firepower maximizing lines. The latter simply had less to shoot at.

A lot changed from the Seven Years War. The revolutionary armies brought about a complete change in tactics, which is why they won against professional militaries despite lousy training. Institutionalized by Napoleon's reforms, that created the tactical revolution that swept Europe. Everyone else then learned the lessons, most of them the hard way. (The Brits had a little prior experience of the importance of light infantry from colonial fighting).

What happened with the revolutionary armies is not everyone was willing to close with the enemy. Crowds hung back. An active fringe were willing to risk themselves to fire. Nobody seriously planned it that way, and the pros of Europe were all shocked that the French rabble outperformed their discipline. They had discovered that skirmishing is a superior form of fire combat. The reasons are easy enough to understand, as a matter of mere physics.

If two forces line their frontage with men with muskets, one of them in close order and the other in open order, the more close order ones fire many more rounds per unit time. But they have a correspondingly smaller target to hit, since virtually all the rounds are effectively unaimed, "area fire". The hits achieved are therefore an almost linear function of shots taken times exposed area for the enemy. And exposed area for the enemy goes up directly with numbers, as you fill in open order to close.

Thus, 5 times the men standing shoulder to shoulder, firing 5 times the shots, do not get 5 times the hits per unit time, against 1 times standing in open order. They get the same number of hits per unit time. And they get it from more shots taken - that is, the per shot accuracy is less. A thin skirmish line and a thick wall to wall line of muskets trading fire, therefore both tend to bleed at the same rate. And the skirmish line, if regularly fed fresh men to replace its losses, can keep it up much longer before ammo gives out.

Wall to wall muskets might achieve a greater morale impact from individual volleys. And they can certainly trade their way through any unsupported skirmish screen, or make it give ground, if they are willing to trade blood for blood to approach and do so. But they do not cause more hits per unit time. And they spend more ammo getting those hits, thus have less "wind" to keep it up.

That was the discovery made by the revolutionary armies. When discipline was added as well, with men specifically told off to skirmish for the rest of the formation, the best of both worlds was achieved. Columns held ground and fed skirmish lines. Skirmish lines engaged in fire combat.

Forces that tried to stand in close order against skirmishers fell apart for a reason - they could not shoot them down faster and they could not keep it up as long. As this sunk in, as ammo grew scarce, and as losses from previous fire accumulated around them, closed formations in long-term fire against skirmishes lost their cohesion. And became vulnerable to assault by still coherent columns emerging from behind the safety of their skirmish lines - with full ammo pouches, unfouled muskets, and rested men.

And I am not discounting low accuracy per shot, I am insisting upon it. But objective firepower tests show that unaimed muskets hit targets the size of formed close order infantry, as often as 25 to 40% of the time, as the range fall to 70 yards or so. This fits the high casualties and instant morale collapse regularly reported from the closest infantry brushes. But it does not fit the overall stats of total losses. Ergo, such brushes were not the sole nor the principle means of infantry combat in the Napoleonic period. Most shots occurred either at skirmishers, or from them, or both. And frequently at quite long ranges.

The skirmisher's edge tells over time - he has no reason to risk very high probabilities of being hit by concentrated volleys by approaching formed too close. Self preservation tells him to stay far enough away that even whole lines firing in his general direction have a high chance of missing him. In return he accepts a high chance of missing even the large target the formed present to him. But it doesn't matter. He doesn't have to hit with 1, or 2, or 3 shots. He has 60 ball in his pouches and plenty of spare flints.

As for reports of "blazing away at 40 paces for hours", blazing away for hours happened, and blazing away at 40 paces happened, but the conjunction did not. That is the thesis, and there is no way to reconcile the ammo expended and men walking away unscathed, that denies it. Nor does it contradict any plausible tactical account.

French tactics in the Napoleonic period drew on those lessons and combined them with reimposed discipline, and all supporting arms. Fire combat was conducted by open order infantry in thin screens for prolonged periods of time, plus artillery fire. Infantry masses and cavalry simple waited. Fire disrupted enemy formations wherever they tried to remained massed in close order. After they had been prepped or when they voluntarily thinned their fronts, the shock forces charged over them.

Infantry fought simply by playing "chicken" with guns, firing considered flinching because it left men with uncharged tubes facing men with charged ones. The latter could jog to just outside bayonet point and fire, unable to miss. The tactical point was, accuracy per shot rose by a factor of 5 or so in just the distance a man might jog, in the time it took to reload. Cavalry dispensed with this and just ran right in, only massed formations in good order being able to stop them.

Napoleonic battle wasn't about odds ratios, especially local ones, because everyone had packed frontages. The whole school of those later tactics derives from artillery firepower having already forced the men to spread out, making the degree of concentration the dominant issue for close or "shock" fighting. That just didn't apply when every brush featured shoulder to shoulder men two plus ranks deep with the same sort of muskets. It was simply not phyisically possible to bring more than the other guy to the same frontage, because both sides were pegged at the maximum that would fit.

There aren't side to side misses on formed infantry. Most of the misses are high; depth makes no appreciable diiference. Artillery is another matter - it benefits from a deeper target. Muskets don't.

Instead there were huge differences caused by order vs its absence. That packed front loses much of its max firepower unless the men are loading and presenting with drill ground precision - and outlasting the enemy, especially in a sheer courage sense, being willing to stand hell longer than the other guys. Then there was when the first shot was loosed - the closer the deadlier. So approaches became chicken played with loaded guns. Firing a whole rank was flinching - it let the enemy trot to point blank and fire at men with empty tubes, who generally would not stand to take such treatment.

Range, bravery, order, all mattered, numbers did not, at the actual point of formed infantry clash.

From the times spent engaged in infantry vs. infantry fights and the number of ball carried, it is clear most of the men were not firing most of the time. Deep formations and skirmish line tactics account for much of that. Nor was the accuracy high when they did fire, so they were not saving their shots for point-blank. They were delivering them very rarely compared to theoretical maximum rate of fire.

They also achieved nothing remotely like the theoretical test accuracies recorded in firepower tests. When, e.g. musketry typically achieve 25% hits at ranges over 100 yards against realistic formed target proxies. If men carrying 60 call did that in practice, every man on the field would have been shot down with only a minute fraction of the available ammo expended - which never happened.

But men hitting one time in 100 or 200 and firing 30 to 60 times, will put down 30% of an opposing force equally numerous. And armies fell apart under such losses.

In the Fusilier Brigade battle at LLAbuera, where 3 battalions of British infantry in line routed 3 columns of French - each column of 3 battalions - the firefight lasted 20 minutes at least - maybe 30, at ranges of not more than 40 yards. The French started with 540 men in their frontage, while the 2 battalions of the 7th Foot (2/3rds of the Brigade) suffered 706 casualties in the entire battle, which included other actions.

Rate of fire may correlate with order on the low end of the spectrum (disorder leading to not getting another volley off until much later I mean); beyond that, it is not meaningful. Firing time was not scarce, and rate differences were quite small. No one could fire more over the whole day by firing faster - no one's ammo sufficed to fire for even 30 minutes at sustained rates. Shots were picked for the times of their max effectiveness, and most formations spent most of the day out of musket shot of any enemies. We know that because over 2/3rds of those present walked off the field despite battles lasting hours, most of them will ball still in their pouches. 

The smoothbore musket didn't have *one* accuracy or effectiveness, in other words. It had a "dial a yield" effectiveness between "none" and "mutual suicide", that depended entirely on how much of that final minute was spent walking and how much was spent reloading. In turn, that was a function of who had balls of brass, and who wanted to wake up the next day instead.

The weapons were all effective enough at close enough ranges to shoot down the opposing armies to the last man. That didn't happen because the casualty determining step was the willingness - or the lack thereof - of the men to "engage the enemy more closely". The dominant fact that needs explaining about Napoleonic era firepower struggles is how and why the battles took so long. Overall firing time was not scarce; ammo supply was far scarcer. Everyone had more than enough time to fire off every shot they carried onto the field - but in fact fired only a fraction of what they brought.

The reason is just that most of the men are not in effective range of anyone for most of the involved time. The periods of maximum enemy exposure to fire were quite limited - and necessarily coincided with the periods of exposure of one's own side. The losses were tightly concentrated in a temporal sense into those brief windows of closest approach of formed infantry bodies.

The normal skirmish line might have 2 ranks staggered, so 2-4 total men per 10 yards; the line formations on the other hand were 3 rank in most armies, 2 rank only in the British and a few trained by then, so 20-30 men per 10 yards.

What couldn't skirmish lines do? Take ground quickly. Hold ground vs an enemy formation that was denser and was willing to spend blood to take ground.

Notice that the equality is between the two sides, not between the two formations. If I am in skirmish order and you are in line, we both bleed at 1/3rd the rate we would if we were both in line. If I need to bleed you faster, right here and right now, and don't care what I spend to do it - then I need a line. Skirmish won't do the same thing - it will need more time to bleed you the same amount.

The exception to symmetry then becomes order and morale. If a unit's front is in disorder from men running or trying to, then closing in will drive his loss rate higher without your own moving up with it. Closing when the others won't stand, in other words, is the only immediate asymmetry, and this is available to fresher as well as to steadier troops. 

All of which made the logic of Napoleonic infantry warfare what it was - a matter of outlasting the enemy and having the last intact reserve.

There were plenty of close approaches by formed infantry, they were just rapidly decided. "A line of infantry tried to stop us. We gave them a volley at 30 paces and walked over them" - Borodino first hand account. Holding fire to suicidally close range made the musket a terrifyingly effective weapon, and people got out of the way. Obviously *most shots* were fired at much longer range and with much lower per shot accuracy. But plenty of *hits* probably came much closer - and much faster.

As for when they ran, there is no great mystery in it and no reason to trace it to anything about the weapon tech. Men will stand a one in sixth chance of being killed or maimed; double that and they won't stand it. Enough won't, will run instead, that between the losses that high and the men running, the rest won't be able to defend themselves either. It isn't hard to threaten lethality that high with a smoothbore musket and 50 to 60 ball in each pouch. A 1% average accuracy would be quite sufficient. Shots aren't scarce compared to men. The only thing limiting the number getting shot is the bravery to go stand close enough to do it.

It was morale and unit order and rout that kept those periods of close range action brief. Basically, the men could walk to ranges so close that they became so deadly to each other that they morally would not stand it, before they physically died from those fire effects. Whole units "flinched" from those close approaches, precisely to avoid trading volleys that could kill a third of those engaged in less than a minute. What characterized the period was not the ineffectiveness of the firearms used, but how sharply their effectiveness rose as the range fell. 

Index that with how far the men could close the distance during the reload time between one shot and the next, and you get the characteristic "chicken played with loaded guns", that one doesn't see after rifles make it practically impossible to get so close without getting shot on the way in.

Cavalry and artillery were supports to infantry in the Napoleonic era. Infantry was the major combat arm, by a long way. And a wound ratio of 35 to 1 for musket ball vs. bayonets gives the lie to stories of infantry fights being matters of pike rushes.

Bayonets never did a blessed thing, except keep back horses through about the Napoleonic era, and that only in full, good order ranks. Officers have believed and peddled the most errant nonsense on the subject from the moment they were invented down to today. It is all utter rot. Close order infantry fighting after the musket and pike era was a matter of men without loaded tubes running from men with loaded ones.

The best single witness on the point incidentally is a short piece by Ambrose Bierce, "What I saw at Shiloh".

The worst was the "Grand Maison" school in French military doctrine just before WWI, which pushed the crazy to the point of suicidal frontal charges with fixed bayonets, the men forbidden to fire, against steel breech loading artillery and magazine rifles. The French lost 1 million men in a month learning, all over again, what utter rot all talk of the bayonet and its (purely imaginary) "moral" effect, was.

The truth of the matter is in close combat, the guys with empty tubes gave way to the guys with fully charged ones, and point blank musket fire was the way close combat was conducted by infantry. And close combat was the exception for all arms except cavalry.

It is pretty clear none of the military authorities understood the real firepower relationships before the Napoleonic period. That is why the spread of open order and light infantry tactics revolutionized war. Not getting that is also why armies like the early Austrians and the 1806 Prussians, still trying to use the tactics of the era of Frederick the Great, got their heads handed to them when they met the French.


NAPOLEON'S MILITARY SYSTEM

The French military system is skirmishers supported by columns, who provide the numbers to maintain the skirmish lines and the ground holding and taking support they need, plus cavalry defense, since they can't do those things for themselves

Standard ways the French fought, illustrated. Each x represents a single company (or large "platoon" in French nomenclature, technically) of 75 men in 3 ranks, 25 files -

Regiment in battalion lines -

xxxxxx-xxxxxx

Rarely used due to vulnerability to enemy cavalry and fragility in battlefield maneuver

(3 battalion) regiment in ordre mixte -

xx-xxxxxx-xx
xx----------xx
xx----------xx

Considered an ideal theoretical formation, but not too frequently used

brigade in closed regimental columns

xxxx--xxxx
xxxx--xxxx
xxxx--xxxx

by far the most common formed infantry formation

regiment in supported skirmish line

-x---x---x---x-

--xx-------xx--
--xx-------xx--

the most common fire combat formation. Notice, each of the demi-brigades of the previous readily deploy to that formation for fire combat, opening up to cover 3 times the frontage, but with the same number of shooters on the front line.

Each of these would cover about the same frontage, the closed regimental columns being slightly narrower than the others.

The first and last are fire combat formation and man the frontage with the same total strength; the last is preferred as having greater staying power. It gets its fire combat strength from superior *defense* rather than more muskets on-line and firing. That defense comes from the 4 front line companies being deployed on the same space a line would pack 12 - which just makes a better target.

The order mixte gets 5/6ths the front line firepower from 3/2 the men of the line formation; in return it is much stronger against cavalry, being already nearly in square. It's only downside is its maneuver fragility and complexity, and requiring marginally more men (not really an issue).

The regimental column formation uses 3 times the men in 2/3rds the frontage of the line formation, and was considered superior in mobility and battlefield control, much stronger against cavalry, and marginally superior in shock combat. No efficiency in the use of manpower was being aimed it in that formation - efficiency in the use of frontage was. It was understood that all the rest of the frontage would be left to looser formations like the supported skirmish lines, or cavalry and artillery arms rather than infantry, in combination with those.

If manpower is instead scarce and more frontage needs to be covered, the regimental column formation just opens up to the supported skirmish line formation to defend, in sustained fire combat.

French columns were not about holes or breakthrough or local concentration. They were about staying power on the frontage, maneuverability in getting there, and leaving the fire battle for most of time and space to men in open order - skirmishers - not lines or columns.

Wellington fully understood that fire combat is dominated by infantry in open order and by batteries, which is why those are the arms he deployed all along his crest and the French slope of his position. He sheltered all his formed behind the hill. A few low country allies left in relatively low ground were observable by the French grand battery, rapidly shot to bits and ran. He continued to feed light infantry forward all day, whole battalions eventually fighting that way in open order.

The Brits fight for Hougemont in open order and in cover, all day. They feed in whole large battalions of Guards as companies fighting this way. You can't use cover in the denser formations and they didn't try.

The Brits defend La Haye Saint with riflemen in open order. Plus several other regiments of trained lights. They fight against the French skirmishers for hours; they shelter in squares against cavalry and abandon and retake the place of enough enemies sweep over and back again. But for hours on end they are out there, in open order, taking shots, sometimes at very long ranges. Batteries on the crest line are also firing for sustained periods, running for cover, coming back and remanning, etc.

The bulk of the British infantry spends most of the day in square, not line. They are behind a crest and facing off cavalry. Some formations take 30% losses and higher and their squares shrink, but they never see a French infantry close order column, from one end of the battle to the other.

Two sections of the British line face French infantry attack by close order formations - preceded by skirmish lines - on two separate occasions, neither lasting even a single hour. About a single British division in each case, against an equal or larger French formation. They only stalemate the bigger one with losses on both sides; cavalry drives it away. They beat the later and smaller one, after it brushes through the first Allies it hits, in a local counterattack (fire first, then charging after that causes disorder).

This is not remotely the same as everyone standing in line formation to fire all day to have the maximum firepower and inflict the maximum enemy losses by having max firepower in action for as long as possible.

More than half of the infantry vs infantry fighting at Waterloo, meanwhile, is happening over on the Prussia side of the field. The Prussians attack in columns as well as in lines; the French face them with skirmishers for long stretches, for lines for some stretches, and with column counterattacks (by the Young Guard e.g.) at some critical points. But that fighting goes on for hours, with infantry formations in contact throughout. 

Plenty of that has to be firing at longer ranges and in open order or using cover. How do I know that? Because they are not all dead at the end of it.

When Picton's division faces D'Erlons at Waterloo, the Allies have one division on the frontage. The French have four divisions on the frontage.

When French infantry in columns did attack Picton's position, they pushed into it - and killed Picton himself - and the British infantry there didn't break them. They were just getting started, when the British heavy cavalry charged them in flank. That, not any imaginary special virtue of lines, stopped the most serious French infantry attack. The only other time British infantry in line mattered was the defeat of the Guard, and it ran over the first formations that challenged it. Then, yes, did succumb to British infantry in line - counterattacking after prepared volleys - in flank - delivered after it entered the British position. That was indeed a key part if the British system - including the bits about riposte and flanking as much as the bit about "line". In that system, its purpose was maximum firepower in a short period to disorder an enemy formation. 

The normal skirmish line might have 2 ranks staggered, so 2-4 total men per 10 yards; the line formations on the other hand were 3 rank in most armies, 2 rank only in the British and a few trained by then, so 20-30 men per 10 yards.

What couldn't skirmish lines do? Take ground quickly. Hold ground vs an enemy formation that was denser and was willing to spend blood to take ground.

Notice that the equality is between the two sides, not between the two formations. If I am in skirmish order and you are in line, we both bleed at 1/3rd the rate we would if we were both in line. If I need to bleed you faster, right here and right now, and don't care what I spend to do it - then I need a line. Skirmish won't do the same thing - it will need more time to bleed you the same amount.

The exception to symmetry then becomes order and morale. If a unit's front is in disorder from men running or trying to, then closing in will drive his loss rate higher without your own moving up with it. Closing when the others won't stand, in other words, is the only immediate asymmetry, and this is available to fresher as well as to steadier troops. 

All of which made the logic of Napoleonic infantry warfare what it was - a matter of outlasting the enemy and having the last intact reserve.

The French military system is skirmishers supported by columns, who provide the numbers to maintain the skirmish lines and the ground holding and taking support they need, plus cavalry defense, since they can't do those things for themselves

Standard ways the French fought, illustrated. Each x represents a single company (or large "platoon" in French nomenclature, technically) of 75 men in 3 ranks, 25 files -

Regiment in battalion lines -

xxxxxx-xxxxxx

Rarely used due to vulnerability to enemy cavalry and fragility in battlefield maneuver

(3 battalion) regiment in ordre mixte -

xx-xxxxxx-xx
xx----------xx
xx----------xx

Considered an ideal theoretical formation, but not too frequently used

brigade in closed regimental columns

xxxx--xxxx
xxxx--xxxx
xxxx--xxxx

by far the most common formed infantry formation

regiment in supported skirmish line

-x---x---x---x-

--xx-------xx--
--xx-------xx--

the most common fire combat formation. Notice, each of the demi-brigades of the previous readily deploy to that formation for fire combat, opening up to cover 3 times the frontage, but with the same number of shooters on the front line.

Each of these would cover about the same frontage, the closed regimental columns being slightly narrower than the others.

The first and last are fire combat formation and man the frontage with the same total strength; the last is preferred as having greater staying power. It gets its fire combat strength from superior *defense* rather than more muskets on-line and firing. That defense comes from the 4 front line companies being deployed on the same space a line would pack 12 - which just makes a better target.

The order mixte gets 5/6ths the front line firepower from 3/2 the men of the line formation; in return it is much stronger against cavalry, being already nearly in square. It's only downside is its maneuver fragility and complexity, and requiring marginally more men (not really an issue).

The regimental column formation uses 3 times the men in 2/3rds the frontage of the line formation, and was considered superior in mobility and battlefield control, much stronger against cavalry, and marginally superior in shock combat. No efficiency in the use of manpower was being aimed it in that formation - efficiency in the use of frontage was. It was understood that all the rest of the frontage would be left to looser formations like the supported skirmish lines, or cavalry and artillery arms rather than infantry, in combination with those.

If manpower is instead scarce and more frontage needs to be covered, the regimental column formation just opens up to the supported skirmish line formation to defend, in sustained fire combat.

French columns were not about holes or breakthrough or local concentration. They were about staying power on the frontage, maneuverability in getting there, and leaving the fire battle for most of time and space to men in open order - skirmishers - not lines or columns.

There were plenty of close approaches by formed infantry, they were just rapidly decided. "A line of infantry tried to stop us. We gave them a volley at 30 paces and walked over them" - Borodino first hand account. Holding fire to suicidally close range made the musket a terrifyingly effective weapon, and people got out of the way. Obviously *most shots* were fired at much longer range and with much lower per shot accuracy. But plenty of *hits* probably came much closer - and much faster.

As for when they ran, there is no great mystery in it and no reason to trace it to anything about the weapon tech. Men will stand a one in sixth chance of being killed or maimed; double that and they won't stand it. Enough won't, will run instead, that between the losses that high and the men running, the rest won't be able to defend themselves either. It isn't hard to threaten lethality that high with a smoothbore musket and 50 to 60 ball in each pouch. A 1% average accuracy would be quite sufficient. Shots aren't scarce compared to men. The only thing limiting the number getting shot is the bravery to go stand close enough to do it.

Bayonets never did a blessed thing, except keep back horses through about the Napoleonic era, and that only in full, good order ranks. Officers have believed and peddled the most errant nonsense on the subject from the moment they were invented down to today. It is all utter rot. Close order infantry fighting after the musket and pike era was a matter of men without loaded tubes running from men with loaded ones.

The best single witness on the point incidentally is a short piece by Ambrose Bierce, "What I saw at Shiloh".

The worst was the "Grand Maison" school in French military doctrine just before WWI, which pushed the crazy to the point of suicidal frontal charges with fixed bayonets, the men forbidden to fire, against steel breech loading artillery and magazine rifles. The French lost 1 million men in a month learning, all over again, what utter rot all talk of the bayonet and its (purely imaginary) "moral" effect, was.

Rate of fire may correlate with order on the low end of the spectrum (disorder leading to not getting another volley off until much later I mean); beyond that, it is not meaningful. Firing time was not scarce, and rate differences were quite small. No one could fire more over the whole day by firing faster - no one's ammo sufficed to fire for even 30 minutes at sustained rates. Shots were picked for the times of their max effectiveness, and most formations spent most of the day out of musket shot of any enemies. We know that because over 2/3rds of those present walked off the field despite battles lasting hours, most of them will ball still in their pouches. 

Incidentally, it is pretty clear none of the military authorities understood the real firepower relationships before the Napoleonic period. That is why the spread of open order and light infantry tactics revolutionized war. Not getting that is also why armies like the early Austrians and the 1806 Prussians, still trying to use the tactics of the era of Frederick the Great, got their heads handed to them when they met the French.

There aren't side to side misses on formed infantry. Most of the misses are high; depth makes no appreciable diiference. Artillery is another matter - it benefits from a deeper target. Muskets don't.

Wellington fully understood that fire combat is dominated by infantry in open order and by batteries, which is why those are the arms he deployed all along his crest and the French slope of his position. He sheltered all his formed behind the hill. A few low country allies left in relatively low ground were observable by the French grand battery, rapidly shot to bits and ran. He continued to feed light infantry forward all day, whole battalions eventually fighting that way in open order.

The Brits fight for Hougemont in open order and in cover, all day. They feed in whole large battalions of Guards as companies fighting this way. You can't use cover in the denser formations and they didn't try.

The Brits defend La Haye Saint with riflemen in open order. Plus several other regiments of trained lights. They fight against the French skirmishers for hours; they shelter in squares against cavalry and abandon and retake the place of enough enemies sweep over and back again. But for hours on end they are out there, in open order, taking shots, sometimes at very long ranges. Batteries on the crest line are also firing for sustained periods, running for cover, coming back and remanning, etc.

The bulk of the British infantry spends most of the day in square, not line. They are behind a crest and facing off cavalry. Some formations take 30% losses and higher and their squares shrink, but they never see a French infantry close order column, from one end of the battle to the other.

Two sections of the British line face French infantry attack by close order formations - preceded by skirmish lines - on two separate occasions, neither lasting even a single hour. About a single British division in each case, against an equal or larger French formation. They only stalemate the bigger one with losses on both sides; cavalry drives it away. They beat the later and smaller one, after it brushes through the first Allies it hits, in a local counterattack (fire first, then charging after that causes disorder).

This is not remotely the same as everyone standing in line formation to fire all day to have the maximum firepower and inflict the maximum enemy losses by having max firepower in action for as long as possible.

More than half of the infantry vs infantry fighting at Waterloo, meanwhile, is happening over on the Prussia side of the field. The Prussians attack in columns as well as in lines; the French face them with skirmishers for long stretches, for lines for some stretches, and with column counterattacks (by the Young Guard e.g.) at some critical points. But that fighting goes on for hours, with infantry formations in contact throughout. 

Plenty of that has to be firing at longer ranges and in open order or using cover. How do I know that? Because they are not all dead at the end of it.

When Picton's division faces D'Erlons at Waterloo, the Allies have one division on the frontage. The French have four divisions on the frontage.

When French infantry in columns did attack Picton's position, they pushed into it - and killed Picton himself - and the British infantry there didn't break them. They were just getting started, when the British heavy cavalry charged them in flank. That, not any imaginary special virtue of lines, stopped the most serious French infantry attack. The only other time British infantry in line mattered was the defeat of the Guard, and it ran over the first formations that challenged it. Then, yes, did succumb to British infantry in line - counterattacking after prepared volleys - in flank - delivered after it entered the British position. That was indeed a key part if the British system - including the bits about riposte and flanking as much as the bit about "line". In that system, its purpose was maximum firepower in a short period to disorder an enemy formation. 

Napoleonic cavalry was divided into heavy and light, and sometimes medium types that did both jobs. Light cavalry used smaller horses and had scouting and observation and screening roles, outside of battle. Within battle, it was pressed into duties supporting formations that needed cavalry especially defensively, or vs enemy light infantry, and the like. They also fought against heavy cavalry via riposte and countercharge when the latter was "blown" or disorganized. Hussars and lancers and Chausseurs are the formation types here.

Heavy cavalry, on the other hand, was designed for shock action in battle. They charged, enemy formed infantry, enemy guns, enemy cavalry. Some were in armor, all were on larger, heavier horses. Cuirassiers are the paradigm instance here. Dragoons and others were medium cavalry that could be used in both roles, but mostly fought as heavy cavalry, just without special armor.

There were specific enemy arms that cavalry simply "trumps" and is most effective against - open order infantry, a line of guns ahead of the main line of battle (which is how artillery had to deploy, not behind anything).

Cavalry was also needed against enemy cavalry because formed infantry can fight off cavalry easily, but not take ground from it readily. Basically, against cavalry, formed infantry is a solid defense but a lousy offense.

This has nothing to do with the usual attributes of unit speed on a grand tactical map coupled with limited numbers of men and no firepower arms to speak of. It is instead a function of melee threat and the role of order is meeting that threat. Men on the ground with muskets that have already fired are nearly defenseless against men on horseback with swords, unless the infantry are in good order and project ing a solid wall of bayonets that horses shy away from.

Good order in every direction means a square, which doesn't move really.

Good order only to the front is possible in line, but not practical really, because lines are too thin and break readily in melee stress and then present flanks and so forth. If the infantry stops the cavalry by fire, a line can withstand a frontal attack, only, some of the time. Deeper formations work better at this, but still have the same issue of vulnerable tactical flanks if not anchored on each other or formed into a full square.

Cavalry can't linger in the fire range of infantry muskets. It must charge home or retire. But infantry can only advance after them after such retirement, and gingerly, since they need to be able to reform square if the cavalry turns. The result is that normally, cavalry charging infantry is repulsed with loss but "freezes" that infantry in place and puts it into square - where it is e.g. vulnerable to artillery fire.

An infantry formation doesn't charge a cavalry one. If they break their own ranks, the cavalry charges them back and the infantry will break apart and flee. It can advance on them slowly; the cavalry will retire slowly or charge, itself.

1.  Artillery should clobber infantry in square and be effective against formed infantry, much less against cavalry and that only at range, should be useless against infantry in open order or in reasonable cover, should have hours of fire but not unlimited amounts of it, and lots of range compared to other formations, but bleed targets only very gradually at anything beyond close range.

2.  Formed infantry should defeat unsupported artillery but with heavy losses, should move open order infantry but take more losses than it receives doing it, should defeat cavalry if it makes it to square but be somewhat vulnerable to it otherwise, especially if flanked or caught changing formations. Against other formed infantry, the defender should have an edge, but order should be the most important thing and quality the next most important; terrain should hardly matter at all when they clash.

3.  Cavalry should effortlessly beat open order infantry, do well against formed infantry not in square but somewhat unpredictably, almost always lose to infantry in square unless that is particularly "unsteady" or threatened by other arms as well, and should fight with other cavalry in a manner in which freshness and order is the most important thing, then quality, and numbers a distant third. Cavalry should run over artillery readily, though sometimes with modest loss in the process.

4.  Open order infantry should die without much effect against cavalry, take practically no losses from artillery fire, should exploit cover well, and should lose ground but inflict higher losses than it suffers against formed infantry. Against enemy open order infantry both sides should bleed slowly, with a strong edge to the side with better terrain if one has it, but little being decided per tick of the clock.

None of these relationships are those seen in the American civil war, because by the time of the ACW all the infantry have rifles, with 5 times the effective range of the smoothbore muskets of the Napoleonic period. With smoothbores, the passage from out of effective range to in melee is one shot in reload time terms, for cavalry. With rifles, the infantry can fire repeatedly and accurately and effectively and the cavalry simply cannot even attempt it, unless the infantry is scattered, few in number, disordered or surprised, etc.

The other thing to understand as different between Napoleonics and ACW is the role of light infantry in the former, meaning skirmishers in open order. Basically, open order beat formed for sustained fire combat. It gets its strength from the enemy missing more of his shots - innaccuate muskets, choosing the range, using cover, bigger target for themselves, etc. Open order couldn't hold ground vs formed that pressed and was willing to take losses to do so, but it was attrition-efficient. 

This heightens the role of cavalry because cavalry is a specific trump card counter to open order infantry, if the latter doesn't have plenty of terrain to shelter in. In mostly open ground, open order infantry is defenseless against cavalry, unable to get enough hits before being reached by charge, unable to present a continuous line of bayonets, etc.

Armies always knew if it was a battle day or a march and deployment day. Battles included long periods marshaling forces and dressing lines and waiting for orders. Yes there were periods of screening during battle days, but none of any consequence to the actual outcome of battles. Meaning, the screens simply gave way and deployed for battle as soon as the enemy was present in earnest and in strength etc.

Napoleonic battle strategy always kept and used significant reserves, and sequenced the use of forces. There was never any attempt to use every piece of the force at the same time to some utmost - they wouldn't last long enough in action for it anyway, and good order beat disorder so readily that possession of the last intact reserve was always a major focus of battle strategy. 

I bring that up because it explains the role light cavalry often found itself in during battle. They were frequently supporting or in reserve or ready to issue a countercharge riposte to deal with enemy cavalry attacks if those happened. They had valuable roles after battle as well as before, and reserves always mattered, so it was natural to have plenty of them in reserve for much of the time. They would still be used, but not to "harass flanks" in the sense of trying to turn the enemy left flank at a whole army scale.

Cavalry was organized into whole corps, generally of about 3000 or so, with battle roles pretty much always, or into divisions or brigades supporting specific infantry formations, especially the light cavalry. A typical French corps had one division of light cavalry, for instance.

Those wouldn't be collected into a cloud and sent around the enemy's left flank because they were fast. They would remain where their corps was, and support it, and perform for it the roles that only cavalry could perform, of driving off enemy cavalry that was spent or disordered by its own charge, or driving away skirmishers, or charging an offending battery threatening the infantry of the corps. And they'd be in support and reserve until they had to do those things - with their corps. Yes sometimes on its flank, sometimes behind it. They form part of its protection against enemy cavalry (by threat of riposte) and reduce its vulnerability to specific enemy combined arms counters and so forth.

Operationally, you occasionally see a detached cavalry corps or more attacking as an advanced guard on the day before battle, or early on a day of battle. With only their horse artillery as other supporting arms. But they generally couldn't take ground and keep it against a serious force of enemy formed infantry in those situations, and mostly didn't try. They'd wait for the rest of the army or at least the infantry of one supporting corps, so the enemy faced a true combined arms threat. Without one, it was too easy for the enemy to just get into square and stay there. Cavalry threat could take ground the enemy didn't occupy, and "freeze" some of his infantry, but to attack him efficiently the whole combined arms toolkit needed to be present.

Artillery was NOT the major killer or wound inflicter in the Napoleonic wars, or even came close to the total wounds inflicted by musketry.

Here are the wound causes of French soldiers admitted to hospitals at Borodino.

69% musket ball
13% artillery
15% sword wounds
2% bayonet or lance wounds

Hits per shot fired by muskets were as low as one chance in 200, occasionally as high as 1 in 50, and they still inflicted more causalties than the guns did. The average soldier carried 60 ball onto the field with more in battalion and higher supply trains, and fights lasted hours, long enough to fire off entire loads (which in fact only takes about half a hour, and was frequently limited by fouling more than firing time). But the average soldier did not hit 1 time in 60, or nobody would have walked off the field whole.

2 hits per shooter in 20 minutes is a tiny number for so short a range. Even if the average is pulled down by half the men on the shooting side being wounded - which would be an outlier, because only about a quarter were overall, typically, and those fired some first, etc.

The average shot was fired at much, much longer ranges than the short and intense close order brushes highlighted in tactical accounts. There are perfectly believable accounts of French columns opening fire at 1000 yards, and frequently halting to fire at 300.

Yes there are also instances of very short range firefights, which are a game of "chicken" played with guns, in which firing first allows the other side to fire with his remaining men from closer in. But those short range brushes were by no means the sole way infantry fought, nor the way most of the rounds fired were fired. Battles would have been over in half an hour with almost everyone on the losing side wounded, if it had been.

All participants describe Borodino as an artillery slug-fest with the bulk of the killing performed by cannon. Both sides remarked on how the day had been dominated by massive cannon fire, which produced an indecisive bloodbath. By September 1812 both the Grande Armee's and the Russian Army's field strengths in soldiers (i.e., musket toters) had shrunk by roughly two-thirds, while numbers of guns present on the field of Borodino remained effectively unchanged from June.

Cannon density was probably higher at Borodino than at any other major Napoleonic battle, with the possible exception of Leipzig, which, unsurprisingly, also was at the end of a long campaign where strategic wastage cut down infantry numbers while leaving cannon numbers basically intact. 

In the 18th and 19th centuries, cannons fired at 400 yards or less.

The targets were in close order. The cannons involved were not 1.5 to 2 inch bore rifles but 3 to 6 inches, mostly smoothbore and some howitzer (firing explosive "shell").

And they still hit less than one man per ten rounds fired. E.g. at Borodino, infantry muskets undoubtedly caused more losses than artillery, and the French artillery alone fired more than 100,000 rounds (ball and canister and shell, full cannon loads). Total Russian losses were around 40,000, all causes.

The number of artillery guns and their average accuracy was far too low to shoot down any appreciably portion of the opposing army even in an entire day of shooting. 5% maybe. The average shot fired missed completely, even against massed infantry targets. Smoke and continuing to fire after the enemy formation had left the beaten zone are leading reasons for artillery ineffectiveness. This made artillery mostly an area denial weapon, which forces enemy to leave a spot of ground.

You can find particular instances of forces shot down by artillery when it failed to move or did not know where to go. But shot down means things like 30% casualties to sizable formations - but well less than full armies - or 50% to very small ones (individual battalions or regiments e.g.).

Artillery just wasn't that effective as a killing instrument on Napoleonic battlefields. I've examined cases that are the biggest outlier successes of artillery in the wars, and they still work out to very low achieved per shot effect, even against massed infantry targets. The idea that they inflicted most of the casualties can definitely be rejected as a myth - the infantry muskets did. Yes the achieved accuracy of the muskets per shot were very low, but the same is true for the average cannon shot.

You can't find an instance of artillery just shooting down and stopping charging cavalry, of any consequence, from one end of the Napoleonic wars to the other. You find the reverse - the gunners run down or abandoning the pieces when charged - in nearly every battle. You can indeed find instances when artillery was particularly effective and played a major role in deciding battles. But close examinations shows it had that effect by setting up attacks for other arms, usually by causing disorder or forcing infantry to abandon key terrain, or otherwise to present a favorable occasion for infantry - or occasionally cavalry - attack.

Consider one of the most frequently cited "outliers" of artillery success - the French VII corps at Eylau. Accounts frequently speak of it being "almost annihilated", and ascribe this to massed artillery fire, especially from the 72 gun Russian grand battery in their center. One is thus given the impression that 72 cannons firing for half an hour or so could and did kill 10,000 man bunches. But that is not what actually happened.

VII corps advanced in a snowstorm and could not see the source of the fire hitting them. They strayed into the line of fire of the French guns. The Russians had 460 cannon on the field, not 72, and 150 heavies bore on the area in converging lines. It is called a mistake that they advanced where they did, and considered a weather excused command failure. Then the snow abated with them right in front of the 72 gun battery, within not just cannon range, but canister range.

The French formation may have been as few as 7500 men, and were already somewhat disordered. It received a few volleys of canister fire and more of ball from 3 directions. Then - often left out but clear in Russian eyewitness accounts - the disordered resulting mess was charged frontally by 5000 Russian infantry, supported by cavalry too on the left. About 2000 prisoners were taken. The Russian advance carried clear across the field. Murat's countercharge stopped it. Later in the day, 3000 to 4000 "survivors" of VII corps were still fighting in the center, having rallied in the Eylau town area during and after Murat's charge.

Starting strength minus survivors and prisoners imply anywhere from 1000 to 5000 actual casualties, with 3000 probably correct. Those losses were incurred not just from the artillery, but from an equal and more ordered body of infantry that went right through their previous positions. They were disordered by artillery, and routed by charge. It is possible as many as 1500 were actually hit by artillery, some their own or ball at longer range.

Meanwhile in the battle as a whole the French lost around 20,000 men, not 1500. With an error bar as large as 5,000, accounts differ so much.

I allowed a range of 7500 to 10000 for VII corps. Since 3-4000 survive fighting for the French and 2000 are captured, the actual hits are 1500 to 5000 with 3000 the figure that will minimize the expected error. Those losses are from long range shot for an extended period, recorded by all concerned (not "maximum possible" - the Russians had 460 guns and I only include the 150 known to bear on their position), plus the short range canister (from 72 of them), plus the infantry attack (by 5000 men, carrying straight through their positions and accounting for the prisoners).

The reason coming into sight within canister range matters is it means the positioning of the men and their formations and attitude etc were all unprepared to receive the fire they did receive. Normally infantry would approach to within canister range first with a skirmish screen in open order, whose fire would try to drive the gunners away from their guns. Making use of available cover etc. Formed would use dead ground, observe the line of previous shots and avoid those locations, etc. None of these usual means of dealing with artillery applied. The incident was clearly an outlier in its direct fire effects, and these factors help explain why it was an outlier.

Nevertheless, the charge and the prisoner haul and the large numbers who rallied back in French positions, all present a quite different picture from the typical one liner about a corps being practically annihilated by artillery fire. Instead they suggest they were disordered enough by it that they could not withstand the Russian infantry's charge. The fact that formed beats disordered in infantry fighting is easily the most important and best established of the whole era.

So, they blunder into a more vulnerable than usual situation, they get decimated, rear ranks start to run while front ones are ragged and in chaos, then infantry charges into them and they can't stop it. Some are shot down by that charging infantry, many more surrender to it, and more still run for their lives in rout. Yes the artillery fire was decisive in this, but as breaking the ice, starting the ball rolling. Not as inflicting all the losses, which were a significant chunk of the modest portion of the French army engaged, but nothing like a whole corps.

As for Borodino, the French storm the fleches alone half a dozen times just in the morning. Cannon fire never stops them. Every time they have to be ejected by fresh Russian reserves thrown into the position. The French grand battery bearing on the position approaches 100 guns. But never sweeps it clear, it always takes infantry attack. The position had reverse slope aspects, and each side rapidly dominated its own side of the hill, so to speak. But the real fighting took place as trades of pushes by fresh reserves.

Meanwhile, the fight on the French right was an infantry affair that lasted all morning. Skirmishers were in contact in the outlying positions in front of the great redoubt all day. When the French finally cleared the fleches position and attached the next, they did so with formed infantry that smashes thinner skirmish lines, and with repeated cavalry charges. This is not a battle that can be called simply an artillery duel, nor was it boring. Maneuverists who do not understand frontal attack on attrition principles can't see any of their favorite sweeping flanking operations and so fail to understand the battle, or focus excessively on minor actions on the wings - but that does not mean artillery did most of the fighting in the center. It didn't. The fight there was decided by exhausting fresh reserves, which is not something one can accomplish if the other guy only has to line his front with cannon to hold.

What is always conspicuously missing in the dramatic accounts of contemporary commanders is how all the time was actually spent. They focus on the most arresting passages - if which they usually figure prominently themselves - but rarely explain why tactical process A took 2 to 4 hours, instead of the 5 to 10 minutes that suffice for the part they retell. Because entire corps of infantry are described as "hotly engaged" by balancing forces of the enemy, for periods that long. In practically every battle. But there is not the remotest possibility the men were literally standing at 70 paces in close order happily blazing away as fast as they could reload, for such time periods. They'd all be dead in ten minutes, and out of ammunition in half an hour if for some unexplained reason they survived.

What was clearly happening instead is that only small portions were engaged - crusts of men in open order or using cover - firing at ranges that were sometimes quite lengthy. And still inflicting considerable harm (and disorder) on each other, but in a wearing, outlasting fashion. One does not see a division that can line its frontage give way in 20 minutes just because there are two opposite. Instead they lock, stalemated, and it takes hours for the scales to turn. Why? Because both can line the frontage and make it too dangerous for men to approach too close, and they then do not approach too close, but instead fire. Not something the commanders play up, because not a wanted behavior - but clearly present in battle after battle.

At Arcola, the French infantry refused to cross the causeways because Austrian musketry and a few cannon had a clear field of fire over them, half a mile long. Instead both sides fired at each other from behind dykes for the better part of three days. The Austrians lost half again as much as heavily as the French, despite better terrain and equal numbers. Probably because they were more willing to stand in ranks in close order, frankly. At Rivoli, the leading French corps was engaged in infantry vs. infantry combat from dawn until 11 AM without relief or interruption. What were they doing? They were skirmishing across a ravine.

At Austerlitz, the morning fight for the villages lasted two hours, from 7 to 9 AM. What do you think they were doing? Soult secures the Pratzen by 9:30 AM. He stayed in heavy action there until early afternoon, with continuous heavy action from 10 to 11 in particular. A little farther left it stayed hot clear to noon. The Russian Guard renewed the fight at 1 PM. Charging from 300 yards (why, if no one was firing yet?), they readily broke the first French line but were then disordered enough to be readily stopped by the second. See-saw commitment of cavalry ensued clear to 2 PM. Lannes and Bagration were in sustained infantry contact from mid-morning on, with firing on that flank only ceasing around 4:30 PM. On the French right after mid morning, 8000 French held off 4 times their number of Russians for hours, without giving ground or ever being free from fire. Then there is all the talk of "pressing" the cut off Russian left, which takes to late afternoon and (against increasingly disorganized stragglers) into evening. Why? What are they doing all that time? It takes only 20 minutes to fire off every round carried. They were skirmishing a few ranks at a time, that's what.

At Borodino, Davout begins the first attack on the fleches by 6 AM. He is pushed out of them again at 7 AM. Eugene has meanwhile also pushed past the village and been repulsed for the first time. The Poles are stopped at first by musketry from the woods to their north. They skirmish there indecisively for two hours. Davout is supported by Ney in the Fleches fighting as early as 8 AM, and cavalry tries by 8:30, with conscipuous lack of success. Russians are firing from the woods, in addition to trading blows with reserves in the fleches area proper. They regroup and doubtless shell in the meantime, but try again with 3 corps of infantry in the center at 10 AM. Davout was already wounded, Ney was wounded no less than four times. The Russians throw in reserves again, result see-saw fighting again, but the French keep the ground this time. Cavalry attempts to exploit farther, however, fail, running into Russian squares, their musketry, and cannons once beyond the fleches crest. Diversions cause delay after that, as the French prepare to hit the center with infantry again. They go in at 2 PM, with cavalry hard behind them. It clears the Redoubt, and the infantry occupies it. But it takes an hour. Then both sides' cavalry clash on the Russian side of the hill, and the Russians reform on the next ridge back under the cover of that action. Thus infantry was skirmishing for hours on the left, then fighting in close contact there. On the right, for an hour or more in the morning, and a relatively brief diversion in the afternoon. In the center is the real prolonged infantry fighting - 6 to 7, 8 to 8:30, 10 to noon, and again from 2 to 3. 4 and a half hours within range of enemy forces.  Estimated infantry rounds fired for the day as a whole, both sides combined, run 2 million. And all told, both sides combined lose 75,000 men. Meaning more than 25 ball are fired per man hit, even if muskets got almost all of them, which they did not. More like 35-40 for the portion they probably did cause.

Does anybody think that with formations engaging at melee distances, muskets can miss 34 out of 35 times? Does anybody think it takes 4 and a half hours for the average man to get one hit on an opposite number at 70 paces? Ergo, most of the shots fired were shot much farther away, and at much less dense targets.

The typical dynamics of a Napoleonic battle in attrition terms have to be faced, and combined with the still decidedly counterintuitive axioms of operations research. The battles last many hours, not minutes. Artillery ammunition expenditure runs high 5 to low 6 digits. No more than 40% of the losing side, and typically more like 25-33%, are hit. On the winning side it can be as low as 5% or as high as 30% in the bloodiest fights, with more like 15% typical.

Meaning, 3 out of 4 soldiers that walked onto a Napoleonic battlefield and fought equally numerous enemies for hours, walked off again without a scratch. Of the 1 in 4 that were hit, only 1/5 died - 1/20 of the overall forces present. The average soldier failed to hit a single enemy, despite theoretical accuracies of 25-40% for their main weapon against typical mass targets, and 60 to 100 rounds per man available, and ammo typically a real problem by late in the fighting.

OR says, first theorem, the average weapon system fails to account for a single opposite number over its service life. The realism difficulty for all the romantic accounts of period fighting is to reconcile how much they fired and for how long, with how few men were actually hit by any of it. And the inescapable conclusion is that lots of men shirked close fighting, average shots were taken at much longer ranges than tactical drills called for, with vastly lower achieved average accuracy as a direct result.

Bravery was scarcer than ammo, ammo was scarcer than time to fire, hits were scarcer than men present - all by large, not trivial, factors.

The artillery, meanwhile, was hitting only a seventh to a fifth of the quarter that were hit at all, despite firing up to 100 rounds per gun. Rounds fired outnumber men hit by all causes by factors of 2 to 5, and wounds by artillery are outnumbered by rounds fired by a factor of 10 to 25.

And some of that is canister at shorter ranges. Some is shell. Outlier best shots occasionally hit up to 25 men at a time, which to keep the average as calculated needs to be balanced by as many additional misses. The average shot must have missed, and more than that, it probably took something like 20 shots on average to hit anybody. A battery firing for an hour might have averaged 25 to 50 men hit. With, undoubtedly, a huge variance - plenty of that is firing blind into smoke at locations long since clear of all enemy. But a decisive arm through casualties directly caused, it most certainly was not.

The point of the Eylau example is that destroyed meant on the order of 1000 men hit by artillery fire, plus infantry attack and rout, not 10000 actually hit by artillery fire. Also, they destroyed was more like half destroyed, and it wasn't just the artillery that did it.

Incidentally, in the later 19th century the advent of rifles made infantry even more dominant, sweeping cavalry from the field and equaling the range of the guns. In the US civil war, wounds in hospital are 94% bullets, 5.5% artillery, and 0.5% bayonets.

Artillery only became the dominant wound causing agent in WWI. It was high explosive - the high is critical, earlier shell is not remotely in the same league - for steel breech-loading artillery, that brought about that change.  Artillery went from causing 12% of wounds to causing 70% of wounds, when it stopped being canister and started being HE.

Napoleon wasn't trying to avoid a war of attrition - he wasn't a German from 1941. His army outnumbered the Russian army by a factor of two. He was well placed to fight and win an actual war of attrition.

The attrition Napoleon actually encountered reduced his army by half before any major engagement with the Russian army. He was not gradually worn down by a series of major fights, nor reduced by winter weather (it happened in the summer - it was in fact unusually hot that year), nor by gradual small war and cossack actions away from the main battles. Several of those did feature in the retreat, but not in the reduction of his army which forced said retreat.

It was instead two other factors, medical first, and logistical second.

The medical was a typhus epidemic, spread by lice. It was particularly deadly, mortality among those infected reaching 90%. It swept through his army in the first month or two of the campaign, and did its damage before the first major fight at Smolensk. It was furthered by crowding, unsanitary camp conditions (men living in the open for weeks in the same infested clothes, without baths, on top of each other, etc), and the like, but it was simply a plague, at bottom. Shaving heads, burning clothes and issuing new ones, showers - those are the items his army needed but didn't get, in the urgency of the press of operations. He was invaded from below by an "army" of small parasites, which took at least a third of his army. That's right, at least a third, from this one cause alone, a viral fever spread by lice.

The second was logistical, and compounded by the previous. Napoleon had arranged storehouses of food to feed his half million men, and wagons to shift it to the army. Traditionally the French foraged for over half their supplies, but in the then sparsely populated forest and swamp regions of northwestern Russia there was precious little forage to be had. So he was more than usually reliant on supply from the rear by wagon.

This had three main problems. One, the army was moving and opening the distance from its depots at least as fast as the wagons moved. Which meant it only received anything if it halted and paused and let some of the wagons catch up to the men. Then those got to go back for more, doubling the distance and (with the army moving still) tripling or quadrupling the time to fetch up the next load.

The second problem was that the roads were abysmal to non-existent, and the better ones couldn't take to volume of traffic sent over them without serious delays. The army was too large and too concentrated for the road network and carrying capacity of the countryside, in other words. The army corps had been created to keep road columns managable in size, and spread logistic load more widely through parallel movement. But in Russia the French had an army 4 times the usual size, and to stay more concentrated, for lack of parallels to spread over. This stressed the very factors that needed corps in the first place - and broke them.

And the third was that the horses were dying. Both in the army force itself and all along the supply train, overworked horses in the high summer heat were dropping like flies. Napoleon had a veternary crisis as well as a medical one, in other words. 

The right response to all of the above was to divide the army and pause operations to enable its easier supply, master the epidemic, and save the horses. But that left no ability to chase Russians, so Napoleon did not adopt it until the damage was done.

Meanwhile, men and horses fell out in droves, to get away from those conditions, to carry sick to the rear or tend them in place, to forage farther from the line of march (which was completely picked over and a wasteland in consequence, as far as food and supplies went). Probably half as many, to as many, simply dropped out of the march as actually went down to the typhus.

After winning the battle of Smolensk - handily - Napoleon should have paused and saved his army there, going into winter quarters early and gathering in supplies. He had already lost half the army, less than 10% of those losses from enemy action.

He gambled instead that he could win a decisive battle, occupy Moscow, and force a favorable peace, as he had e.g. in 1805 in Austria after Austerlitz. He did get and won his decisive battle - Borodino - and did take Moscow. But Alexander didn't make peace, and the Moscow was burned practically to the ground while his army was quartered inside it.

That was the actual final blow. Before winter and not by military action, attritionist or otherwise. Supply and shelter and logistics were decisive throughout the entire campaign. Those, and medicine. Napoleon was defeated by a plague virus spread by insects and by a staggering disregard for logistics.

CLAUSEWITZ TO THE CIVIL WAR

Why all that background? Because it sets up shock vs. maneuver thinking, as it was before the modern German military tradition. What happened historically is, the Prussian army that went to face Napoleon in 1806 still used the old linear tactics of Frederick. And the French cleaned their clocks, in one of the most decisive defeats in history. When the Prussians got a chance to rebuild a nationalist army in 1813, they were determined to avoid another Jena, and learned scrupulously from the French.

The architects of that new army - Gneisenau above all - believed completely in Napoleon's doctrine of decisive battle. Tactically, they mixed fire and shock in the French way. Gneisenau also created the German general staff, which sought to duplicate the effects of Napoleon's personal genius in a distributed "brain" of expert professionals.

Attrition strategy stresses firepower, but that is hardly its main point. The overview above that lists mobility as one of the key contributors to attrition strategy to "focus destructive force" and move away from the enemy's is a typical piece of maneuverist bombast smuggled in to someone else's doctrine because they just cannot stop talking about it to save their lives.

The thesis of attrition strategy is that all dislocation, quality, and command effects tend to be bounded in scope between first rate adversaries over the time scales involved in serious great power war. Clausewitz says, for example, that there is scarcely any general in Europe whose value on the battlefield would outweigh odds against him of 2 to 1, and he says that thinking of cases like Napoleon and that Battle of Nations at Leipzig. 

Incidentally, Clausewitz also explains why they are bounded. Armies learn and emulate each other. Tactics can be copied. Unsuccessful leaders lose their positions and veterans take their places. Genius can indeed occasionally matter more than the bounds he gives against the truly incompetent or the unready; but major powers don't stay incompetent for the entire time scale of great power wars.

Attrition strategy focuses on the ratio of fielded forces between the two sides as the single most important determiner of long run military outcomes. It seeks in every way to raise this ratio in both its numerator and its denominator, by additions and by subtractions.

Meaning, force generation, logistical support, and projection are as vital as battle. Meaning, destruction of the ability of the enemy to field new forces is as important as destroying his existing force. Meaning, all forces are viewed as flows or time integrals and not as stocks at one moment in time. Meaning, no available forces are ever permanently discounted as being "out of position" through mere dislocation effects; they are always expected to be able to move to where they are useful in one way or another.

And meaning that the fielded forces of the enemy are the main objective and center of mass in an attrition strategy. They are the target, not a "surface" to be avoided as dangerous. Napoleon expressed this principle well when he said "there are many fine general officers in Europe, but they all see too many things. Whereas I see only one thing, the main body of the enemy. This I crush, confident that lesser matters will take care of themselves". Attrition strategic seeks decisive battle and battles of annihilation for this reason. It is as far as possible from adages about achieving victory without fighting, of the sort beloved by maneuverists.

Attrition strategy expects great power war to be a competition in systematic industrial murder on a continental scale. It views all attempts to replace this expectation with something else as weak evasions and mistakes.

Thus Germany leaves the Napoleonic era with a living and successful tradition, wedded to tactical combined arms, decisive battle, and staff professionalism. Maneuver is secondary. It may help to bring about a decisive battle when the enemy seeks to avoid pitched battle. It may improve the conditions for tactics.

The basic driver is what I would call "tactical opportunity pull" from combined arms relationships. You look at what the enemy has and the professional formulas spit back the tool to use, as the "school solution", that he is most vulnerable to. Its action in turn creates opportunities to use other arms to their best effect.

You see a mass of infantry in close order on a ridge, say. Your first thoughts are not "shall I go right at them or around"? They are simply "enemy in close order equals use fire equals deploy skirmish lines in front and place batteries in positions overlooking said ridge". Like that, automatic, no thought necessary.

No scheme of maneuver beyond that neccessary either - yet. When fire changes the enemy force, creates disorder, or makes him move or alter his dispositions and formation etc, then sure you reach to the next weapon. And you think ahead about those additional moves, the instant you deploy the skirmishers and batteries. So the close order supports of the skirmishers go here, in case an opportunity to charge is created by the batteries, there. That you can scheme about all you like. But the actual charge is going to be made when the tactical opportunity appears.

Implicit in the scheme is the notion that the enemy cannot cover himself with one disposition against all weapons types and contingencies.

OK, mid 19th century, something else comes along. Modern firepower begins to appear, in the form of rifles for everyone, then breech loaders and repeaters, breech loading artillery with effective explosive shell, etc. It is found that physically charging into infantry ready to receive that charge, is suicidal. This does not mean frontal attack is suicidal. It means frontal attack must be delivered as fire and not as old style shock.

Good defensive terrain in the ACW era is long and linear while providing cover as well as concealment - stone walls, sunken roads, trench lines, breastworks, or a ridge. Woods provide some concealment and are extensive enough to cover whole formations, but like hedges don't really provide significant cover in the sense of physically stopping a large number of incoming rounds.

Most ground that wasn't pretty flat (no more than rolling hills) was completely covered in forest, making long lines of sight impossible, and negating 90% of the usual benefit of higher ground in the fire combat era.

Tactically, nobody tried to defend towns. Only open order thin formations could use the available cover, and those could not hold off a rush. You can't defend buildings with muskets that take 20-30 seconds to load when lines of sight are 50 meters or less. The attackers would march up, a few defenders who could actually see them would open fire, the attackers not hit would lower their bayonets and rush, and the defenders standing there with empty tubes would run away as fast as their legs would carry them.

The US Civil War battlefield dramatically reduced the importance of artillery compared to the Napoleonic period, precisely because the widespread use of (more rapidly loading) rifles gave the infantry an effective range firing at artillery batteries that matched or outranged caseshot. This put artillery in the front line at a distinct second to infantry lining the frontage, in the firepower it could put out, and removed its previous ability to outrange said infantry to protect itself with a lethal envelope that infantry could not readily cross without disorder or ruinous loss. The same increased range of infantry made mounted cavalry a suicidal arm outside of skirmish situations.

While skirmish lines were still used in the ACW they did not have anything like this importance or role. The rifles were much more accurate, so being more spaced out but still in open ground offered much less protection. A full line of battle could readily shoot down skirmish lines opposite, and do so even at significant range. They didn't need cavalry to clear such skirmisher clouds away - they could just aim and fire.

This development also means thinning to fire efficiently is not so easily countered as in the past. To wear that out by fire alone takes time. This frees up numbers previously held massed for shock, and as a result the size of deployments expands dramatically. Long thin deployments create vulnerabilities at the ends. Now the stock counter to a thin firing line is no longer a charge, but is instead a turning movement.

This is a reintroduction of maneuver, to outsiders, or an increase in its importance. But within the scheme itself, it is simply an updating of an entry in a move-and-counter diagram. The counter to "thin extended firing line" is not "pick a flank and overload it" rather than "charge with shock forces".

In the wars of German unification, 1864 to 1870, Prussia showed this stuff off. The architect this time was Moltke the elder. Decisive battle remained the idea, but he added two features - the above tactical adaptation to modern firepower, and mobilization speed to produce an operational advantage early in the war. This was created by tapping the *managerial* abilities of the general staff system (and by wedding those to railway timetables, above all).

The Germans expected infantry to attack in long skirmish lines, firing while moving, and to defeat any enemies in front of them. They also had an excellent divisional artillery arm, including 105mm howitzers in each infantry division, that was trained from the start in indirect fire. In practice, that artillery could put a barrage down ahead of the German infantry skirmish lines and often "shoot them in", as long as the defenders were not strongly entrenched.

It has been said the Prussians of this era understood how to take the offensive operationally while standing on the defensive tactically. That is true to some extent, but what it calls "defensive tactically" is really reliance on fire, rather than defense per se. They don't charge the French army at Sedan, they envelop it and annihilate it as it tries to get out of the trap. And it crushes their enemies. Nothing indecisive about it. Western traditions (especially French and British and especially cavalry thinking) sees the disappearance of Napoleonic shock as defense taking over. It is really fire taking over.

THE GREAT WAR

The Germans go into WWI with that kit bag. It works better than anything the Allies have, but still doesn't win the war for them. The armies are so large in the West, on limited space, that there aren't any edges to envelope, only fortified salients. In the East maneuver room can still be found sometimes.

The overall goal is still annihilation of the enemy army. But the enemy armies are so numerous, and overall enemy firepower is so high, even an application of this well developed and professional doctrine, does not suffice to win the war.

Historically, armies defeated armies with similar weapons by vastly superior command. Yes that vastly superior command included selection and training of subordinates, organization of their forces, disposition of those forces, etc. All of them smack in the center of the art of command. For example, the Mongols had a better military but mostly from their superior organization, only secondarily from a better choice of tactics and weapon systems, which were also open to their opponents, just not fielded as effectively.

Yet from a command perspective, WWI was a war in which the generals  could do remarkably little, given the technology and methods known to them, including those invented in the course of the war. Plenty of development happened during it, which it is important to know from the history of the military art perspective. But it was in the end decided by entire nations being fed up with the slaughter of their young men, and by armies coming apart in the field when they could not see how to stop that; in turn those outcomes were mostly driven by the economic weight directed at such slaughter, with only a minor term for the importance of tactics or skill. And practically nothing for the importance of command.

None of the tactical innovations mattered horribly much to the eventual outcome - shell production thrown by artillery tubes still murdered entire nations whenever either side tried to attack, and railroads shifting divisions and shells ensured defense dominance even after apparently "successful" "breakthroughs". As a result, none of the tactics were ever decisive. Decisive means "brings about a decision, determines who wins the war", not "makes a little 5% or 10% difference in one battle".

WWI was decided by raw artillery shell production and raw manpower put into trenches. When enough of the former had subtracted enough of the latter from the opposing side, the men had "had it" and whole nations ran away rather than face more of it.

The officers were trying to do all sorts of other things, but in the grand scheme of things they had their heads up their collective backsides and were hopelessly stupid butchers, unable to control the impersonal monster the war had become.

Firepower kills, said Petain. And it did. But the French relied on direct lay rapid fire from their "French 75s" for artillery support, and that really only worked with visible, massed infantry targets. Which rapidly disappeared once men were entrenched, and the heavier sort of artillery then took over the killing.  The primary role of infantry from that point on was to force the enemy to man his own trenches so friendly artillery could murder them there. Unfortunately, infantry of your own side had to expose itself to enemy murder to bring that about.

One colossal command blunder that does not afflict the Germans in WW I - with the partial exception of Ludendorf, late - as it crucifies the French and the British staffs, is the cult of the offensive and the dream of breakthrough, "rupture", "the big push to the green fields beyond", "restoring movement". French officers were trained to charge home with elan, thinking that the moral effect of advance would cause the defenders to break and run. Which didn't happen. The French lost a million men in the battle of the frontiers learning that lesson.

The Allied generals simply did not understand the system they were interacting with. Better infantry tactics could and did win battles, but could not and did not win campaigns, let alone the war. Strategy still dominates operations and that diplomacy and economic weights are the prime factors in strategy. Operations dominates tactics and movement time to the front, logistics, reserves and planning dominate operations, not tactical razzle dazzle of any kind.

At the strategic level, the Germans pick a target from their overall central position, rail in what it takes to hurt it, choose the right mix of tactics for the enemy force in front of them, and hurt it.  The right mix of tactics starts with 210mm howitzers by the hundreds and adds nuance with a eyedropper. Somebody has to threaten attack to make the enemy man his front trenches in strength. Then heavy artillery annihilates them. This is the old mix of shock and fire, only now shock is not an infantry skirmish line, but hundreds of batteries and millions of shells applied over months. As the enemy adapts to this with deeper dugouts and thinner outpost fronts, infantry gets more aggressive. Trench raid tactics are scaled up to the size of armies.

The French doctrine of 1914 was certainly pants, but they weren't completely clueless about trench warfare once that took hold. They were the pioneers in the use of mortars, for instance, and fielded them rapidly for their infantry once the lines went stable. The Brits copied them on that. On light MGs, the Brits had better equipment in the Lewis, but the French understood the importance of pushing light MGs forward - their Chauchat was just a piece of crap mechanically. Light enough but not nearly as reliable as the Lewis.

The Germans did not field more MGs than either; their superiority - which was definite - lay in their superior artillery and in better command and initiative in their rifle infantry. It wasn't until quite late in the war that the Germans developed a superior defensive doctrine - the "denuded front" to avoid enemy artillery concentrations - and even then, it wasn't infantry-equipment based, but doctrinal.

In the early war, there weren't trenches, the number of MGs was very low (like 4 HMGs to a battalion of riflemen), and there was plenty of open maneuver by lines of infantry. But with the men above ground, the main result was that artillery superiority was tactically decisive. And the Germans in 1914 were the only power fielding 105mm howitzers in every infantry division. They also used more HE and less shrapnel, and shrapnel was just a bad idea (no need to carry projectile when the shell case will serve just fine for that, if you carry more HE to make more faster and smaller splinters).

The Germans kept their artillery edge well into midwar, fielding large parks of 8 inch howitzers when the French were still mostly 75s with some 155s as their heaviest howitzers. That mattered most in trench fighting - trenches have the most dramatic effect on the power of the lighter kinds of artillery. The western allies also had some simply horrible artillery usages through midwar - long prep barrages with lots of notice that just sent the Germans into deep dugouts for the duration and wasted millions of shells to little effect, etc).

In 1914, the French started out too aggressive, attacked into barrage fire and got cut to pieces, and got defeatist about it pretty quickly. They then had morale problems, as the line correctly deduced that their bosses didn't know what they were talking about and were hanging them, the line, out to get killed. In contrast, the Germans had better artillery and leaned on it more. It worked, morale stayed high, and their infantry showed initiative. But in 1914 they were still trying to fight at the end of long lines of march against defenders trained in as needed, with all the usual attacker's difficulties of poor intel and the occasional well prepared defender's position. Fundamentally, the Germans lost the 1914 campaign because the French had a shorter time to front. But they had gotten close because they were superior man for man during the war of movement.

The Germans had a qualitative edge in WW I, initially from better strategy and superior heavy artillery, at midwar mostly from the latter, and late (when they no longer had an artillery edge) from advanced infantry tactics, far beyond those the other powers had attained (despite continual improvement on their part, as well).  With strong tank support and massive relative artillery expenditure the western allies occasionally reached near-equality, they did not exceed it - again until German morale collapsed in the last four months.

Practically every major German offensive of the war inflicted more casualties than they took themselves. They inflicted 9 million casualties on the Russians, suffering far fewer, and attacking the majority of the time. They crushed Rumania in weeks, taking tiny losses. They inflicted losses an order of magnitude higher than their own on the Italians. The French and Brits were tougher, but the Germans still inflicted 3 to 2 attacking at Verdun, as well as 3 to 2 again defending on the Somme. 

The Germans lost, because there were too many enemies to contend with. Numerically, not just economically. Economically the running was closer, in fact. Economic strength mattered not for home front morale but for shell production, which translated pretty linearly (though with different coefficients for different countries) into enemy losses. But to sustain those losses took population, and in case nobody noticed, France, Britain, and the US combined are much larger than Germany.

In the latter stages, the Germans are frankly gambling. The single biggest longshot bet is unrestricted submarine warfare trying to knock the Brits out, even at the likely cost of bringing the Americans in. The Brits institute convoys, tame the sinkings, the Americans do come in. That would have lost the war right there.

Russia dropping out gives them another long shot. Maybe US in and Russia out is a net gain, if they can beat the other allies before the US shows up. That is Ludendorf's 1918 reasoning and the reason he is driven to seek not sound tactical application of doctrine, but rupture and decision. He predictably fails to get it, and Germany loses.

The early 1918 Ludendorff offensives inflicted a million casualties on the Allied armies. (The Brits alone lost a quarter of a million in the first 6 weeks). German losses were roughly half that. The reason they were not more decisive is Americans were arriving in France as fast as Brits and Frenchmen were being killed or wounded, while the German killed or wounded could not be replaced. US forces in France reached 650,000 at midsummer, in time to help stop the offensives. By the fall there were 4 million US soldiers mobilized and half of them were already in France.

Ludendorff knew the army was collapsing, its trench strength could not longer be maintained, and every Allied offensive was producing prisoner hauls with 5 digits in the first few days. Nor did they have anything that could stop 30 tanks per mile indefinitely.

At the start of 1918 the Germans still had an edge in numbers, thanks to repositioning men from the east. But by the fall they no longer did, since the arrival of Americans replaced the British and French losses in their offensives, while their own losses could not be replaced.

At the start of the offensives, forces transfered from the east were sufficient to give the Germans numerical superiority on the western front, for the first time since 1914. They fielded 220 divisions to the Allies 160. And they performed significantly better per man, despite Allied strengths in weight of artillery metal from industrial output (much of it American for years, incidentally), and tanks. If millions of Americans had not been arriving to replace Allied losses, Allied strength would have declined seriously due to the 1918 offensives, faster in fact that the Germans and from a lower base.

The British still had significant manpower reserves. No one else did. The British Army did not on its own stand up to the German offensives, which ripped wide holes in its front and led to PW bags in the 6 figures. British conscripts being sent back to the front showed signs of unrest similar to those seen in the French army the previous year.

In principle, Britain might have traded blows with the Germans for another year, with their greater remaining manpower depth (not as yet mobilized or trained, however) fighting against the headwinds of superior German numbers at that point, and proven superior German skill per man. It might have taken 3 million more casualties to drive the British past their own breaking point if they had pulled out all the mobilization stops. Germany might not have had the wind for that.

But it was darn close, and in the first half of 1918 the British were in no shape to stop the Germans. It was the pointlessness of bleeding the Allies a million men at enormous cost, only to see 2 million Americans step into their places, that drove the Germans to despair. And it was inability to replace their own losses at that point that reduce their average battalion size 20% by the end of summer.

The army was coming apart in the field and could no longer hold. That is why Ludendorff insisted on an immediate armistice. We have all the internal documents establishing this, and the loss and trench strength reports that substantiate it. The German army lost on the field first. After it was clear there would be no victory, pols began insisting on consitutional changes - something the German high command had known was inevitable if they did not simply win. The man in the street then saw which way events were heading and activists pushed for a full republic, successfully.

In WWI, several armies came apart on the field. Losses too high and inability to replace them drove front line rifle strength below levels needed to hold the line and provide regular reliefs. Once that happened, morale of the remaining overtaxed men plummeted. When attacked, they surrendered by the tens of thousands per day on top of battles losses, rates no army could sustain.

90% of Austro-Hungarian men mobilized during the war became casualties or surrendered well before the end. 76% of mobilized Russian manpower became causalties. Neither sustained themselves in the war. 73% of mobilized French personnel became casualties, and they were carried by their allies, Brits as early as 1917 and Americans in 1918. For Germany the figure was 65%, at which point the army broke.

Russia left the war and had a revolution. Austria-Hungary left the war, had a revolution, and ceased to exist as a unified state. Germany left the war and had a revolution. Turkey left the war and had a revolution.

And the same would have happened to Italy after Caporetto had French and British troops not held the line for them, and to the French after the Nivelle attempts in 1917, had the Brits not carried the weight for them. (French army morale was sustained only by the promise of no more offensives, on the slogan "wait for the Americans and the tanks").

Attrition is not an indecisive process. Europe is not run by large multinational empires. Kaisers and Czars do not sit on thrones clear across it, ordering their minions about following geopolitical schemes. War so conducted smashes states to pieces. Which is decision by any objective standard.

There was no home front collapse (the "stab in the back") first. It was decidedly second and triggered by the high command's admission that victory was no longer possible. Post war German propaganda tried to maintain the myth, at first to denigrate the terms of the Versailles treaty and later to discredit the Weimar government. But it was all lies.

WW I was a much more near-run thing that people here seem to imagine, and the processes involved were as decisive as you please. They were just horrendously expensive in human terms, as well.

All of which gave attrition doctrine a bad name in the postwar era, in Germany too. While the Generalstabs is still professionally trained a la Moltke the elder, and therefore believes in annihilation battle and tactical opportunity pull as combined arms, the new armor force guys aim higher. And there is a diffidence about the older tradition because it proved insufficient in the immediate past, to defeat half the world from a base of just Germany (though it had outperformed the Allies).

MANEUVER THEORY

Encirclement and flanking were viewed as creating favorable conditions for annihilation battle.  Later maneuverists, and also early British ones (Fuller, Hart) envisioned deep objectives as an alternative to destruction of the enemy force. 

Contrary to popular belief, "shot to the brain" drives on capital cities was not part of the German recipe in WW II. It was not that they failed to consider it, they did. But as a professional body, they rejected it as unsound. (Anybody who likes can think them wrong about that, but that is what they thought). Thus, the 1940 drive to the Channel, not Paris. Or the 1941 Kiev encirclement, not the drive on Moscow.

The earliest serious theorists of the armor revolution in warfare were not German, and they didn't wait until WW II. They were British, hip deep in the debate over the proper use of tanks in WW I, and all the sound professionals among them were eclipsed by one crazy guy named Fuller, who was an officer and a practitioner, but was also an author, a proto-fascist "modernist" of the Nietzsche-Pareto style, and a perfectly certifiable lunatic who worshipped Aleister Crowley and the nuttiest occult nonsense imaginable.

Fuller was the one who said, mass the armor, don't dribble it out all along the line. Let armor be the decisive arm, not an aid to the infantry. Let it move at its own mechanical speed, instead of slowing it to the pace of the dull plodding masses of infantry. Strike for deep objectives. The shot to the brain instead of superficial cuts at the extremities.

This was all presented as having political overtones everywhere. Being tied to the dull plodding masses supposedly happened in politics and culture, too. The magico-technical elite could and should act independently instead, determining their fate. With only other elites worthy targets - not morally speaking, just magico-technically. Some air theorists were saying similar things - let us fly over and destroy the enemy will to resist, and all this ground fighting by massed peons can be made obsolete.  You can't understand why these ideas all had the same "savor" to literary nostrils without seeing their nutty-elitist overtones. Free of morality, the new magicians were going to seize technical power, wield it decisively and self servingly, and install themselves as masters. Mass anything would bow to magical techno prowess. When he wasn't writing armor theory, he was reading spellbooks and indecipherable gibberish from occultist charlatans. (I swear I am not making this up).

BHL Hart was Fuller's sane publicist, trying to strip away the encrusted garbage and keep the military sense of the idea. But at bottom he was only an historian, and his military judgment was superficial at best. This lent itself to cartoon formulas and ideological propagation, but also acted as a "seriousness repellent". Your average general, told the secret of all warfare was to go around, rightly scoffed that amateurs know nothing about war. Although admittedly it was an improvement over the full Fuller.

Everybody had read Fuller and Hart. It was not a matter of being unaware of the thoughts involved. They were just presented in such extreme forms, by such nutty people, or so simplistically, that they were clearly just wrong as stated. (Fuller wanted attacks by -pure- armor, ignoring fronts, riding right through them straight for deep political objectives. At a time when armor meant either "Mother" or whippet tanks. Think Cambrai with 10 times the scale and without a supporting arms plan). The question was how to correct them, what to keep, what to throw away?

To Hart, the whole point of tanks was to get back to charging around on the map chasing political aims, instead of siege warfare between the armies at the front line. In this he was decidedly more conventional than Fuller. The whole British army spent WW I obsessed with the idea of "breakthrough" in the "one big push" that would "restore movement" and "win the war". Anybody who thinks they fought WW I as they did because they didn't know enough to try for this hasn't the first idea what happened in WW I. They continually thought, this new formula will break through, when breakthrough was a mirage. Breakthroughs did occur in WW I, sizeable ones. The Germans stacked up long lists of them. They just didn't end the war.

The Germans had their own front generation nuttiness, not Fuller but Junger. For him WW I was the war of material, mechanized total war. It reduced men to ants, to raw materials being poured into and processed through mechanized death factories. He "got" the horror of artillery warfare. But wanted to find some romantic prowess in the middle of it, in the minimalist form of bare willingness to take it without going stark raving mad. (It is not at all obvious he didn't). All that mythic, superhuman will can magically vanquish all before it, just never tell them to retreat, junk, that you see Hitler spouting on the east front was regurgitated Junger. (He always thought he "got it", having been a corporal under shellfire, and that the foo-foo staff officers never would).

This fight between traditionalists and maneuverists then interacts with the politicization fight going on within the German army, about its independence from or subservience to, Hitler and the regime. Those who slow up the new maneuverists are successfully painted as old sticks-in-the-mud who aren't with the new political program, and are opposed to aiming high because (it is insinuated) they secretly oppose the regime.  Officers willing to play it as an ideological "card" get around the formal hierarchy and get their way on things. Guderian reached around his chain of command to be allowed to send his force wherever. Manstein got his plan for France picked over those by men far senior by selling Hitler on it privately as the bold path to decisive victory.

Hitler was going on promises and "scent". When people failed he just sacked them, he had no real ability to assess their talent beyond the empirical one, had they won? But he could be manipulated, readily, by flattery - giving him a whiff of romantic elitism and "counting him in" as "visionary" for "seeing it", as opposed to those old reactionary vons. (One just couldn't ever get him to do anything pessimistic-realistic that way - a great big gamble, no problem, the simplest precaution for a likely downside, forget it).

Part of this was just being susceptible to flattery like any tyrant. Part of it was his way of politicizing the officer corps, trying to indoctrinate them to his way of thinking. Think big unrealistic magically-nutty thoughts, get your way - as a sort of standing offer or inducement to sign up for a higher dose of nutty than your neighbor. (He had an endless supply of nuttier than fruitcake to sell, no serving officer would ever get to the end).

The Nazi Party did not have a military doctrine. They had an attitude -- romantic, magical, elitist, immoral, deliberately brutal -- that they thought was the secret of power. Scraps of ambient elitism absorbed from the wider culture also wafted first into, then back out of, the pages of the nuttier maneuver theorists. Well schooled military professionals were inclined to look on the nutty bits about the way a classical economist would look at a Foucault seminar, and turn up their noses. And were snubbed in turn as reactionaries.

So what happens when you give a few officers in this school Fuller and Hart to read? They throw away the excesses and keep the parts they think fit what they know to be a sound existing doctrine, overall. They are not in the position of a Fuller in England, hurling anathemas at an establishment that won't take him seriously. The German adapters do not think Fuller's ideas can replace Moltke's and Napoleon's. They would as soon ignore the advice of Boeing and Lockheed about a new aircraft design in favor of four hand-drawn sketches made by an out of work bicycle mechanic who dropped them over the transom as a way of asking for a job. But they'll look at the drawing - the Wright brothers were bicycle mechanics, they might come up with the darnedest thing.

Guderian immediately saw that sending no infantry would not work at all. This was the first objection by the British and French army staff as well to the pure tank theorists of WW I era. Guderian's solution was to make the infantry as fast as the tanks (operationally, not tactically) by motorizing them. And motorizing all the other arms as well.

Notice, this meant he immediately saw the mobility issue as an operational one, not a tactical one. Tactically, there were definite tactics from WW I about how you penetrate anything, even with pure infantry. Guderian did not regard this as an unsolved problem that it would take tanks to solve, because it wasn't. German infantry regularly created breakthroughs in WW I by using surprise, limited arty prep, advanced detachments to blind the enemy and find weak points, reinforcing success, pushing deep into the enemy position to mess up deployment of reserves and create confusion, etc.

Guderian put armor in the same leading role. The all arms motorized force was to exploit the breach once made. From a German point of view, that is where all the grand WW I attempts had failed - not at the breakthrough stage.

In 1914, they broke smartly through the French frontiers but stalled at the Marne, tired and overextended. The French could rail in whole reserve armies faster than the landser could march. In Russia, again, they broke through repeatedly. They encircled and destroyed entire Russian armies in 1914 and 1915, and broke the front again at Riga in 1917 - without a single tank. But it still took 2 revolutions to knock Russia out of the war -  breakthroughs alone did not do it. They had thought them about finished after the 1915 smashing successes, but in 1916 the Russians still hit back hard in the Brusilov offensive. The broke through in Italy and wiped out an army - but the Italians rallied on French and British reinforcements, the line soon stabilized, and a year later the Italians were attacking them. They broke through the Brits and later the French in the grand 1918 spring offensives, and advanced dozens of miles - but then faced reserves with arty all railed in, while their own supplies were back on their side of the original front.

So the problem Guderian thought he was solving was not breakthrough as such, it was making one decisive. He also thought, to be sure, that tanks could achieve the breakthrough more reliably and more economically in lost lives and strength. But in case everybody forgot, his greatest victory was crossing the Meuse at Sedan in 1940, and Pz IIIs do not float. Infantry made the bridgehead, and held it under supporting fire from the far bank as tanks were ferried across. Air support mostly just suppressed French artillery fire until after the crossing had been effected. The French batteries were waiting for the "raid" to be over, to avoid giving away their positions.

Did Guderian learn from Fuller how to make a breakthrough decisive? No. First, it was Guderian personally and not some overall army doctrine. When they conducted the wargame of the French operation, they got to the point where his armor had broken through. He had to decide his next move. He was aware of the case for deep objectives and a "shot to the brain", and knew that it meant the target should be Paris, trying to win the war in one "go". But he rejected this as unsound. And instead picked the English Channel, to cut off the Allied armies in Belgium. That was Molkte speaking, and through him Napoleon - seek annihiliation battle on favorable terms. Target the main body of the enemy army. Secondary matters will take care of themselves.  That was not a lack of maneuverism. It was military sense rather than ideological and pedantic abtraction. And it won the actual 1940 campaign, easily. 


THE EARLY BLITZKRIEG: THE ILLUSION OF CHEAP WINS

WW2 was decided by long term attrition processes: wiping out the enemy by killing their manpower and breaking their major weapon systems. For all the early German maneuverist seeking of cheap victories through command dislocation effects, those never decided the war, and only decided short campaigns early on, against unprepared adversaries.

When the German army crushed Poland in 1939, the pros running the show believed they were simply applying the same sort of annihilation battle that had defeated Austria in 1866, France in 1870, and had shattered lesser allies (Italy, Rumania) in WW I, done at least massive damage to larger ones (Russia repeatedly, the Brits in 1918, the French in 1914) - without use of a single tank. The German general staff did not share the western belief that warfare was futile and indecisive because of machineguns, barbed wire, artillery, and trenches. Actually, I doubt they would even have understood the conjuction, "futile warfare". They lost WW I, but at no time did their methods seem to them incapable of achieving the strategic task.

In spite of its reputation as the first application of "blitzkrieg", Poland was a very conventional battle of annihilation in the classic sense.  The German IDs ate everything they ran into, and that is what destroyed the Polish army. The process was quite simple. Probe, get shot up a little but locate the Polish position, call down 105mm and 150mm fire, advance after it to find most of the Poles gone and the rest bleeding.  Yes the motorized corps also made a couple break ins, everybody did, it wasn't hard. They occasionally had the sense to get behind the first of these instead of each division making its own. But on the whole, the German army pushed rather than cutting, and evaporated Polish units directly in front of them as readily as they evaporated units they ran around.

The attacking German army was twice the size of the Polish one. That's in manpower, which was Poland's only long suit.  Per capita income in Poland was about a quarter of that in Germany. (Population was less than half Germany's, as well). Most of the population was engaged in agriculture (half still were in the 1980s). Half the population was illiterate, and lived on less than $100 a year. The country came into existence in the aftermath of WW I as part of the civil war in Russia, had to fight for independence down to 1922. It then lost all accumulated savings in a hyperinflation, then had a trade war with Germany that wrecked agricultural exports, then a fascist coup (years before Germany's), then the great depression. This sequence amounted to an economic catastrophe of biblical proportions. In the mid 1930s per capital output was half the level reached under Russian rule in 1913.

The border the Poles had to defend snaked around the country on three sides, coming to 3500 miles in all, not counting the Russian backstab. They were facing one of the strongest militaries on the planet, supported by a fifth of world industrial production and its highest technology.  The war was largely over in the first week. The Germans advanced 150 miles, destroyed or isolated in doomed pockets large portions of the Polish army (foolishly defending far forward in a vain effort to defend everyone), and breached or turned all the natural defense lines in the form of the major river systems.  There was one more week of serious fighting in which the Poles tried to concentrate on fighting a single German infantry army, which failed. After two weeks, it was utterly pointless. The rest was a completely uncoordinated collapse, and messy mop up.

The first real test case for the "maneuverist" school was France. The French had full armor divisions - very tank heavy - and light mech divisions, the latter all arms formations that gave a reasonably good account of themselves. The French armor failed in part because it lacked the modernized "soft systems" Guderian focused on in the interwar period - cross country mobility, vision, communications, undertasked tank commanders with time to think. Largely because they had portions of their armor dedicated to every theory there was, from infantry support to full ADs. The light mech were in the front line with a screening mission, because of cavalry thinking. One full AD was available for counterattack, but most were delivered by brigades or regiments that lacked all arms. Germans knew gun fronts already and had no problem dealing with them.

France is the first test case. The old guard sets limited objective attacks. Manstein presents his own plan instead, directly to Hitler, and gets it picked. It is a brilliant school solution in main outlines. The idea is to defeat the enemy army. In a classic maneuverist touch, he makes surprise a linchpin of the plain, in pure head-fake fashion. He rightly guesses the French will expect a repeat of the nearly successful 1914 plan and will march NW into Belgium to stop it. And he plans to break off that wing and kill it.

This is strict old guard annihilation battle reasoning, and entirely correct. A "shot to the brain" maneuverist would have gone for Paris. Maneuverists who cite the 1941 encirclement of Kiev (rather than Moscow) as Germany's fatal error never cite this one, because it was obviously correct and because it worked.

There was also direct precedent. Germany won the 1870 war by encircling the French main body at Sedan. That resulted in a major battle the Germans fought with great positional advantages, and won handily. A later siege of Paris proved time consuming and did not help much.

So, as of 1940, in their actions on the ground the Germans were still maintaining an operational focus on annihilation battle, and treated maneuver as a means of achieving it, under favorable circumstances.

The Brits suffered from excessive literalism about Fuller and used armor too independent of other arms, until mid war. With "tanks", infantry support ones that is, allowed to do the older WW I thing, and thus get combined arms but not mass. The Russians had massive technical problems supplying large armor forces in the field, at first, and difficulty coordinating indirect artillery in anything but static conditions for a while. Until those allied deficiencies were corrected, the Germans thus has a simple WW I era answer to tank attack that worked for them but did not work against them (because they had tank - artillery cooperation from the start - largely thanks to Guderian's interwar insistence on upgrading communications for the tanks. He was originally a signals officer).

Once both sides knew to mass gun fronts, but also knew how to counter them, dealing with armor attacks of sufficient scale could not be addressed with just a tactical tool. It required whole deployment schemes at the operational level, or massive advantages in overall mobility and mass-able firepower assets. If you don't have a tank army in reserve, it probably works. The initial break in essentially never failed, though the follow up frequently did. The follow up needs local odds in the non-armor arms, infantry and arty, and it needs sufficient scale. If the defender can throw in a whole fresh army group, forget it, breakthrough is as much a mirage as it was in 1918 against that kind of depth.

Nobody knew any of those principles of successful defense against an attack not only sending a brigade of tanks, but a brigade of tanks talking to its arty in real time and supported by all arms, motorized to exploit, corps scale, etc. And nobody defended against it successfully, against an attack who knew what they were doing, until Kursk. From then on, there isn't any offense dominance to speak of, as a matter of doctrinal technology. But as with all move and counter chains in military matters, there are still opportunities for them, because the defender doesn't always have the assets needed to stop it, just because he knows how. It you are the Germans and you want to hold the Dnepr bend, you don't need a different theory, you need an infantry army's worth of replacements and two corps of fresh panzer divisions in reserve. And since you don't have them, you won't hold it.

So that is what is really going on. 

Meanwhile, everybody is confused as heck about the formula, at the time I mean. The Nazis think they are winning because they are following their elitist formula and racial superiority. The Fullerites think they aren't quite winning because they don't head for Paris and Moscow instead of the channel and Kiev - or maybe because they are insufficiently accomplished in the occult, for Fuller personally. The Hart popularizers think it works just because it avoids frontal attack, that is the only thing that matters (when in fact, they attack frontally to breakthrough without a qualm and e.g. that is essential to Manstein's plan in France, and the reason they aren't supposed to be expected in the middle of the line). The Brit tank corps types saner than Fuller think just massing the tanks independently would work - and fail utterly at places like Knightsbridge. 


WHY DID HITLER THINK HE COULD BEAT THE RUSSIANS?

Germany was the first great power to know there was going to be a war, but it was also the last to mobilize its economy. Predictably, therefore, it lost catastrophically.

The true reason the Germans needed to believe in the breakthrough followed by decisive annihilation battle was that up at the stategic level, German was not mobilizing for total war. It was an article of faith for Hitler that Germany should not compete in all out "material struggle" as it had in WWI, but should instead rely on Aryan superiority, quality and tactics to achieve cheap and rapid victories.  He repeatedly backed the  reckless up and coming maneuver theorists against the older army establishment. These continually promised him more cheap victories, right up to the time they knew it was a bust. Then they got dismissed for saying so, replaced with more ambitious firebrands who rode the theory straight on to ruination. The German generals had a dozen opportunities to remove Hitler, but didn't, because they saw him winning and enough of them agreed with him until it was too late. Later claims otherwise are self excusing whitewash.

Such overconfidence is really quite rare in history. It is one of the all time outliers. But it made perfect sense to Hitler, fitting every corner of his world view. Russians were inferiors following a slavish ideology of leveling and nothing great could be expected of them. Germans were superiors following the true and natural ideology of ruthless cruelty to the weak and inferior and would sweep all before them.

Pride is a weakness, as well as a vice. It is like tearing your own eyes out.

However, that hubris did not come out of thin air, but against a background of astounding German military successes.

1. Repeatedly, German general staff estimates of the difficulty of a prospective war turn out to be overestimated. Poland, France, Low Countries, the Balkans, Norway; each time the operations are getting hung on a thread, and paying off with jackpot victories. The victory comes faster and with less blood than the generals expect. Conclusion: The military advisers are too conservative; in fact the Wehrmacht is more capable than they give it credit.

Those conservative Wehrmacht generals were conservative because they were professionals who had their Clausewitz drilled into them and knew war is friction and no plan survives contact with the enemy. But they did not call the shots, and the predictable result of amateur overconfidence was overreach. Hitler doubled up until he lost. There was nothing random about him hitting a wall eventually, he'd have gone right on doubling up. 

2. Political and public will to resist the German onslaught, or more exactly the lack of it, is a critical factor in those successes. France, Germany's greatest opponent, folds so fast in part because the country doesn't have the grit to fight to the last Frenchman. They'll fight on the battlefield, sure, but as insurgents? No, for practical purposes the European populations conquered by the Germans up to Russia, as of Spring 1941, had acquiesced in German conquest. Indeed there was more than a little collaborating.

3. German has a war-winning system, blitzkrieg (and by extension the quality of the German officer corps) and it is clearly unstoppable. As of Spring 1941 that system has overwhelmed the cream of Europe's armies,which are quite simply unable to keep up. The Germans have combined arms warfare down to a "t". The opposition has no clue.

4. This war-winning system is decisive. It ends campaigns in a way WWI most decidedly did not. The enemy is demolished and knocked out of the war before a long campaign of attrition can take place. Establishment of German control of practically every European nation from the Atlantic to the Vistula, in the space of about three years, proves this in spades.

In Spring 1941, there must have seemed as little reason to worry about attritional warfare as there was to worry about the Allies arming warlike tribes and deploying them against Germany. Both possibilities were from eras of war that, based on German experience, were now history.

Now consider the Soviet Union in the context of the time.

1. Stalin's rule is the most brutal in modern European history. Germany's Final Solution hadn't kicked off in Spring 1941, for practical purposes - and there is plenty of evidence of open hostility to the Communist regime. There are plenty of moldy old Whites hanging around in cafes in Paris and Vienna, telling any one who will listen Russia is just waiting for some liberator to come and kick out the Communists. Large portions of the Soviet interior - the Caucausus and Central Asia, are only superfically under Soviet control. In the Far East, the Mongolian and Manchurian frontiers are so lawless, that Soviet control often extends only as far as the direct fire range around border units. Otherwise, it is arguable that most of the border with China/Manchukuo is run by bandits.  Even where the Reds are clearly in charge, they have been in undisputed power for less than a generation. This does not give good reason to predict popular resistance to German invasion, at least for as long as it would take to demolish the Red Army.

2. The Red Army officer corps of course has been purged, and its equipment and training are woefully inferior to the Wehrmacht's. They performed abysmally, not only against the Finns, who are tough, but even managed to flub their part of the Polish invasion, and the annexation of the tiny Baltic states and Bessarabia. Their tanks are inferior to German (T-34 and KV are secrets), and their ability to produce more is suspect.

Given all that, the logic that a German blitzkrieg aginst the Soviet Union makes a certain kind of sense. If you take away the filter of hindsight, in Spring 1941 it must have seemed to a rational German decision-maker that the German military would be able to keep tearing the Red Army to bits until Soviet society came apart at the seams.  The last time that happened, in 1917, the Russian army collapsed. In 1941, the Russian Revolution was very recent history.

Also, Germany had beaten Russian in WWI with one arm only.  Now Russia was nearly alone in Europe. Hitler knew Germany was stronger now than it had been in WWI. He thought communism was rotten from top to bottom and expected Russia to be weaker than in 1914, relatively speaking (all technology having of course advanced). Russian fiascos like the Finnish Winter War seemed to confirm this. His easy win in France made him think he had magical new methods of warfare that nobody could stop.

PLAN FOR BARBAROSSA

The Germans hoped each battle might be as outsized a success as May 1940 in France (the clear model for the Bulge concept). Even Kursk was expected to be an army-killing "bag" like Bryansk). But even their leading theorists did not fully appreciate how much their initial successes had depended on correctable weaknesses and bad "play" by their opponents.

You can find hordes of generals repeatedly saying Germany could not win a war of attrition against Russia. But just as repeatedly they also say that the answer is to fight a maneuver war instead, promising to win it. And when it all went to hell, later claiming they could have and would have if only this or that. This same group repeated endlessly that the offensive is the only decisive form of warfare, recklessly called for grandiose new death ride offensives, supported high command whenever it dreamed up such attacks itself, and so on.

Germany had a great maneuver doctrine and brilliant generals to execute it (whom it later fired), believed the overpromises of that doctrine and those geniuses, overconfidently took on the world because odds would never have time to matter and it could always defeat its enemies in sequence, one at a time, then they'd give up and admit defeat - or something. But oops, great powers don't give up and admit defeat, they learn, and more enter the farther you go, and wars last years not weeks, and you need not a ready fleet of 1000 or 2000 tanks and as many planes, but 100 times that number, to replace losses of ten times that number every year, and so on.

Needless to say, the decision to attack Russia in the first place showed a singular contempt for the military importance of odds. The British empire, Germany, and Russia were approximate equals in industrial and economic terms. The Germans drastically underestimated Russian military power. The idea was indeed annihilation battle, but it was also to defeat Russia in one swift campaign of a single season. I call that an instance of "victory disease" - they confidently expected bigger and better things than they or anyone else had ever done before, because hey, the last three much smaller and easier things worked out.

It was crazy to think a new military technique would make odds irrelevant in warfare. And the old Prussians, trained in the tradition of Moltke and Napoleon, would never have believed it. Force multipliers were how you won outright from a position of equality. The enemy force was the target in order to get away from equality to superior odds. Multipliers plus odds were supposed to snowball. Makes much more sense as doctrine and everybody else believed and acted that way.

But the same odds calculations had told the old guard Prussians not to risk entering the Rhineland, not to risk confrontation over the Czechs, to prepare for a long war of attrition as soon as France entered. There were officers ready to stage a coup as soon as one of these gambles failed because of the Nazi attachment to wild magical thinking (as they saw it). But Hitler kept winning. A Manstein was on hand to give a more ambitious plan for France. A Guderian was on hand to actually execute it successfully. By the time of Barbarossa, the army had given up second guessing the leadership on these gambles.

There was a disconnect here. The Napoleon-Moltke tradition stressed annihilation battle as the objective. This was sound doctrine and thoroughly believed throughout the German army, and by the high command. But seeing the purpose of maneuver as bringing about annihilation battle, means odds have to matter. As mere logic, there is no point attacking the enemy fielded forces unless you plan to run him out of them, have more remaining yourself, aka odds. But the leadership viewed the new magical techniques as a substitute for odds thinking, as a way to escape not defeat, nor indecisiveness, but material-struggle itself. Masses weren't supposed to matter anymore.

The Nazis thought they, the Germans, were brilliant, while the Russians were inept recently purged barbarians who had had trouble defeating Finland. They thought it was going to be a cakewalk.  And the early successes fit that impression to a tee. Which was singularly flattering to their own daring, intellect, military prowess and reputation. You can't understand the first thing about the Russian campaign unless you "get" how long the Germans believed what they wanted and needed to believe, that the Russians were stupid and weak and the Germans were winning easily.

Meanwhile, the Russians had learned from the failure of the Brusilov offensive to decide WW1 in 1916 that great power wars could not be won by single offensives, and that one needed to plan for a succession of operations of army group scale that would have to be strung together into a long war of successful attrition to decide anything, and called it deep battle. Churchill was offering his people only blood toil tears and sweat, for as long as it took. And FDR was envisioning a total economic mobilization of an arsenal of democracy to bury the enemy in armaments, calling for the aircraft industry to aim for 50,000 planes a year when there were less than that many military aircraft in existence.

This was all strategic level, and it was not attrition strategy. It was overconfidence. Bred of faith in past successes, and memories of the sacrifices of WW I. The hope that Germany's new methods of warfare had made all of that unnecessary - the complete mobilization, the millions cycled through the fronts, the massive expenditure of treasure and blood through munitions to murder enemy armies. At the operational level, the Germans were seeking annihilation much more by maneuver than by battle. At a tactical level, they had come to believe in armor as the restorer of shock in the old sense, and the decisive arm, always to be employed offensively.

The pure blood maneuverists, criticizing the performance and outcome, say they didn't shoot for the brain they hacked at the muscle, and that is why they lost. The brain was in fact mobile, and behind acres of muscle. In France, the odds created by killing half the enemy army proved immediately decisive. In Russia inflicting even higher losses did not. The time scale was longer and forces per unit time mattered, as they hadn't in the west. The Russians drove their replacements up immediately, and the Germans did not.

Maneuver strategy lost the Germans the war. It cannot be sugar coated or evaded - what a strategy induces its adherents to regard as possible or likely is just as important a characteristic of that strategy as how well it counters this or that idea of the opponent. Arguably more so.  Overpromising and underdelivering is of the essence of maneuver warfare strategy, which is constantly telling its students that they will be smarter and faster than the opponent, and therefore more effective regardless of the odds. Which may appear to work for a bit against the unprepared and against fourth rates, leading its adherents to gamble for ever more - right up until it gets them killed.

In contrast, prosaic attrition strategy says that you may be smarter some of the time, and your opponent may be smarter some of the time, but in the end those will about balance out or stay relatively close to each other in cumulative effect. And that therefore nothing matters more than numbers and pure combat power generated, in the long run. And the run will be long, it will be bloody, so bloody no sane man should wish for it or see it as anything but the last resort. It counsels overestimating the enemy, being prepared for the worst, being prepared for the longest hardest most painful war that could happen, because that is precisely where wars between first rate powers tends to go. The enemy gets a vote about whether he is beaten, you see, and unless you are ready and able to grind him to powder, you have to expect him to vote "no, I'm not beaten."

If you can't plan for a winnable war of attrition, you should stay the hell out, because that's where it is going to end up and it is the only war you need to be able to win. If you can win cheaper sooner, gravy, not something to plan on or expect.

An attritionist grand strategy with operational maneuver directed at Russian fielded forces was perfectly feasible, within Germany's capabilities. Thankfully, they didn't pull out the stops and do it. Their operational target was not meshed with their strategic assessment of the war. A fielded forces target fits an attritionist outlook at the strategic level, focusing on the ratio of fielded forces, and doing everything possible to keep it moving in one's own direction. Including the production side. "Total war", was the term at the time.

Instead they had the half maneuverist idea that they didn't need to worry about total war and attrition processes and large scale numbers. They thought the multipliers their operational maneuver methods would give them were unbounded above. That they simply trumped numbers, made them irrelevant, would destroy them in any quantity necessary. Not so. Numbers beat them. Numbers mattered. The strategy level was flat wrong. Brilliance at the operational level (in 1941 only) was not able to make up for this.

The basic error in 1941, however, was not an insufficient application of maneuverism aimed at deep objectives, nor simply their political nastiness. It was flat overconfidence in their maneuverist methods, the belief that they made numbers irrelevant, that total war preparations were therefore unnecessary.

In hindsight, it was an act of madness to attack a state as powerful as the Soviet Union without even mobilizing the economy. But that is what they did. Because they just didn't think it *was* "a state as powerful as the Soviet Union". They thought it was a rotten tower of cards assembled by  untermenschen. Which was just plain dumb, a case of the "evil stupids" and believing your own spin.

Thus the paradox, the Russians beat the Germans in a war of attrition that Germans knew how to run and could have run. They won by beating the Germans to the draw - even though the Russians were the ones surprised, completely, and hopelessly on the defensive for the first six months.

The Russians lost 40% of their industrial production from a base of the same size, and outproduced the Germans in tanks by 2 to 1. How? They produced at the same peak rate, longer. (They got there in 1942, the Germans didn't until 1944).

You can't win a war of attrition by not trying. And you won't try if you don't know you are in a war of attrition. And you won't admit that you are in a war of attrition, if doctrinally it is anathema to face the reality of attrition.

The Germans of early WW II were perfectly willing to believe in attrition *for the other guy*, and targeted his fielded forces on that basis. But they weren't willing to admit it applied to them, too, that they weren't above it and untouchable by its logic. Fundamentally, because it is indeed extremely painful and Germany had been through that pain in WW I, without success - a prospect difficult to contemplate facing again.

Which is nevertheless exactly what happened to them.

Later in the war, the Germans made recurrent unforced errors (e.g. insufficient infantry replacements sent to Normandy) largely out of fear of attrition, when their actual defensive successes turned on high achieved exchange ratios wearing their enemies out, locally. They had tactical skill advantages to boost the effects of numbers. In other words they were better at the actual attrition fighting than they thought they were, and worse at the command and direction of attrition operations because of their distrust of them.


THE MYTH OF NAZI EFFICIENCY

Hitler ran the Third Reich by a system of parallel bureaucratic competition. He let anyone who supported him loyally and mouthed his ideology get all the resources they liked for any purpose they proposed, growing any bureaucracy in the process. Whenever he encountered any form of resistance or pushback against his ideological or practical desires, he left those doing so in place and replaced their role and function with a new burgeoning bureaucracy that took their jobs and did them, Hitler's way. The existing formation just sat there, starved for new resources and ignored by every other part of the state, as now out of favor.

Hitler personally sat at the center of all the competing resource grabbers playing that game, and played referee. This made everyone dependent on his nod and ensured his continued power. It also did an end-run around every form of bureaucratic resistance or "sit down strike", and every tendency for the experts in a given area to try to overrule him, citing their expertise on the one hand and their institutional positions and supposedly indispensible roles on the other.

If a state body wouldn't do something, he left it there and had a party body do it directly instead. If the police wouldn't do something, he got the SS to do it. If the army talked back, he gave all their men and equipment to Goering and Himmler, who were yes-men and knew how he played this game. He was always reaching down 2-3 levels in the organization charts and across some existing body's responsibilities, to get some ambitious firecracker who would suck up to him to do what he wanted, and thumb their noses at their supposed superiors.

The lesson was, there are no superiors in the Third Reich. There is only Hitler and his favor trumps everything.

Now, this left behind a complete chaos of duplicated functions. Someone had Hitler's favor 6 months ago and built a whole organization to do something, but then they talked back or tried to have something their own way, and he started ignoring them. There would be 2 separate organizations with the same role a year later, each grabbing for all the resources (in men, equipment, raw materials, etc) they could get their hands on.

How well any of these organizations actually did their job was an entirely secondary consideration. What mattered was their loyalty and the fact that the policy they strove to implement was not their own, but Hitler's. Would he occasionally starve an organization for complete incompetence? Perhaps. But it had to be pretty complete.

This drove the efficiency minded general staff to distraction, because it was horribly inefficient both militarily and economically. It wasn't meant to generate maximum military power for the available economic inputs. It was designed to generate maximum obedience with the available (stubborn and self-willed and arrogant) human material.

Nazi Germany was a system of organized grab by empire builders of all kinds. Overall the Waffen SS got the best equipment in that game of grab. The best formations of the Heer also did well, because they were cream skimmers in a huge pool - but that means things like Panzer Lehr (created from training units that had their pick of the army and ran the army schools). The Luftwaffe also had some units well equipped, like Panzer Division Hermann Goering.

Goering did not have power in Germany as creator of the air force but of the Gestapo (and before it the early SA). He got command of the Luftwaffe because he was a Hitler crony who happened to have flown in WWI. He was one of the first to join the Nazi party and basically created the SA in that early incarnation. At bottom he was a paramilitary organizer and a party thug.

When the regime took power, it initially formed a coalition with pro army and conservative support, and its first order of business was to seize total power and remove all dependence on those elements. To appease them, the Reich interior minister of the new government was a nonentity they trusted. But Goering became interior minister of the state of Prussia instead, in a characteristic Nazi move of parallel appointments and bureaucracy building. Goering quickly filled the Prussian state police with his own men and that became the Gestapo. He used it to destroy all the party's enemies by criminal direct action, as any capo might.

In 1934 he turned over the Gestapo and police powers to Himmler, because the SS became the central organization when the SA was put down. In turn, the regime was encountering resistance from the finance ministry and central bank. To bypass those opposition with a massive armaments program, the four year plan bureaucracy was created and Goering put in charge of it. He then had power as an economic dictator. The Luftwaffe was being formed at the same time, to be sure, and he held both portfolios, but the economic one was the larger commission, and in its own way gave him powers as wide as the police power had given him earlier.

But all that was ancient history by mid 1943. Economic power had passed to Organization Todt and then to Albert Speer and Goering's role there shrank to nothingness. His standing from the Luftwaffe command suffered from the failure of the Battle of Britain and later from overpromising at Stalingrad (a pattern with him), and was in the process of collapsing due to the loss of the air war over central Germany. It wasn't until the fall of 1944 that his power was reduced to next to nothing and he became a standing joke, but he was on that path already. He was mostly focused on looting the art of Europe and eating whole bakeries at this point.

Earlier in the war, the Luftwaffe had the Falschirmjager (paratroopers), as an elite but tiny force. They were picked men and thoroughly trained, but underarmed because they were meant to be airmobile, and that meant little artillery. They were mostly wrecked taking Crete, with only cadres left over after their heavy losses in that battle.

But it also had poorly conceived and equipped divisions like the 1942-43 era Luftwaffe Field divisions. They were basically an attempt by Goering to keep his hands on as much manpower as possible after it became clear the Luftwaffe was not the decisive arm, and ground forces were. This basically happened as soon as the war in Russia "went long". These formations were made up of men transferred from existing Luftwaffe roles like AA, ground support units, and rear area staffs. They trained themselves, instead of going through the superior Heer schools, and it showed. Their infantry training in particular was extremely poor. They were also stuffed to the gills with repurposed AA guns in place of standard artillery, simply because the LW had gobs of the stuff lying around.

By 1944, the LW shifted its ground forces to the FJ designation, and left behind the Luftwaffe Field divisions. It gave the newer FJ formations more in the way of artillery, and formed some StuG brigades to give them minor amounts of armor support. But they were basically just infantry divisions. And their quality level was quite uneven. Some got cadre from the remnants of the original elite FJ, in the form of sergeants and lower ranking officers, and trained to something like their previous standards. But others got desk jockey Luftwaffe  officers and raw recruits drafted from wherever, and indifferent training.

Some of the later war FJ formations fought very well, including  at Cassino and some on the US front in Normandy. But it was definitely no longer a picked or elite force. It was distinctly less well equipped than the late war Waffen SS.

It is less well known, but the mid and late war Waffen SS also had its poorer component - ragtag units formed from half-volunteers from all over Europe that the SS decided where objectively pro Nazi in this or that national, racial, or ideological sense. This leads to units like a Muslim SS contingent in Yugoslavia, and others from eastern Europe with only the vaguest interest in Germany winning the war. Anti communism was sometimes sufficient. These formation were mostly straight infantry, were frequently just awful, and some ran away at the first opportunity. Other formations mixed some more select volunteers with a German core and fought better - e.g. 5th SS (portions recruited from Scandinavia and Holland).

Chaos and variation is the watchword, for anything about Germany in WW II, pretty much.


COULD THE GERMANS HAVE WON IF THEY'D COOPTED THE SLAVS?

A moot point.  Hitler intended it to be a war of extermination, and made quite a point of it. He wanted to use the occasion to radicalize the army, which was still full of old fashioned mere nationalism, and hadn't bought into the fully modern racist "murder everybody else" ideology Hitler was selling. They were to become Nazis by committing crimes together.

He also simply believed in the power of ruthless cruelty. He thought it was a form of strength and a source of it in war. Many evil men have. The way to will a thing into existence was to throw aside all moral restraints in pursuit of it. Hitler believed they were more likely to attain their goals with cruelty than with kindness or political appeals to new subjects. What was happening inside German heads, not Russian ones, was what mattered to him. He wasn't trying to scare Russians into submission, though he probably expected that too. He was trying to toughen Germans into determined killers.

Those who point out the political stupidity in this overlook who they are dealing with. If Hitler had thought the proper way to achieve political ends was by appealing to the just wishes of the governed, he would have remained a house painter. He simply did not agree that being nicer to the Russians or the Ukrainians would have made things easier. He thought it would mean slack Germans invading half-assed while trying to be nice to their slaves.

He was a nasty piece of work and a moonbat, any way you slice it, and if he weren't, none of it would have happened.  The German army would have functioned much better without him. Effective intelligence equals cleverness minus self-importance, and Hitler's was negative because the second term was infinity. And no he didn't understand the economic factors the generals supposedly didn't, he just used that as an excuse to shut them up, while in fact he was screwing it up royally.

After the purges, every surviving Russian officer had a legitimate grievance and the sure knowledge that the leadership were uniformly murderous idiots. This neither raised loyalty nor inspired confidence. It gave every one of them legitimate reason to kill or resist the Communists any time it was expedient to do so, even just for pure self preservation, to say nothing of what was best for the army and the country.

The Germans just ensured it never became expedient by promising to kill them all.

Hitler wanted to literally exterminate the Russians and resettle the whole country with his imaginary Aryan colonists. The Germans didn't give the Russians a choice between Stalin and life under a different dictator; they gave them as choice between Stalin and death. They picked the former, naturally. The Germans were their own worst enemies in practically everything, and even regions that would have willingly supported a moderate German military occupation resisted fiercely as soon as they realized they were just going to be exterminated.


WERE THERE ALTERNATIVES TO BARBAROSSA?

There was a real possibility to hurt Great Britain during late 1940 and 1941, a periphery strategy, which was proposed but dismissed because Hitler had decided to seek the decision in the East (note that there is zero evidence that he made this decision because of a tangible threat from the Soviet Union, if we accept the first-hand evidence we have). This periphery approach would have involved Vichy France seriously in a Mediterranean strategy, and would have made the most of the costly success of Crete by using it as a springboard from which to attack Alexandria and mine the Suez Canal (it is only 400 miles from Heraklion to Alexandria, well within the range of German bombers). There was a real fear that the Germans and Italians might end up driving the British out of the Mediterranean entirely after Greece.  What this might have done to the British willingness to continue to prosecute the war is anybody's guess.

So it is not as though the Wehrmacht would have had to sit on its rear scratching its head what to do, if Hitler had decided to do one thing after the other, instead of conflating the open issue of Britain with his ideologically driven attack on the Soviets.  And as a final thought, this periphery approach could not possibly have resulted in a worse outcome for the Third Reich than what actually transpired.


DID THE GERMANS PREEMPT A RUSSIAN ATTACK IN 1941?

The origin of the pre-emption claim is simply Hitler's public speech defending the attack. It was the official German propaganda line. We know it was a conscious lie because we have contemporaneous private letters from Hitler, including one to Mussolini explaining the grand strategy involved, that completely contradict the public relations spin. Publicly, he says Russia has been detected preparing to attack us, because Germans still needed to be spoon fed such moralisms. Privately, he says Britain won't make peace because they hope to win through allies in the old British pattern. They can hope for help only from the Americans or the Russians. We can't get at the Americans, though the Japanese might be able to keep them busy. But we can get at the Russians.

A planned Soviet attack in summer 1941, as supposed by Suvorov, would have been a walk-over for the Germans defending. Anyone with a passing acquaintance of the state of the Red Army in summer 1941 knows that. It was undergoing a complete transformation in terms of organisation and equipment at the time. It is simply not believable that they were planning to attack that year. 1942, maybe. 1943, possibly. 1941, not a chance.


WHY WERE THE RUSSIANS SURPRISED?

For the simplest of reasons. The attack was clearly a blunder of the first magnitude. It lost Germany the war. All German grand strategy since Moltke had been based on avoiding war on two fronts. Hitler jumped into one out of overconfidence.

Russia's initial calculation in 1939 was that France and Germany would fight for ages in a WWI style battle of attrition, and that Russia would do well to turn the Germans loose to do so, and sit it out, collecting minor spoils in the meantime. They thought Finland would be easy, they took a piece of Rumania, the Baltics, their slice of Poland. They expected a long draw in the west.

When that didn't happen and France instead collapsed rapidly, it was a terrible shock. They responded with a campaign of appeasement, offering Germany whatever it wanted. Germany asked for Russia to enter the war on their side and help them divide the British Empire, e.g. by taking Iran or pressuring India. (Russians and Brits came within a month or two of fighting each other in Finland. Germany's Norway campaign cut the British route to help the Finns).  Um, no thanks, was the response. Stalin was interested only in Europe, and was not looking to fight Britain. He offered economic support to Germany instead, and Hitler took it. The Russians thought the Germans had been fishing for a closer alliance, but had been bought off anything further - which they wouldn't expect anyway, because they saw the German's remaining problem as successfully wrapping up their war with Britain, and then enjoying their spoils.

They did not expect the Germans to "double up", court a two front war, add one of the most powerful states on earth to their enemy column gratuitously, etc. It played into British hands, Churchill was happy as a clam.


DID THE GERMANS UNDERESTIMATE THE SOVIET ECONOMY?

Germans knew Russian industrial capacity, knew and relied on. They were receiving raw materials from them up to the day of the invasion.

It must have seemed that German ability to break into the Soviet rear, meaning European Russia and Ukraine, was almost unlimited. Therefore, a German invasion would have been expected to capture 80 - 90 per cent of the Soviet Union's productive capacity. In Spring 1941, the Urals, north Kazakhstan, western Siberia; all those regions were for practical purposes wastelands where, at best, the Soviets had slotted for industrial development down the line.

It is very fair indeed to charge the German decision-makers with underestimating their opponents on racial grounds; no matter how much they believed it, the Germans were not genetically smarter than the Russians, and so assuming that they were was a recipe for problems.

But the German failure to mobilize fast enough was in sharp contrast to Soviet achievements in getting their factories out of the German path, and masses of armed men into it. In Spring 1941, no country in the world, ever, had shifted an industrial base the way the Soviets did.  Also, there was no precedent for the rapid coversion of civilians to military formations, in the numbers the Soviets did it, in the first months after the German invasion. Those Soviet achievements were unprecedented and in some ways have never been repeated. Predicting that kind of response would have required a lot of prescience.

Russian industrial production was no higher overall than German industrial production. The myth otherwise is part of the general excuse making German officers and other apologists have indulged in since the war. They try to present the war as one of their stellar quality against overwhelming Asiatic hordes.  They speak of being outnumbered 10 to 1, inflicting 5 to 1 losses on the Russians regularly, but still being overwhelmed.  The problem with this convenient rationalization is that Russia is not ten times as large or as powerful as Germany. In manpower it was larger by a factor of 2 on the day of the invasion, and by no more than 1.5 once they lost the Ukraine. In industrial output, the Soviet Union was no larger, at any time, and in fact smaller once 40% of its territory fell under Nazi occupation.

As for the supposed importance of Lend Lease to Russian production, economic historians have studied the question in detail. Lend Lease made up 7% of Russian war output by value. Meanwhile, Germany received in loot and tribute from conquered territories of western Europe, 7% of its own industrial output. In addition, a rising portion of labor in Germany proper was performed by foreign nationals - conscript labor, POWs, and others simply attracted by higher wages than were available in the managed financial extraction regimes Germany imposed in occupied Europe. Germany got as much from looting Europe as Russia got from the west. Its production was no lower than Russia's.

Until the main western front was opened in France, Germany was not facing significantly higher productive capacity than she herself possessed, had she actually used it. And Germany was certainly able to match Russian production in 1941 and 1942, having greater advanced notice of the coming fight and far fewer economic disruptions, than having 40% of its territory seized by a hostile power. It did not match Russian output because it did not try, not because it could not.


DID THE GERMANS UNDERESTIMATE THE SIZE OF THE RED ARMY?

At many times during the 1941 campaign, and even as late as the eve of the Russian counterattack at Stalingrad, the Germans underestimated overall Russian strength and thought they must finally be running out of forces. This was purely due to measuring Russian performance against their own, not taking into account the fact that the Germans were not exerting themselves. They knew they were inflicting far more losses than they were incurring, and they assumed the Russians must therefore be running out of everything much faster than they were themselves. The possibility that Russian input from mobilization equalled their high loss rate was incredible to them, because they had no high mobilization rate on their own side to compare it to or measure it against. 

WWI as well as the WWII mobilizations of 1939 showed that once recent reservists entered the ranks, further manpower was quite limited. Only so many more 18-year-olds came of draft age each year, and in any case they must be trained and equipped.

The Soviets broke that mould.  They were fielding 5 or so new armies, on average, every month after the first mobilization all the way to Typhoon. This is partly due, of course, to the raw size of the Soviet population, and the size of the country helped to give the Soviets time to raise more troops. But again, in Spring 1941 no country had ever created military forces as quickly as the Soviets did. With the exception of the U.S. once they got going, no country ever has matched the Soviet achievement.

The Russians created new forces from scratch as fast as the Germans destroyed the old ones. These forces were not sitting in barracks outside Moscow on the day of the invasion, they were untrained peasants working in the fields.  The Russians did have men being called up from May onward, but at only half the rate they reached once the war started. The main flow is after the invasion.

In July they formed 7 new armies, all on the Moscow axis. In August they formed 12 new armies - 4 for the Leningrad axis, 2 for the southern end of the line in front of Moscow, 5 for the Ukraine, and 1 for the Crimea.

That August surge to 12 armies came from accelerating the training to practically none, and was effectively borrowed from September and October. September saw 3 new armies formed, 2 for Leningrad and 1 for the Ukraine, while October added 4 more, 2 for Moscow and 2 for Ukraine.

In November and December the rate was back to normal, with 11 armies over the two months combined, 3 to make a new line east of Leningrad, 1 for the far south, and the rest all in front of Moscow.

In all there are 37 new armies in the field July to December, average 6 per month. There were 7 in process of formation from the May wave at the time of the invasion. The overall process was simply a flow not a stock - emphatically not a one-off bump from pre-war mobilized manpower the Germans didn't know about.

The Russians are forming fresh armies monthly and deploying them right in their zones of formation, ahead of the main German lines of advance. This was not some missing army of the interior in the Russian order of battle on the day of the invasion, that the Germans did not know about. On the contrary, they were entirely new formations created from scratch between the collapse of the first line positions and the arrival of the Germans at their formation points.

Clark says "in the first six weeks". The extra armies the Germans did not know about formed in those six weeks. Russia mobilized 1 million men per month throughout the 1941 campaign. A month and a half is 1.5 million men. The whole force was a flow not a stock, that was the German misunderstanding.

People's this and that and worker brigades were close defense groups for urban areas. Lots of others worked on digging trenches and the like. But the millions of men mobilized throughout the late summer and fall were civilians on the day of the invasion, and soldiers when they faced the Germans.

The way you go from one to the other is you are put on a train, sent to a depot, issued a uniform and a rifle and given the most cursory training over the course of a week or two, then railed to the front. Those reserve armies in the interior formed at a rate of a million men per month, remember? They weren't going through 6 month training routines.

Want to talk about logistical difficulties? Try fielding 44 armies in 6 months while losing half your country and your whole pre-war force. The Russians would have crawled on their knees to have only the logistical difficulties the Germans faced.

The Germans had no explanation for the resilience of the Russian army after the epic defeats of Minsk, Smolensk, Kiev, and early Typhoon. At the same moment, their political leadership was urging the Japanese to enter the war to draw off Russian forces. The "Siberian army" became an explanation for renewed forces they could not otherwise explain to themselves.

Dunn has given chapter and verse on the actual Russian mobilization. Only a handful of prewar regular divisions actually made it from the Far East to the western front during the 1941 campaign, and they arrived as early as October. 3 divisions then, and only 3 more over the rest of the year. That is less than one Russian rifle army and completely immaterial in the overall scale of Russian mobilization.

Then in 1942, there was a repetition of German shock in the case of armor. The Russians were producing 1500 tanks a month, less than a year after the outbreak of the war, and despite several large scale counterattacks that lost lots of them (at Kharkov, Voronezh, and then in the Don bend in front of Stalingrad) they were continuing to accumulate a reserve of modern armor. The Germans again could not comprehend fighting and losing such battles and throwing in such fleets of tanks and losing them, and still having literally thousands in reserve, in units forming up. 

The Russians had more tanks uncommitted in late 1942 than the Germans had tanks, or indeed, had had tanks since the beginning of their entire armor program, all years and all fronts. The Germans were always measuring their expectations about Russian strength and reinforcement depth against their own lackadaisical practices, and were forever expecting that they were on their last legs. Which they never were, all war.

Russia mobilized more manpower and fielded more tanks through mid war, by actually bothering to try as hard as possible. Germany did not exert her full strength until it became clear, as a result of Stalingrad and the losses in 1943, that she would otherwise lose the war.


GERMANY'S FATAL ERROR - FAILURE TO MOBILIZE FOR TOTAL WAR

The German 1941 performance was outstanding in every military sense, with the Russian moves initially dismal and barely passable later on. The cards were stacked as neatly as you please.

What defies basic logic is expecting to fight a state as powerful as Russia to the death in a planned war of extermination, without mobilizing your own economy.

The main issue was simply that they were in an all fired hurry, for no decent reason, other than not bothering to plan for a longer war. If they had, they could make their own Russian gauge rail cars, have all the winter clothing they wanted (just have to ask for it), replacements for all the vehicles that fell out before December, etc.

When you expect the campaign to be over in 3-6 months, you don't bother investing in increased thruput for transport links that will only operate for the last 2 of those months. You don't think it will matter, and push everything forward. When instead you correctly estimate the war will last years, you invest in things that pay off 6, 9, or 12 months later as a matter of course.

There is nothing magical about a Russian freight car. Germany made freight cars just fine. Any number could have been ordered beforehand, if they thought the war was going to last long enough to make it worthwhile to have them. You'd have to give up something else - like a pre-war civilian standard of living and short working hours for men only. But you'd get them.

The Russians lost 40% of their country and tens of millions of citizens, from the same size industrial base. And they fielded an army as big as the one they had on the day of the invasion, new, in six months. The Germans are richer and supposedly smarter and know modern mobile everything better, you say yourself. So why on earth can't they match the Russian logistical achievement?

If the Russians raise 44 armies after the German decision to invade to the end of the battle of Moscow, where are the 22 new German armies to match them, even supposing they can only mobilize half as many from a lower population base? The Germans knew sooner, they had more lead time. They had lower losses and less disruption.

The German army in front of Moscow in November 1941 had absolute numerical superiority. It lost it by December. The reason is the Russians were mobilizing a million men per month and the Germans weren't mobilizing even enough to replace their own losses, which were a tenth those of the Russians.

The ratio of the reinforcement streams is not equality, it is not two times, it is 20 times. Capacity ratio 2 times or less, outcome ratio 20 times.

In 1941 through 1943, Germany was nowhere near overall capacity constraints. Germans were still working only a single shift at critical war plants in the fall of 1941.  Key plant was being used 10 hours a day, most women were not in the labor force. 40% of steel production was going to civilian industry. The armaments program was funded by cutting back long term investments and construction spending through 1941.  Hitler was directly ordering war plants producing army ammunition to stop and switch to other forms of production in October of 1941, because he thought they would not need more.

In 1942, the first minor inroads into civilian consumption occurred, but the standard of living was basically the same for those not mobilized, as it had been before the war. 

In contrast, in Russia hours worked doubled and civilian consumption fell by half, as everything was focused on armaments.

In the fall of 1942, Hitler still thought he was winning easily. "The Russian is finished". He thought the Stalingrad battle was consuming the Russian's last reserves and that they were so weak at that point they could not longer hold a continuous front. Some staff officers warned of the weakness and overextension of the Stalingrad position, but were shot down as defeatists with weak nerves just like the previous winter.

The notion that the Russians might be hoarding literally thousands of T-34s and entire army groups for massive counterattacks, never crossed their minds. When it came, the command shock was total. Everything they had believed about the war for a year and a half was obviously rubbish, but for a week they could not admit it to themselves.

The first full mobilization speech came in February 1943, over 2 months after the initial defeat at Stalingrad. The sharp difference between the reaction to the battle of Moscow - sack commanders and hold at all costs - and Stalingrad - let Manstein save AG South while ordering full economic mobilization - reflects Hitler finally recognizing that German might lose the war.

Nor was Hitler simply trying to buy time with hold at all cost orders, he was trying to replicate the success of the winter of 1941-42 with his magical formula, dating from his own front experiences in WWI and his ideological conviction that will was decisive in modern combat (for which, see Junger on Verdun e.g.).

Germany had no mobilization plans to speak of in economic terms. Speer improvized some plans after replacing Fritz Todt with the latter died in a plane crash. Full implementation did not happen until 1943.  Speer was a good organizer but he was not remotely given complete control over production after Stalingrad. Goering and Himmler continued to run massive independent fiefdoms that worked at cross purposes with each other and with Speer. 

Also, it would have been very costly to mobilize men any more quickly than they did after Stalingrad.  First, supplying the larger force well inside the Ukraine would not have been easy. ANd the second is, when they actually pulled out the manpower stops in the later summer of 1944, the German economy went into decline. The western bombing had something to do with that, sure, but it was also just the withdrawal of manpower from industry - because that late war wave comes from pulling all kinds of previous exemptions.  Similarly, you can't transfer all the Luftwaffe ground crews to the Heer before you've lost the war in the air, because they are actually doing things - up to spring of 1944 or so.

As disaster loomed, Germany mobilized men and machines about as rapidly in 1944 as Russia did in 1942, producing an army as strong at their own borders as the one they lost in White Russia and France. Fielded forces equal previous minus losses plus newly formed. Since the last was nearly zero for the Germans themselves through mid-war, they overlooked its importance.

When the Germans had to produce fresh armies to hold at the edge of Germany and in Poland after the twin collapses of White Russia and France, they pulled out their rear area manpower stops. Naval personnel, Luftwaffe ground crews (bloated with manpower as they ran out of fighters and fuel), workers previously given exemptions, and teenagers were whipped through training courses, given MPs and fausts, and shipped off to the fronts.

The manpower for the Volksgrenadier divisions was far from scraping the bottom of the barrel. There were still a lot of capable protected men working in German industry as specialists in 1944.  The problem was that these units were not well trained, and that their equipment was often somewhat substandard in many respects, especially in the artillery arm.

They had more training than the Russians of 1941 did. But that is what real mobilization does - it unlocks a continual stream of civilians becoming soldiers, in millions, and throws that stream into the fight. That's on the manpower side. On the production side, it means every factory in the country that can, makes armaments and nothing but armaments, running 24 hours a day to do so. Which equip that stream of civilians and make whole armies.

However, if the recruit wave that was actually used to patch the front in the summer of 1944 after both Bagration and the fall of France had instead been available at the time of Kursk, it might have made an appreciable difference in infantry depth. When Manstein looked at the Kursk plan, he said it could work if they had 25 extra infantry divisions, but he doubted it would without them. Eyes were rolled, who had such things, was the reaction. In the event, the panzer divisons were constantly turning this way and that to clear their flanks, and typically one division in each panzer corps was entirely defensive, at any given time. When the offensive failed, the uncommitted forces of the Russian reserve, Steppe front, came to about 25 divisions. So Manstein was right that they were needed and about the scale. It took 10 German mobile divisions diverted from the north face of Kursk and sent from theater reserve, just to contain the Kutuzov attack long enough to get most of the men out, still losing the Orel salient.


WHAT IF THE GERMANS HAD MOBILIZED FULLY FOR BARBAROSSA?

If the Germans go in fully mobilized, a Speer running manpower allocation and tank and fighter production on the homefront (rationally), the army getting highest priority for resources, prepared for long war not one season, planning on halt lines and upgrades to logistic links at the latest by the onset of winter, with the army expanding in size as mobilization and low losses allow - if they just ran their tank factories around the clock with multiple shifts of workers instead of 10 hours a day (fact!) - then the Russians would have lost. They were in deep trouble as it was. They would not have won a war of attrition against an equal industrial power, losing five to one on the battlefield.

By the time of the mud, the Germans would have made as many new AFVs as they produced in 1942. They might have needed to pause to get them to the front, over logistics links still in need of upgrading, but so what? By the time of the battle of Moscow, the Germans would have been stronger than they were on the day of the invasion, not weaker. Why should they weaken taking only a tenth the losses they are inflicting, when the Russians maintain their strength in the field? If logistics and Russian reserves and weather still force a pullback, fine, pull back and defend for a season, with a lot more to do it with.

When 1942 rolls around, the Germans are going to be the ones with armor superiority, 2 to 1. Visualize an entire tank army, fresh, waiting behind the southern wing in the late fall. While another is drawing off any accumulation of reserves by tearing into the Don front around the level of Voronezh. With full strength infantry armies on either side of it. And replacements for all the losses in the Stalingrad fighting (they certainly existed - somebody held the front 2 years later).

How are the Russians supposed to beat any of that? By losing five to one? By Mars style attacks met by fresh armor reserves? When they try to stop a Voronezh thrust in 1942, are they going to have Kursk level 2:1 manpower and tank odds? How, when the German armor fielded to date has doubled compared to the historical situation, and the Russians haven't had a year's worth of T-34 production?

The Russians are much closer to losing in pure attrition terms than people often realize, because a 5 to 1 loss rate is one heck of a headwind to try to make up.

In the actual event, the sustainability of all the Russian offensives of the second half of the war depended on mobilizing manpower from the last areas cleared, and getting them into new units within 6 to 12 months. Those provide half or more of the new recruit flow. The loss rate simply wasn't sustainable without the front moving their way.

Yes the Russians can pull back in space terms. But there aren't a lot of additional recruits to be had in the Urals. Not a million a month. They could keep up the huge mobilization rate for a while anyway, but not forever. Not at 1941 loss levels.

The thing that saves them is the German force isn't expanding. It isn't even making up its own lower losses. So if the Russians manage to push their mobilization rate past their own loss rate, they gain relative power.

But if the panzer fleet was doubling in size, and the Germans were not only making up all infantry losses but adding new divisions to the force even half as fast as they later show they could when they really had to? (E.g. 1944 collapse of both fronts made good). Then the Russians are in a world of trouble.

Toss in not sacking the best generals for bringing the "we didn't win in one season" message, and instead listen to them. Imagine Rundstedt is running AG South in 1942, with Guderian in charge of an additional panzer army, complete in every detail added to the OOB, behind the south wing or at its shoulder (on the Don opposite Voronezh, say). With German infantry armies as big as the minor allies historically, also added. And boatloads more everything to support all of it logistically etc.

In two years, the Germans have a working rail system complete with enough narrow gauge rolling stock (they can just make it if they want to). The territory isn't going to be a drain. It will be looted like other areas, paying for itself, about.

You don't need the Russians to "capitulate", they can fight on if they like. You just clobber them by the bushel continually and they can't make up the ground. Their own manpower reserve is not at all limitless, and if they don't liberate any subject population, it gives a lot sooner than a mobilized Germany. They have to reduce any attacks to sustainable levels, and those can't make any real impression on a German force they don't outnumber 3 to 1 in tanks and 2 to 1 in men.

Saying "all the Russians have to do is survive" rather overlooks the actual role the Red Army historically played in defeating the German army. It is a bit like saying "all China had to do is survive to defeat Japan" - they didn't have anything to do with defeating Japan, which was up to the US to accomplish on its own.

The German position against the Western Allies is a lot stronger if they win in Russia than people might suppose. By the time the US and UK are trying to do anything about it on the continent, in that event, the Germans probably have jets. And early smart weapons (radio controlled bombs, successfully used in small scale off Anzio vs invasion transports, etc). Does the US just fighter sweep to there being no Luftwaffe to face them if the Germans have Me-262s and they haven't been ground down by years of war in Russia ahead of time? 

Also, it would not have been any picnic invading western Europe into not 50 but 300 German divisions. Long term, none of it is any assurance against the USA - which was going to win the A-bomb race any way you slice it - but it would all have been enough to make Russia irrelevant to the outcome of the war.

Which would have been immensely to German's advantage, compared to what actually happened. And was fully within their existing capabilities, and existing political, economic, and military constraints. Not achieving it was a pure "own goal" due to overconfidence.


KEYS TO THE BLITZKRIEG 1941

The Germans outmaneuvered the Russians in the 1941 campaign by among other things locating radio transmitters and bombing them as soon as located, with the result that Russian commanders had to stay off the radio and rely on handwritten notes and dispatch riders, stressing the aforementioned 4 high school graduates 1 of whom had passed trigonometry.

The Germans had the best radio direction finding systems in the world in the first half of WW2. The western allies about caught them by the second half, the Russians never did. Of course the western Allies also smoked them in code breaking with Ultra.

The Germans regularly knew where any powerful radio transmitter was broadcasting from in hours, and could arrange to strike any concentration of them within 1-2 days. They used this to good effect in France in 1940 and Russia in 1941-2. The Russians got paranoid about ever getting on the radio, and that hurt their comms in its own right.

But while the Germans were good at striking HQs, the practical effects of doing so can easily be exaggerated. 

First, command and control in WWII armies was a chancy thing even with an intact chain of command.  Suppose a commander amazingly knows both the friendly and enemy situation with the eye of God. But now he has to coordinate the movements of a mechanized corps of 400 tanks (of 4 varieties, with variable mechanical reliability) and 2000 wheeled vehicles across a dirt road network through swampy forested terrain. His staff to perform this consists of 4 high school graduates, 1 of whom passed trigonometry. They have a pack of 50 blank index cards and 2 number 2 pencils among them. 6 dispatch riders with motorcycles are available to disseminate the orders. Radios are forbidden because Germans are listening and rapidly locate and bomb all transmitters.

In addition to issuing clear orders to combat formations, please be sure you arrange for each formation to get enough gas to get where it is going, account for road constraints, travel times, laager positions, etc.

Moral - the problem of command and control is *not* merely a problem of knowledge in the head of the commander.

Second, orders coming out of early war Allied HQs were not exactly models of brilliance and cogency. Thus, in many situatons being out of command may not have appreciably harmed units left to their own devices. In many situations, orders from above were worse than useless: hold at all costs, fight to the end, counterattack at once with 90% depleted formations, etc. Or else reflected such an unrealistic or dated picture of the situation that the best thing a divisional or regimental commander could do with them was to throw them in the trash.

It is instructive to compare a British division HQ forced to displace during the North Africa fighting with the performance of intact British armor HQs at Knightsbridge. In the latter case, 3 tank brigades, under orders, executed a concentric attack on a German gun front supported by armor, and lost two brigades worth of tanks in half a day. The chain of command was unbroken, just doctrinally incapable of good armor artillery cooperation to suppress the German towed guns. The flawless operational coordination of the tank fleets sent them in piecemeal, letting full German firepower face each in sequence.

Third, even without HQ guidance subunits fight anyway. They didn't just roll over and give up - not unless or until surrounded, and out of shells, and three break out attempts have failed, or similar. They relocate and they reorganize and they keep fighting. Sometimes 200 miles to get home, but still they fight. If the attacker doesn't cash in on dislocation - very quickly - for dead enemy troops and lots of them - the dislocation impact passes and the combatants are right back into a struggle of attrition.

In the huge Kessel encirclement battles in Russia in 1941, for example, it took all the infantry of whole panzer armies to hold the eastward retaining walls of large pockets - for a week at a time. Facing large scale counterattacks, costing thousands of casualties. The pockets only collapsed after Russian artillery ammo gave out, and under large scale frontal attack by infantry armies. Pocket walls were often not that tight, so hundreds of thousands of bypassed men successfully escaped and evaded back to Russian lines, albeit with little more than their rifles.

In WW II, armor could concentrate with less exposure to area bombardments, and that more than anything else is what led to mobile warfare and a restoration of offense dominance. It still faced problems from obstacles - AT mines in particular, and terrain channeling. Gun fronts could stop it on narrow fronts, particularly if the attacker muffed his all arms coordination. Most of the time, though, the initial break in by armor was successful, and the fight shifted to a battle with arriving reserves in the depths of the defended zone. The same area fire stuff could strip the tanks by then, though, if the defenders were good.

In WW II, tanks refueled in a laager at night and not before.  And they weren't out of gas, either. Ranges were 100 to 200 miles on a tank of gas, and none of them drove that much in a day. Record advances were on the order of 50 miles - which is enough to cross France in a week or so. Wheeled recon elements might go farther against no opposition, but don't guzzle fuel like armor does. Basic loads of ammo, carried by a unit or its organic transport, lasted a day or two for artillery and up to a week for small arms and such.  Rommel went clear into Egypt during Crusader. It didn't work but he got back. 

Russian penetrations that got overextended in 1942-3 did so by driving not 2 km past enemies but more like 50 to 100 miles. Their supply problems arose from follow on and supply elements not knowing where the spearheads were, not because bypassed enemy troops slid in behind them.  Unprotected flanks become a problem over a time scale of days afterward, not hours.

Moving to flanks first requires that there be flanks, which since 1914 has been the trick. Breakthrough, on the other hand, isn't encirlement. The breakthrough at Sedan, as an example, had to be created by infantry because tanks couldn't cross the Meuse until somebody friendly held the far bank.

Plenty of powers used massed tanks but conspicuously failed with them, because that isn't actually a winning formula. It is trumped by gun fronts. Knightsbridge may serve as an example. It was actually a good way to lose a whole armor brigade in one afternoon.

The Germans did have an organizational and doctrinal innovation - motorized combined arms support for tanks, subordinated to the tanks. Instead of tanks operating on their own, or combined arms tank support of largely infantry formations.

Actually the French did that too, but only with a modest portion of their force (the light mech divisions), with others very tank heavy and others supporting infantry.

Looking over the French campaign I've always been struck by how overdetermined it is. It is not like the Germans lose anywhere, and need the Sedan breakthrough. Yes it is the instrument of the win, but even the secondary attacks romp. The French light mech fought reasonably well, that is about the most one can charitably say.  Yet their army was larger than the German one for a large portion of the interwar years and on paper hardly inferior at the time of the 1940 campaign. The French were outplayed, operationally. They had to defend, which is harder.  They thought it would be easier based on WW I experience and picked the defensive, of course. The Germans did better tactically, so much so the German success was overdetermined.

If you go to the critical bits of the 1940 campaign, you find things like French armor brigade attacks German infantry division, result nothing. While German tank regiment attacks French infantry division, result breakthrough. It isn't explained by what the higher ups thought they were trying to do. Parallel efforts do not give parallel results.

This reaches an extreme in 1941 Russia, where German mech corps hits Russian infantry, result Russians evaporate and German mech corps is loose in the operational rear, while the reverse - Russian mech corps with 1000 tanks hits German infantry division, result Russian mech corps evaporates in less than a week. Leaving gaping holes, because it was unexpected and other units relied on them.

The Russians lost 1/2 of their initial armor force in the first three weeks of the war, and more like 3/4 in the first 2 months or so. Many were lost in breakdowns or captured inside large pockets. (Captured tanks ran into 4 digits in the larger pockets). Up to 90% of the fleet needed some sort of repair on the day of the invasion. Readiness was obviously very low.

Tank losses were also high in the initial period due to poor doctrine. The Russians did manage large scale armored counterattacks on a number of occasions. But these typically had little in the way of support from other arms (infantry and especially artillery).

The Germans went into Russia with as many heavy tank killers as the Russians had heavy tanks. They just weren't on tanks. They were towed guns. 88 Flak, 105 Kannon, 150mm howitzers, and 105mm field guns firing HEAT as it became available. They also started to get 50L60s towed in the Panzerjaegers long before they dominated the vehicle fleet.

What were the Germans hitting with their 50L42 Pz IIIs? Infantry, mostly using the MGs. The odd gun, many on few, and frequently with artillery or mortars suppressing the gunners beforehand.

The Germans responded to these attacks with the "PAK front" tactic, essentially just trucking in every AT capable towed gun in the area ahead of the Russian advance. The Russians sometimes got through the first lines, but took high losses doing so, high enough that within a few days they were fought out.  The Germans had as many heavy guns in their force as the Russians had heavy tanks. They just weren't mounted in AFVs (yet). 1/3 to 1/2 of the German AFV fleet had 75L24 or 50L42 guns, which could handle T-34s at close enough range.  

The panzers used "hail fire" when they encountered limited numbers of heavies, simply putting a whole company on single enemy vehicle, and wrecking it even without penetrations. This only worked tactically because the Russians practically never had a full sized formation of heavies on the field. Where they did, the Germans didn't duel them, they pulled back behind a gun front and penetrated elsewhere with the armor. The higher ROF and better accuracy at longer ranges of the early war German guns, compared to the Russian heavies, would let them do this if they had an echelon larger force (company vs. platoon e.g.).

PAK front tactics worked especially well against armor when armor-artillery cooperation was poor, as it was in all the early-war allied armies. Rommel beat French tanks in 1940 with PAK fronts, and British ones in the western desert, and Germans beat Russian tanks in 1941 with gun fronts too.

German tanks see and hear better - they have commander cupolas, 3 man turrets, radios, and better optics. On a large battlefield with cover available, this tends to let the Germans get many on few fights here and then there. They can get "piecewise" numerical superiority in sequence, even with the overall numbers on the field even.

The longest delay they occasioned was about 3 days for AG South at one point. By the end of July, the net contribution of the entire Russian mech arm to the war is negative. They would have been better off not relying on such formations to plug holes etc, and sending infantry formations instead.

The most common explanation for the dismal Russian showing is "obsolete tanks".  But this should at least result in large scale attrition to the Germans as they are taken out in combat.

Even if the T-26s were useless on a battlefield you'd still have a monster tank fleet.  The BTs were about as good as the lighter panzers that made up half the German fleet. And the modern stuff put the heavier half of the German fleet to shame, and outnumbered it.  They had as many KVs and T-34s as the Germans had Pz IVs, IIIs, and StuG.

T-34s were encountered in strength (100s) in the border fighting in AG South in early July, just two weeks into the war.  They had a momentary tactical effect, halting one German prong for about 3 days. Another went behind them and the parent corps evaporated in place.

So how can you get NOTHING out of the good half of your tank fleet, just because you also have a bad half? How can having a T-26 and a T-34 be worse than just having the T-34?

The T-26s were so numerous that some were running, but they also broke down if you looked at them funny. Many were used emplaced as bunkers. The BTs were marginally better, but on a road march of 150 miles easily half of them fell out. And instead of being repaired in 24-48 hours as they would have been in a western army, they were abandoned by their crews and permanently lost.

Visualize rusting buckets of junk strewn across every road in western Russia.

And the T-26 can burn your gas, take up your road space, take all your commander's time and babysitting to shepherd hither and yon on the mud trails, etc. Especially if you don't remotely have enough of those resources to go around.

The dysfunctionality of Russian mech in 1941 was not a matter of technical specs, but of technical readiness and combat service and support. The Russians were simply utterly unable to operate large 1000 vehicle mechanized corps, to plan or coordinate their movements, to keep them supplied, to do ordinary maintenance on vehicles with the most minor defects.

Later in the fighting on the approaches to Moscow, one can find single incidents that held up a lone panzer division or corps, for a few days to a week. While all the others galloped ahead. Even those eventually went the same way, as Germans turned positions and the Russians were unable to sustain armored forces in action, above brigade size, - and usually less than even that.

There was tons of fighting by Russian formations trying to get out of the pockets. In the later ones, Bryansk in particular, hundreds of thousands did get out, especially through woods and marshes or by night infiltration between the German positions. But also by direct attack.

On the German side, the eastern walls of the pockets right after they formed were generally held by the infantry of the mobile divisions, both motorised infantry and panzer. The side walls started that way but rapidly transitioned to leg infantry. These were then on the tactical defensive, while the Russians had to attack. After the first few days surrounded, often with little coordination, artillery support (ammo low, coordination gone), and with limited tank support (fuel exhausted rapidly once rail lines cut, breakdowns abandoned, etc).

But this was still tough fighting for the German infantry divisions. They had the advantage of heavy weapons and artillery support, working systems of reserves, etc, and the opponents were green and mostly pure infantry. There were just a lot of them. The pockets were huge and their walls could not be held with thick deployments. If you've heard tales of masses of Russians charging German machineguns and artillery recklessly, this is what they are most likely talking about.

The fight went out of the pockets rapidly, however. One of the biggest factors was undoubtedly sheer physical fatigue. Panic is not conducive to adequate shut eye, and sleep deprivation makes men walking zombies in about 72 hours. Ammo for the indirect guns and fuel for the tanks also had to give out pretty rapidly.

A lot of it, though, was probably the combination of evasion by scattered groups combined with high losses in unsuccessful attacks, draining off the most determined manpower and leaving the wounded, dispirited, and disorganized. The walls keep getting stronger as more German infantry marches up and as the pocket shrinks. The forces inside keep getting weaker. A week or so in, those who haven't made it out already see the last best chance is a night escape through woods or marsh. Some make it, many don't, some go partisan, nothing is left in large cohesive formations anymore. The rest surrender. That is the penalty for not keeping an intact line. 


THE RUSSIANS BARELY SURVIVED 1941 

The basic story of 1941 is the Germans chop the Russian army into pieces and gobble those pieces up. By the time they finish swallowing, there is a new Russian army in front of them. Repeat until the Germans miss a step and stall. People debate which step was the one that missed. But the overall picture is operational and tactical skill vs. "numbers", understood as including "supplies" or "reserves". Germans win at the front, Russians win in the rear.

It is an easy enough picture and it does capture the most essential bits. But on western expectations, mobilization and supply logistics are so closely connected, we just assume (I just assumed, in the past anyway) that the Russians are strong in all the rear areas, just lousy at the front. What comes through in flashes in Glantz is that this is not remotely so. Their combat service and support are god-awful, in 1941.  

In pure materiel, the Russians had forces sufficient to stop Barbarossa cold. Before the purges, the thinking of the leading staff was actually *ahead* of the Germans in mobile warfare doctrine, including realism about what could and could not be expected from single operations. The later war performance of its best school trained generals, once freed from hamfisted political "hold at all cost" orders and the like, proved they were outright better than the German generals opposite, certainly after late 1941 to mid 1942, at the outside.

If the mech corps had been commanded professionally by students of the likes of Vasilevsky with staffs not of nincompoops, the Germans wouldn't have made it half as far as they did.
The purges very nearly lost the war; they came as near as any human action to doing so as possible. If Stalin had been shot in 1936 and Stavka had been ruling the country, the Germans would not have stood a chance.

The officer corps also had suffered a a deliberate politically paranoid campaign against some leading mech theorists as smelling fascist and maybe pro German, incomplete personnel for their ambitious mech arm, low readiness, a poor maintenance culture, peacetime training that avoided stressing critical support elements, some disasterous recent experience that should have taught them more than it did (Finland, the occupations), and a few successes that taught a few of them some relevant lessons (in the east against Japan).

Russia invested far more heavily in mobile forces, sooner, than German did. They had the largest airborne force in the world, the largest tank fleet by an order of magnitude, the best tank designs. They had a fully elaborated all arms formation built around high theory hashed out over about a decade, far in advance of anything the western allies had.  On the other hand, the Russian quality advantage existed only at the top of the distribution of tank types. The Russians had an enormous number of tanks when the war began, but 85% of them were thinly armored, 45mm gun armed lights, split between T-26s (by far the most common type) and the BT "fast" series.  All these were entirely vunerable to every tank gun in the German AFV fleet, and every field gun they had as well. Their own guns were dangerous to the lighter half of the German fleet, but needed flank shots at relatively close ranges against the better half (the newer 50mm front armor Pz IIIs, IVs, and StuGs).  The better Russian tanks were a more serious matter, but there weren't all that many of them after early breakdowns (or "never rans") are taken out of the mix, and they were "spent" in penny packets.

In the event, they made catastrophic mistakes and their mech arm was clearly broken. They were on the defensive and nobody yet knew how to stop modern all arms forces with proper doctrine when they were on the offensive. They tried the obvious, reasonable things, like coordinated mech counterattacks against the shoulders of penetrations - but their mech arm fell apart on them within days, without result. This did not happen because they hadn't spent money on it. It happened despite having spent money on it. It is possible to simply fail.

The Russian economy was working much better than anything else in the picture - they were mobilizing, the Germans weren't; they got massive quantities of war material; they fielded new armies reliably and got them where they were needed, strategically speaking. But chaos and confusion reigned in what I called the "near rear" - roughly, railhead to front line in the active sectors.

I think this is the real answer to the standing mystery, what happened to the Russian tank fleet? Glantz had shown from previous operational studies that basically half of it is gone by the end of the summer. At places in this one, it is quite clear they are outnumbered in armor throughout the fall battles. Even though the Germans don't have much (3300 to start and falling). Did the Germans just kill every tank in battle, because T-26s are so bad? I don't think so.

You find there are serious Russian counterattacks with armor. Tank corps strength, and prewar TOEs thus those are big formations. One operation on the Smolensk axis involves well over 1000 tanks. Occasionally there is some early effect, but never anything real to show for any of it. What's going on? Well, that is where the flashes come through. Whole mechanized corps report they are out of gas.

We are not just talking failure to use combined arms in a doctrinally correct manner. We are talking about launching attacks with major formations that push ahead for 2-3 days, and nobody has organized their regular resupply. As in, CSS non-existent.

An early case is Dubno, where initial lack of preparation is still plainly a factor. The operation looks sensible on a map and the forces available include mech formations with 3200 tanks (! - the size of the whole German fleet at the same date. Hardly penny packeting).

The narrative does cite lack of tank infantry cooperation. But it also says air attacks and swamps. Then 2 corps try together, without their motorized infantry division components. We hear of a force with 979 tanks, 426 of them modern models, reduce to 65 in a matter of days. Off in a footnote. "Largely due to technical problems". Another corps cites swamps and air. It reads like the Russian commanders are excuse factories. It also positively screams CF.

And it isn't the only one. Some of that may have been tanks never really operational to begin with, "breakdowns" that consist of the officer in charge asking if it will actually move for the first time since peace ended. But later ones, in front of Smolensk e.g., don't have that explanation really. But the same sort of thing keeps happening.

We read that 5th and 7th Mech have 1036 tanks apiece (!), and their attack fails. Glantz offers that many of them are T-26s or BTs (so what? If half of them were BTs it would still be awesome. Lack of adequate recon and tank infantry cooperation is cited for their failure, against the well prepared AT defense of - one panzer division. That is the footnote version. The main text explains that 7th Mech alone lost 832 tanks within five days and withdrew in disorder "beset also by a host of command and control and logistical problems".

Higher ups gave nonsensical orders. Lower officers obeyed them to the letter. They drove off to point B. No gas arrived to meet them (the route may not have existed, the enemy might have been between, any of a hundred reasons the original order was errant nonsense). They screamed for gas. The front moved. The crews got out and walked. That is my diagnosis of some of these collosal stuff ups. That is how "swamps" consume entire Mech corps.

What is CSS for a modern mobile force, and its supporting C3? It is all the management level planning and gritty detail involved in making sure everything gets where it is needed just before it is needed, in an elaborate waltz. It is all those miles of tanker trucks you see in the desert (recent times), the forward fuel supply points, planned tank laagers every night. It is calculating road space and reconned routes, realistic march schedules, proper interleaving of arms and formations, and every sort of rear support at the appointed place when it is needed. It is lots of trucks actually running every day and bringing everything right where it is needed and when.

Now, I had a previous insight about one of the "rate determiners" for the Russians, early, reading their staff study of the battle of Moscow, on a different subject. Artillery, its proper use and coordination with other arms, and the limits on it. We all know the Russians got a lot better at that over the course of the war. I was looking in part (previously, understand) for why it was weak early. I found some of the expected things, and some things a bit similar to the above. But also one point that just floored me when I realized it.

We have a bright general staff officer analysing why the front line units didn't get more out of their arty. They were always using it direct, and it got knocked out faster or didn't get away if they didn't win, more often. He dug a little into why. Answer, most of the units didn't have anybody to coordinate indirect fire. What was the hold up? Nobody in the typical battery even knew trig. (Whoa. Slow down there.)

The smart kids who knew trig were either off designing new airplanes or doing planning economics. They weren't out with the firing batteries calculating angles for firing solutions. If the gunners couldn't see the fall of shot, they had no idea how to point the guns to hit things. "What's an arctan, Dmitry? Darned if I know." Understand, I am talking early, low level units. This was one reason the Russians centralized guns so much. It made the most of the scarcest factor, trained technical personnel.

On an exercise, the focus is on the line commanders and their decisions, as well as simply testing whether everyone more or less knows their job. The higher ups want to see their units respond to commands. It is not typical to deliberately "stress" CSS in a peacetime exercise. More of them are conducted in open plain regions than in swampy forests with limited road nets. Commanders know about them months in advance. Objectives are laid down with cartoon clarity. Reactions to real moves by the enemy are typically restricted to the front line forces themselves. Even today, we send brigades through the NTC (far more realistic training than anything anybody did in the past), not army groups, and they prepare for months. It is the only relevant thing happening. Nobody is getting killed (unless they tell Stalin jokes).

Now, the CSS, C3, and supply tasks involved under wartime friction are a much tougher problem. The whole economy is stressed. There are occasional shortages of everything. Everything wanted is desperately needed someplace else, too. Everything is urgent, a scramble. People are dying en masse, and not standing on ceremony about trying to avoid it. Every time the situation changes, plans fracture - by which I mean, parts do not make sense, parts adapt to the new information and change, while others need to but do not. Throwing them out of coordination with each other. When they were meant to be interlocking parts.

Too abstract. The fuel resupply point for 3rd battalion is Heresk. Tanks will laager there from 6 PM on. Maintenance workshops set up at the south end of the town. Night security is the responsibility of the tank rider company commander. 456th truck company to pick up fuel at Howsaboutoe on the rail line by 4 PM, deliver and unload before 6. 60,000 gal. In peacetime, a walk in the park.

But 3rd battalion was in combat today. It is needed at the front 15 miles from Heresk. The likely next threatened point is 10 miles to the right, but the only road to that threatened point that hasn't been cut yet is the Cowsapop trail, through the village of Saywhatski. The south end of Heresk is a smoking crater because a Stuka visited this morning. There are German infantry in the woods 3 miles west of Heresk. The SMG company took heavy casualties in today's fighting. The 456th truck company was grabbed for another urgent task at 1 PM, will be free by 5 if all goes well, but 30 miles from Howaboutoe. The train is waiting on the siding.

It is now 3 PM. What new orders do you give to correct the situation? What happens when a third of the units involve get the new orders, a third don't and stick to the plan, and a third think its is all a stuff up and nonsense and stand around shouting at each other and proposing disconnected expedients to deal with their own little corner of the problem? And what is Yvgeny going to be able to do about all of it with the 4 pens and the pack of index cards and less than 3 hours? When something is cobbled together anyway, how much harder will the next two day park walks be because of things that went wrong today?

That is the solvable problem. Ok, now imagine you are in charge of a Russian 1941 Mech corps. A monster of a formation, 3 divisions - two tank (very tank heavy ones) one motorized infantry plus supporting arms - up to 1000 AFVs. And just suppose you have your understudy staff officer Yvgeny, bright but just the one and fifteen years your junior, half a dozen high school graduates (with four pens, one typewriter and a pack of index cards), a support pool that looks like a mom-n-pop's accounts receivable department, and any desired quantity of bodyguards and no-necks to fetch and carry.

Now your mission is, get the majority of your (2000+ vehicle) combat force in integrated subunits to move 150 miles through a mud-track criss-crossed swampy forest (don't show up piecemeal), make sure everyone has gas, repair units within a few miles of whoever needs it, ammo POL maintenance (watch out for that Messerschmidt!) within 48 hours.

And oh, a new report just came in, it turns out the last one (when you gave your previous orders) was based on information 12 hours old, and actually the Germans have reached Whereskaya (Yvgeny, where is Whereskaya? You have the map, right?) and cut the road to Ohnosk.

What does Stavka do? They abolish the Mech corps. This is usually regarded as a big step back to penny packet thinking, but I believe it was correct, indeed absolutely essential. It is vastly harder to move a 1000 AFV glob in a coordinated fashion than it is to move a brigade of 50 T-34s. A reliable brigade of T-34s at the right place and time is more valuable than a wallowing CF of an out-of-gas Mech corps. Let alone half a dozen of those brigades.

This retied the tanks to the infantry formations. Which were lasting long enough to protect and use them. It restored tank infantry cooperation. (Why wasn't there in the mech corps? They had motorized divisions, right? They did, but often left them behind. More on that below). It gave the mobile commander a managable CSS task. It reduced the strain on whatever passed for roads in the area. It put that task more within the likely managerial capacities of Yvgeny and company.

Yes, eventually men who had learned how to manage these brigades and mesh their fighting with infantry formations they supported, had to learn further, how to coordinate several of them as a mech "corps" - on more like a division scale. And once those were behaving reliably (though still pushed too hard, to supply failure, in some rather important instances e.g. in 1942-3), higher muckity mucks could push around whole tank armies again. But the road to all of that was long, a lot had to be learned on the way, and no the men did not remotely know how to do any of it in the summer and fall of 1941.

As for why some of the mech corps trashed their own doctrine and lost tank infantry cooperation, there are some occasional tidbits on the subject in Glantz. Truck shortages cited. Not a lot of detail, but if CSS is the real culprit it will start to make sense.

Which unit has priority for road space? What is the most urgent task for trucks, hauling infantry or hauling gas? In CF supply and C3 conditions, are you stronger for having an extra 1000 soft vehicles strung out on the roads under the Luftwaffe, burning gas? An extra division of men to coordinate and supply? A whole extra passel of muckity mucks insisting on Y and Z once things fall behind plan?

The answer is probably yes, anyway. Triage, leave the weaker tanks, keep combined arms. But green commanders aren't going to see it that way. To simplify, they subordinate everything to getting tanks to A. They manage to get tanks to A. A is a road to nowhere. And a mech corps is eaten by the swamp monster.

Are people who would be factory managers or clerks in a western economy, middling officers in a Russian mechanized corps, in 1941? Is that sort of managerial skill selected for? Remember that one needs in particular to be able to improvise, to plan in detail but also to throw away the plan the instant friction set in.

Why do we have daily returns of tank strength for every German mobile formation, and on the other hand only get occasional end-of-operation, front-wide assessments by elaborate staff studies, on the Russian side? Somebody in the former is presenting a (readable, concise) sheet of paper every day to a professional staffer, who informs the CO exactly what strength he may expect for the coming task. Is are being dotted and Ts crossed.

As a result, German units have notoriously long tails per unit of teeth. Later when they are on the defensive and need trench strength above all, that will come back to bite them. But as a result their modern mech units also go exactly where you tell them to go, arrive on time in a coordinated fashion - and do not get eaten by swamp monsters.

Later I see a pattern in the encirclement fights. The higher ups are issue counterattack orders, hold at all cost orders. They fear the whole front in collapsing, smell fear, think it is morale and nobody is willing to stand and fight. They are authorizing blocking detachments, cashiering officers for defeatism. The overall effect is to shove units west and drive them into the ground with spikes. When they should be backpedaling like a linebacker trying to get angle to the outside corner, they are thrusting their heads straight forward.

The predictable result is they run out of ammo. The resupply doesn't get as far forward as the men most willing to obey these orders and stand. The Germans get between, or there is no gas, or the guns have shot off their immediate ammo. And nobody knows where to get more. The "near rear" is complete chaos. Off in Moscow, off in the Urals, the trains may be running on time producing new guns and divisions. But 10, 20 miles behind a front, that is moving east by leaps, it is bedlam.

The result is a breakaway force. They can make new formations, but those thrust into action melt rapidly. The mech units are the hardest hit. They are the most dependent on reliable coordination, supply, and CSS. There isn't any. As a result, they fall apart within days, in action. Cadres are all that limp away from the easiest brushes with real combat.

The infantry divisions are much steadier. They die of ammo starvation a week after they are surrounded. There is no fire discipline. They don't know to hoard ammo. If not surrounded they live, melting somewhat from casualties to be sure, but not declining in supply related readiness on a exponential half life of days, like the mech stuff does.

The big moves on the map aren't sound. Zhukov is almost relieved when he advises the correct backpedal in the south. He is given a reserve command, taken out of the line. The result is the Kiev pocket and a million men lost. As a rule, the placement of the new armies makes sense and the orders to the existing ones are stark raving mad. (Attack, stay west, fight, blow up Guderian's whole panzer army with an air strike, out of touch and panicky).

The German move south to Kiev is not a mistake. It works, nearly breaks the Russians' back. The lost time is no biggie.  Guderian was for it, as soon as he got headline billing in the operation. That's right, his opinion on operational decisions of the first importance was, in the last analysis, occasionally dictated by his self promotion.

Stavka gives orders that correctly place tank formations with 1000, 2000, 3000 tanks opposite the shoulders of German spearheads. They counterattack. They *evaporate*, not in massive attrition that reduces the Germans, just "gone in days", poof.

Stavka makes the diagnosis, "morale failure". It thinks everyone is just running away the instant they "see the elephant". It cashiers people, it orders more aggressive actions, it forbids withdrawal, it authorizes blocking detachments etc. It is not doing this instead of maneuvering operationally. It is doing this in response to clear operational conceptions falling apart utterly in days.

Operational conceptions rely on a certain predictable stability of performance of subunits. Sound, modern looking ones ask a lot from large armor formations. When the Germans hit a targeted sector with a panzer corps, the infantry division hit collases in hours and they are in the house. When a Russian tank corps hits a German infantry division, the tank corps disappears. The higher ups are looking at each other, going "WTF?"

The Russians take to giving orders to infantry armies instead of the tanks because infantry armies are still on the map a week after an attack order.

The front and army level commanders get the message to fight to the last man because their superiors in Stavka (and, as they communicate this, at the front level) have the diagnosis "morale failure". There is a quote in Glantz, front commander to army commander "fight on stubbornly. Exclude any and every notion of a mobile defense. Revise your operational plan". The army commander had proposed a sensible fighting withdrawal. His front superior assumed any attempt to impliment such a thing would lead to immediate dissolving rout. The front commander was almost certainly wrong. Glantz suggests the front commander's main lesson to date was "Stavka required his forces to fight to the death and not abandon their positions".

What happens with the Russian operational conceptions? The ones they make when they still have armor try to do things you'd do if they were German units. And fail utterly, because the armor is not a sword but a floppy piece of string (that's on fire). The later ones are broad front infantry attacks at army to front scale. They have to be, because (1) only infantry formations last (2) smaller ones take losses when they attack instead of defend (3) huge infantry forces need sections of front or there isn't any front (which is often!). (There are second echelons, but forming and behind critical sectors, not stuff to throw away).

As for Russian operational defense conceptions, placement of an army (or whole front, even, occasionally) by rail behind the important sector works just fine. The army commanders and best front commanders see the need for withdrawals when there is such a need. But ring all the wrong alarm bells with their superiors. When the sensible thing to do is in fact to stand and fight stubbornly - at the operational level, mind - and Stavka has any reserves to send to make this realistic - then it works. Examples are Smolensk area in August (Guderian overstretched logistically, then heading elsewhere), right around Leningrad, Moscow front in November.

When instead the absolutely essential thing is to pull back an army or front, there is no lack of people seeing it on the map and advising it. But Stavka doesn't listen, most of the time - or too little, too late. E.g. the south is holding out better, the bright spot. Then an AG South spearhead gets through. The guys along the Romanian border should retreat to the Dnepr immediately. Instead Stavka is ordering Mech counterattacks that fail, without issuing such a withdraw order because it expects the Mech to either work, or at least smash into the Germans and halt both in large scale attrition.

But oops, they just disappear instead, and the Germans push on. Commanders scream to pull the men back. Stavka smells defeatism. Some armies are given the order but rather too late. (Meanwhile, Zhukov, for being right, is off with the Moscow reserve front instead of Southwestern). Barely out of that hook (several armies don't make it), Guderian comes down from the north with a larger one.

This is supposed to be some mistake, to monday morning QBs. It isn't, it creates the worst command crisis of the war on the Russian side. Staff tells Stalin southwestern front must withdraw. "Stalin reproached us, saying that like Budenny we took the path of least resistence - retreating instead of beating the enemy". They wring half measures out of him - 2 armies can pull back a little. We must abandon Kiev - rage. Orders to wipe out Guderian, utterly unreal (an air strike? A few units tossed in his path?).

Front commander says reserves must be sent to slow him and a general withdraw ordered. Moscow, for Stalin, says they must fight from existing positions. His direction superior seconds the motion. Result? "Do not abandon Kiev" and the direction commander is relieved. His successor says he'll hold Kiev, great. SW front chief of staff can't be fooled, says the result will be disaster within days. Result -

"Major General Tupikov has submitted a panicky report to the general staff. On the contrary, the situation requires the maintenance of extreme coolness and steadfastness on the part of commanders at all levels. Avoid panic... You must compel (2 army commanders) to cease their withdrawal. You must instill the entire front with the necessity to fight on stubbornly..."

This surreal order is issued as the trap closes. They fight as stubbornly as they please for the week their ammo lasts, then collapse to nothing. Two thirds of a million men, a million if you count the battles that lead to it. Including that pesky staff general who said "I told you so".

That is what I mean by nonsense orders to operate under. The high command thinks the front line soldiers are just running away and does not understand why its sensible seeming orders have lost the war. The front line can't get the high command to issue realistic orders that it can actually impliment.

The whole planning loop depended on a level of performance from operations ordered, that the close to front CSS and C3 could not deliver. The resulting failure set of one off the world's great blame games, which then ricocheted through the Russian command structure for the whole fall campaign, wrecking everything it touched.

This is not just the result of tanks in the rear spreading panic - on the contrary, very often the tanks are in the rear because of it (withdrawals not authorized etc). And panic is exactly the wrong diagnosis, what the high command thought, and was so wrong about. (Proof - how the infantry armies fight around Smolensk etc). No, a prior failure of subunits to perform as expected wrecks planning and sets up collossal distrust (on a fertile and well plowed field for it) and miscommunication.

There are some sound plans at Stavka, but they ask too much of the front line forces. There is no lack of bravery in the front line forces - if anything they aren't scared enough and are fighting too far to the west instead of backpeddling. The disconnect comes from incredulity over the huge disparity in observed unit performance, that German tank corps with 300 tanks create breakthroughs at will, and Russian mech corps with 1000 tanks disappear days after they are committed to actions that look just as sensible on a map.

Glantz gives figures sufficient to watch the running strength of the Russian side, in its essentials. The Germans are wiping out over three quarters of a million men per month and the Russians are replacing it, but not gaining. The Russian force in the field has a half life on the order of 60 days. And it isn't the October mud pause that stops this - October is just as disastrous as the months before it, and the respite from the mud is too short to matter.

No, the key thing is that the Germans aren't getting anything themselves. 50k replacements in a time period when the Russians get more like 3 million. It is the sheer scale of the Russian mobilization rate that is the strategic shock to the Germans, and they don't even know it is happening. Every million men they wipe out, they think is the last. When it is just another month or so.

November is the month when Russian field strength soars. There is no Russian odds at that point. The Germans have 2.7 million men in the field and the Russians have only 2.2 million, on November 1. A month later the Germans are weaker not stronger, and the Russians have 4 million. The Russians just don't lose a million men in November - that is all it takes.

Did all of these men come from outnumbering the Germans 10 to 1? No not really. First, Russia's population before the war was about 150 million, Germany's was 80 million. That is 2 to 1, not 10. Second, Germany had help - Romania, Finland, millions of foreign workers in Germany to replace men serving in the army, etc. Third, The Germans overran areas that contained half of the Russian prewar population. While something like 12 million workers were evacuated and men inducted beforehand and refugees, still around 50 million people passed under German rule. There wasn't any numerical discrepancy left to speak of, in the two population bases, by November.

The numerical edge is there at the outset but gets cut to pieces. It has reversed by October and the Germans have an actual edge in numbers, despite no mobilization of their own. If they had mobilized as they attacked, they'd have had double the Russian force by November. What happens in November is the German logistics start giving out, that let's the loss rate fall and the front stabilize, the rear area chaos clears up somewhat (or at least, is matched by equal chaos in German logisitics by then), and front line strength soars.

Before then, the Russians had been treating formations like ammo. The rear area economy and mobilization machine are working - they aren't right up against the battle zone. They field and equip whole armies, and trains drop them at appropriate points ahead of the Germans. And they shift there, in total chaos, until destroyed - under cockamamie orders and utter confusion. The next lot are getting off the trains 100 miles further east.


MANEUVERIST MIRAGE IN MOSCOW

Now to the famous "turning aside" at Kiev instead of going on to Moscow. Yes it was a decision consistent with annilihation battle and the school solution. Hitler insisted on it, over the objections of some of his more maneuver minded commanders (and lots of others only in retrospect, in the later blame-game). It was also a complete success that destroyed armies totalling a million men. It was also the right move. The Russians are vastly weaker after it succeeds, than before it is attempted.

There is no "relief" on the Russian side that the Germans have turned aside from the Moscow axis, where they had just been stopped and all the reserves were. There is, instead, incredulity, command shock, strident fights with the responsible lower commanders, clear sighted demands from the latter shot down at central HQ, commanders relieved, advice not taken, and disaster. It is the greatest crisis of the campaign for the Russians. Greater than the near paralysis of the first week, because there is less to recover with. Greater than at the battle of Moscow, where the Russians hold much better cards.

But the "shot to the brain" types say, shoulda gone to Moscow. I say, what's in Moscow? Napoleon took Moscow, didn't make a darn bit of difference. In WW I, Falkenhayn didn't even bother to try, dismissing it with the quip "an advance on Moscow takes us nowhere". The Russians actually did capitulate in that case, due to a "revolution in the grand style", as Falkenhayn predicted and as the German general staff helped arrange. 

If the Germans had gone for Moscow earlier, the Russians would still have had all the men they did on that front, plus a million more in the south, not engulfed in the Kiev pocket.  In 1941, the government evacuation of Moscow was already well planned and a functioning administration ready hundreds of miles further east. There are no magic mcguffins in national capitals that make countries roll over and die.

If, moreover, the Russians have a million more men at the battle of Moscow (not lost in the South), how are the Germans supposed to win it this time? Are the fronts on either side of the city any shorter? Is the winter any warmer there? Are there any more Germans to man them? They would not have kept it beyond January. They could if they liked have left an army there, like they did in Stalingrad a year later, maybe February - with a dead army thrown in.

As for the choice of front, the south was a much better target. The division of the German armor after the breakthrough there was an unforced error, caused by overconfidence - they thought (again) that the Russians were collapsing completely and they could collect everything with scratch forces, post Jena pursuit style.

The bulk of AG south's armor belonged with the northern prong (meaning axis Stalingrad, not Caucasus), not pushing for oil mirages (that would be sabotaged and could not be transported, anyway. Not for a year). But otherwise the south was the right move in 1942. Moscow was much stronger, the terrain much less favorable, and conditions for beating sizable Russian forces in every way worse.

As for Murmansk, if it is cut the supplies take a little longer to get to the front via Iran, but Lend Lease still gets there. There was nothing decisive in Moscow or close to it. The Russian army would continue to fight, and if the Germans don’t inflict upward of a million losses per month on it, to grow. There was no prospect of keeping loss rates that high through continued German offensives all winter. (The Russians obviously can pick the loss rate they can handle, if the Germans go over to defense).

Typhoon was a hope that the Russians were on their last legs rather than still strong. That hope increased the farther one got from the front. Men in the front line units had few illusions about how strong the Russians still were, in November. But at divisions or corps there was plenty of wishful thinking. At army levels, the thought was "we may be in bad shape, but they must be in even worse shape".

They reasonably thought this, because they had indeed inflicted probably the most comprehensive thrashing in the history of warfare, up to that date. They couldn't grasp that the target and victim of all that was still standing. At army group and supreme command, they were positively giddy, sure it was over, even frankly uncomprehending about why Moscow hadn't already fallen. A serious information disconnect had already set in by the time Typhoon jumped off.

It still inflicted a million more casualties on the Russians. Hoth in particular made serious progress.

Plenty of Germans at the time saw the Russian winter coming and warned against it and urged the necessary preparations or alterations of plans. The "Paulus pause" is one example - a proposal the refit the whole army in October rather than striving for final victory within 1941. Others were a little later but came to similar conclusions after the onset of the mud season or when Typhoon stalled shy of Moscow. Guderian was relieved for putting his panzer army on the defensive; clearly, relieving him for being right was an unforced error.  Guderian was right to want to withdraw from the Tula position, but that was the right decision because he was beaten. A commander who cannot be defeated and recover is barely half a commander. Guderian was a smart general, but he was not what the manuverists want or need him to be.

The reason the Russians turn the tide in December is the Germans run out of logistic rope, their loss rate dips, and large Russian replacement streams therefore get a chance to build field strength instead of just replacing losses, for the first time since the invasion. If you give them a million extra men not lost in the South that just happens about a month sooner.

The Russian counterattacks in front of Moscow succeed as pure infantry affairs. Their edge came from off road mobility, better ability to adapt to winter, and an increase in the importance of simple manpower numbers as the weather deteriorated and all vehicles broke down. It was skis brigades and cavalry and RDs infiltrating through forests and frozen marsh areas, that cut roads and encircled towns and villages. Tanks had nothing to do with it.


1942.  CASE BLAU TO STALINGRAD

The next serious Russian attempt to attack with large scale mech formations was in the Kharkov counteroffensive in May of 1942. It failed pretty dismally. The new mech wasn't ready for prime time and infantry armies with modest sized supporting formations (brigades, regiments) did most of the work. Attacks that would have succeeded if the two side's forces had been equivalent, unit for unit, failed, showing a large continued tactical discrepancy. Tank attacks failed even against infantry division positions, due to gun fronts (artillery-armor cooperation was poor) and ongoing C3I and CSS deficiencies.

The first really successful Russian mech operation was Uranus in November 1942. They performed better against the minor allies or during the exploitation phase than during direct frontal fights against German units, still. But they were adequate in all roles, and operationally dealt with remaining tactical discrepancies with odds and redundant attacks with exploitation of the successful ones.

The Hungarian army along the Don was cut off in days before it could effectively react. The pincers of the initial Uranus encirclement met with almost all of 6th Army immobile at Stalingard, listening to panicky Romanians on the radio and wondering what was happening. One division in Panzer 38t with old wiring tried a local counterattack that went tits up in hours. The rest of the reaction was completely ineffectual until after the Russian pincers had closed.

The only remaining Russian weakness at that point was a tendency to push operationally to the point of logistic failure, as a result of which the foremost mech groups could become quite weak later in one of the offensives. That was cured by the time of the next round, the Kursk era summer offensives, starting with Kutuzov. Which featured rolling commitments at adjacent sectors to maintain momentum, and later regulated the advances well enough to keep the spearheads strong.

Last, they learned after the fall 1943 campaign, but not during it or the summer ones, to size and direct these rolling commitments to make effective encirclements, instead of broad front pushing. The earlier ones were not intended as broad front pushing but could devolve into that when the Germans retreated when they needed to and brought up adequate mobile reserves.

The Russians had a superior grand strategy, in that they understood that the war would be a long struggle of attrition processes and total mobilization of resources, long before the Germans could bring themselves to admit that fact. The Russians had superior high command from the fall of 1942 onward, as the Germans sacked the best minds that had engineered their earlier victories one after another. These generals' crime was having been realistic about Russian capabilities, and the failings and lack of realism of their own high command.

Anyone can see that Russian play on the map, the big chessboard of whole armies and above, was far superior to German play at the same scale, from the misdirection of Case Blue at the latest. The Russians never made operational mistakes as egregious as wheeling in to close on air at Rostov, or dividing AG South into two disparate drives to Stalingrad and Grozny at the same time. The best minds on the German side said as much at the time - and got fired for it. German reaction to Uranus was very poor, and the unreality of their decision making went downhill thereafter, continually.

Were the Russians still clumsy tactically, then and even later? Certainly. But the bigger levels dominate outcomes over the smaller ones. Having the right grand strategy and faster mobilization (despite being attacked with surprise and 6 months plus or prior planning for the other side, the Russians still beat the Germans in economic mobilization by a year and a half), and making the right moves with the big pieces, utterly dominated the outcome.

To take the specific case of the Chir counterattacks, what was actually happening was of course the death of 6th Army in Stalingrad, and the failure of the Germans to do anything effective to relieve them. 11th Panzer was diverted from the planned relief attempt to hold a crumbling front. That weakened Winter Storm and helped ensure it failed. The Russians reacted intelligently to the German relief attempt, diverting 2nd Guards Army from its offensive plans westward to defend the southern route to Stalingrad, and to parry Manstein's (weakened) Winter Storm plan. The relief thrust was also undermined by high command lack of realism that refused the forces inside the pocket permission to help fight their way out, instead relying on the relief to reach them.

Then the Russians had an offensive answer as well as the defensive one, morphing their large planned Saturn offensive into "Little Saturn" to account for the new role for 2nd Guards. This trumped all the German relief attempts by aiming a blow at the left flank and rear of the formations attempting it. Epically and decisively, this put Manstein's Winter Storm relief force as far out of proper position as could be imagined.

In the midst of that German disaster and superior, masterly Russian chess in response, postwar apologists like von Mellenthin try to pretend that one Panzer division diverted from both the main relief attempt and in no decent position to prevent Little Saturn, fighting in a completely defensive role, was some kind of stunning or important success. The Chir fighting was a defensive sideshow, a diversion from a failed counterattack that was itself doomed by a far superior riposte. But apply a little spin and it was suddenly a brilliant win. This was the "line" the German generals were deliberately feeding to Allied debriefers in the early Cold War period, into which they published their memoirs.


1943.  WHY KURSK?

The Kursk offensive was entirely misconceived and a complete mistake, because the conditions for successful offensive maneuver did not exist for the German army vs the Russians in the summer of 1943. The Germans should have stood on the defensive. Among the requirements of successful use of initiative as a force multiplier in such situations is an enemy either out of position or weak enough in some suit of his combined arms to create a realistic chance of serious breakthrough. It would have been a superior use of the scarce German armor available that summer to stand on the defensive and launch counterattacks if and where the Russians overextended themselves logistically - and so on.

Why did the Germans get it wrong? They were schooled that "the offensive is the only decisive form of warfare". They believed that local concentration to defeat enemies in sequence was the essential role of armor and that it had to be employed on the attack to choose points of concentration and force the enemy to react. They thought that striking second was equivalent to being slower and being slower was equivalent to being stupid and less adaptive and having a longer OODA loop and all of the rest of it. All of it was wrong. All of it was telling them they had no chance unless they attacked and rolled boxcars, and all of it was telling them they had to gamble however unlikely the victory was that way, for there was no other conceivable means of victory but - attack, initiative, concentration, breakthrough etc.

Guderian was the one consistently against attacking at all. But he was also without a line command at the time. As inspector of panzer troops he was trying to upgrade the tank fleet now that full economic mobilization was in swing and new types were becoming available. He saw the task as upgrading the German fleet to something the Russians could not handle. He overestimated the ease of standing on the defensive, I believe.

All the German commanders with actual responsibilty for fighting the Russians that summer, saw the matter as less than optional, and as urgent. They believed the Russians would hit them if they did not hit first, and they believed, out of strong recent experience and doctrine, that the attacker had the advantage in operational armor warfare, as long as he had any idea what he was doing.

Manstein thought a mobile defense would be practical, and advanced a detailed alternative to the attack. But most others thought conceding the initiative would be extremely dangerous. Manstein himself agreed with their arguments, that the attacker did have an edge in such things. His defensive scheme was predicated on the Russians not knowing "the ropes" yet, on luring them into a repeat of the overextension they went for at the end of their winter campaign. Clear back to the Dnepr if necessary, then a cut southeast to the Black or the Azov.

Which would mean putting practically all the German infantry in the Ukraine "en prise", vulnerable to destruction unless a German mobile counter destroyed the Russian tank forces first. Understand, nobody with front line responsibilities, knowing recent Russian strengths, thought they could stand there in the open steppe and take the Russian shot, without giving up lots of ground. They had no hope of stopping them at the start line.

So they thought the attack was their best shot. They undoubtedly underestimated the potential of armor in a mobile defense. But since they had no sound doctrine to tell them of that potential, this is not surprising. Most of the commanders were relieved when they got the attack off, before the Russians got theirs of. They did not think the defender would have an edge and they were being suckers to go first, they thought the attackers had the edge, and that the Russians fully intended to attack, but were still massing forces to make it bigger when it hit.

Manstein supported the attack as eventually delivered, and it was basically his plan. He had originally proposed continuing the earlier spring attack immediately after the end of the mud period, but that was largely a bid for forces and logistically impractical.

Of the planned force, he said he needed 25 additional infantry divisions and if he had them it would succeed. People thought he was nuts and that they did not remotely have them. They found them soon enough, in much worse conditions, to hold a line at all after the Russian counteroffensive got going.

What Manstein knew when he made that estimate is how much the earlier German successes had depended on infantry in deep column behind the attack to widen the shoulders of penetrations, hold them open, mop up formations being bypassed, and contain and overwhelm any large forces successfully surrounded. His France 1940 plan had had that. The 1941 attacks, at least those at the border and for the first phase of the lunge to Moscow in October, had that.

When one looks at how the offensive failed, by force to space at the point of attack soaring in the north (where Model was in charge), and pinching in from the shoulders in the south (where Manstein was the operational commander), it is clear Manstein knew what he was doing and what he was saying.

Imagine he and Model each had another dozen IDs. Model could have achieved his desired column depth without putting all the armor on one axis. Every attacking corps in the south would have had 4 IDs behind it, meaning up to a corps holding and hitting at each flank of each penetration. Clearly that would have made the local successes achieved much more lasting.

The increment in scale is also the proper magnitude if you look at the rate of expenditure of Russian reserves - if anything it may not have been enough without added armor too. The Russians had run out of them in both front-line fronts. They were just committing the reserve front, which had 32 RDs. One tank army was needed to check 1SS, while Manstein had one Pz corps in reserve. Model also had one he commited north toward Orel instead of to the attack. Steppe front had 5 other mech formations comparable to a PD in combat power.

So, within a factor of 4:3 or so, Manstein's additional force request was on target - that is how much more the Germans would have needed to have a serious shot, a chance of outlasting the Russian reserve stream with their own, and making tactical successes pay off in some larger sense. To be favored, they might have needed half a dozen additional PDs as well.

A big difference is, the manpower for 25 IDs did exist - unlike the tanks for another 6 PDs. More urgent, emergency mobilization efforts could have produced such a wave. The Germans frequently had to, to patch together a gaping hole somewhere, at later times. But no one besides Manstein thought it anything but excessive caution and trying to be sure, or thought the issue would turn on an extra couple armies worth of infantry forces. Manstein was simply told such forces were not available, that the request was impossible, and accepted it.

Kursk failed because tactical concentration of armor is sufficiently countered by systematic use of large reserves, layered in depth and slid in front of those concentrations to remove all local odds. It failed in the north first, then in the south. 

In 1942 and 1941, Russian numbers had not been able to stop German offensive concentration of armor because they had not been correctly used. In 1943, they were correctly used and they did work. There is no mystery to any of it, only unwillingness on the part of Germanophile historians to admit that previous successes depended on failings of their opponents rather than their own side's decisions or abilities. When those failings were corrected the Germans lost the ability to achieve operational results offensively merely by concentrating armor.

The Germans retained great tactical abilities which helped rack up high enemy loss rates, but without operational or strategic results. Those loss rates no more meant Kursk was a victory than the overall higher losses of the Russians in the whole war meant that Germany conquered Russia. The bar for winning was considerably higher than that, and the Germans stopped clearing that higher bar at Kursk.

There has been a persistent myth, perpetuated by some German historians that the Kursk offensive failed only because the Soviets were tipped off about its time and place by spies inside the OKH. This is a myth, yet more self-pitying German "stab in the back" excuse making.  The Kursk bulge, with its huge concentration of Russian forces accumulated after the winter/spring offensives, was an obvious target for the Germans.  They had always attacked in the summer before, and it was highly likely that they would do so again in an attempt to regain the overall initiative in the East.

So the Russians knew about the offensive certainly, and its general objectives. But they still had to defend hundreds of km of front along the bulge.  They did not know which specific areas would be German heavy points. When they reacted and sent up their reserves, they did so based on front line reports of where the blow was hardest, and sometimes missed the main effort location by a whole corps' width. Which is hardly a sign intel was doing everything for them.

The attack failed due to attrition, pure and simple.  The northern pincer failed a week before the southern one, halted by Russian reserves, with its third echelon panzer corps diverted to defensive use by the Orel attack. 

The basic German tactic was to attack by concentrating entire panzer corps against small sectors, enemies they outnumber and can run over. That is how to make break-ins. You can brawl with even numbers of opponents if you have a quality edge and are fresh, though doing so "trades down" both sides instead of killing cleanly. 

At the time of Kursk, no multi corps armor attack by anybody using correct doctrine had actually failed. (The Russians had failed repeatedly in such things, but usually through clear doctrinal errors). It seemed like armor created a pure offense dominance. Very few men were confident they knew how to employ armor correctly in a mobile defense - you could count them on one hand. And of those who had that confidence, they were divided as to whether attacking or defending in the summer of 1943 was the better "move".

The last two years of war had shown the Germans that, when they put their minds to it to make a deliberate breakthrough assault, the chances were extremely good the Germans would break through. They had the equipment, the doctrine, the training, and the experience to do that; and they had repeatedly busted set Russian defenses.

The Wehrmacht's defeats, in the German mindset of the day, had been pretty limited and certainly were anomalies. Stalingrad for instance obviously was a disaster, but that went down in the professional German mind very much as an urban assault that stalled and then was obliterated due to poor force dispostions and the failure of allied flank formations. Moscow and the Caucauses fit into that category as well; the German army gets so far, is running on a logistical shoestring, and then ebbs backwards when hit with bigtime Soviet reserves.

Add into that mental baggage German counterattack successes at Kharkov and Rzhev, and to me anyway the Summer 1943 attitude of the German military decision-makers (Gudarian excepted) seems pretty logical: If we Germans get the resources to put in an organized operational-level armoed attack, the odds are we are going to win. We will break through and the Soviets just are not fast enough on their feet to deal with that.

As of Summer 1943 the Germans hadn't seen a Soviet defense they could not demolish.

The Germans were aware they could get into trouble at the end of logistical tethers 2 and 3 hundred kilometers long, and Kursk was sold as a way of getting around that with geographically limited objectives. By aiming at pinching off the Orel salient, the distances Model and v. Manstein needed to cover to link up were not hundreds but dozens of kilometers. So the attack must have seemed grounded on immpecable logic: we can break through, the distances are reasonable, the battle will be relatively focused, mobile, tactical, and decisive; rather than static and attritional.

The spanner in the works of course was that the Soviets at Kursk developed an in-depth defense deeper than anything the Germans had ever seen before. Using tens of thousands of civilians to move earth, they built a defense not to hold a single static line, as they generally had in the past, but rather to force the Germans to pay in armored vehicles for every kilometer advanced. It is a bit simplistic, but one could say the Soviets at Kursk changed the focus of their anti-blitzkrieg tactics from terrain-holding to panzer-destroying.

Also, settlements occupy an appreciable portion of the total area. There was plenty of town like fighting at Kursk, which in the unit histories shows up as "and then regiment xxx spent the rest of the day fighting for yyy. It wasn't cleared until late00 hours".

Layered reserves in depth are a higher card in the same suit than offensive concentration of armor. The Russians applied the correct remedy to concentration and it worked. It didn't work cleanly or inexpensively, but it worked. The Germans made headway where offensive concentration gave them a local odds edge, and were attrited and then stopped everywhere arriving reserves took that edge away.

The Germans were still able to break in at will. Nowhere did the front line defenses hold, most were penetrated miles in the first day. The front line rifle divisions were very roughly handled, sometimes hit by entire panzer corps with 500 AFVs or more. However, Russian reserves in depth were ready to slide in front of the penetrations. Break in did not become break through. The front line armies were deployed 30 kilometers deep, and additional armies stood behind those.

The same division of opinion existed on the Russian side. Nobody had ever dared an opponent with multiple tank armies to take his best shot before, conceding the initiative. It was a ballsy move. The Russians didn't know if their breakthrough-defeating formula of depth would work, though they had sound theoretical reasons for expecting it to.

Nobody had ever deployed an entire army group in reserve before, without assigned frontage - any other army in the world would have regarded it as slightly insane. Everybody understood 2 up 1 back, but usually stopped practicing it at the level of reserve corps. But the Russians had seen in 1941 how reserve armies railed in as a "second line" had prevented even achieved breakthroughs from losing them the war in a single campaign. So it seemed a natural piece of "insurance".

But deliberate deployment in a static setting of a full army group without frontage, was unprecedented. And that is what it took to stop multiple panzer corps concentrating for breakthrough at a few chosen points.

Another persistent myth is that the Russian defenses at Kursk were one continuous PAK front, with hundreds of guns lined up for every kilometer. That the defense worked because it was so well prepared, waiting for the Germans, who could not attack so many defensive guns. The reality is, the front was enormous and the Russians were deployed in great depth. They knew the operational area the Germans would attack, but not the exact tactical points.

Concentrated PAK fronts were an early to mid war tactical expedient that worked well only against insufficient combined arms, when tanks were employed offensively without adequate artillery and infantry support ("cavalry doctrine errors"). The most successful users of the technique were the Germans. Not because they had scads more ATGs - they didn't - or better ones - ditto. But because the Allies took longer to correct cavalry doctrine errors and provide sufficient combined arms support for their tanks. Leaving e.g. the Brits of 1942 vunerable to PAK front defenses in North Africa.

The AT network was a huge array of small cells covered by single batteries of ATGs, occasionally pairs of them. 45mms in the forward belts, 76mm in the later ones (including div arty positions incorporated into the ATG scheme).

A defending Rifle division averaged 10km of frontage, with only 4 battalions up front, with only 60 ATGs (4-12 each) and field guns combined, in 3 belts. Which is a nest of 4 ATG capable guns every 2 km. The guns were mostly 45mm, and sited in nests typically of battery size - 4 ATGs and a few MGs and ATRs thrown in to help.  Their effective range sight pictures barely touch, and at most a km of attack frontage gets hit by 2-3 single batteries.

The first AT positions were placed in the second trenchline 200m behind the forward edge of the position.  The secondary belt (the battalion reserve position) was 800m from the forward edge and contained additional AT sections. The regiment reserve (third) line was 1400m back with additional AT sections.  Doctrine stated the ATGs were usually not to open up until the range fell to 500-600 meters, which meant the first line of ATGs reached out to 300-400m beyond the whole position (i.e. at frontline MG range to infantry). The second line (battalion) only opened up on tanks that penetrated the first trench line. The third line (regiment) only opened up on tanks that penetrated the first two lines.  So the belts fought independently by ambush fires, not by massing. 

The large figures frequently quoted for "guns per kilometer" originate in Russian staff studies that calculated such figures for local odds and effective concentration analysis. But they include mortars, which make up a third of the total (lots of battalion 82s, divisional and independent 120s), and indirect and HE chucker only artillery (regimental IGs, divisional and corps 122s, rockets, etc) for another third. Only about a third of the quoted totals are typically direct fire ATGs and dual-use divisional guns incorporated into the ATG scheme.

In addition, those guns are spread to a depth or 30 km, in divisional tiers, and frequently with double line positions (regiments up and back etc) within each of those tiers, as well. At the points of attack on the first day, entire panzer regiments only encountered a few batteries of 45mm in the first line. Nowhere did the ATG network present any serious obstacle to the initial break-in.

At 1 km between batteries, knock out a couple of batteries side to side, a couple front to back, and you will tear a hole kms wide and clean through the doctrinal set up, without having been in "open fire" range of more than 4 ATGs at a time at any given point.

The primary initial AT defense was not the gun network, it was the mine belts. Those held up the Germans for hours in places. And they created a paper-scissors-rock chain, tanks beat defenders without mines, mines strip tanks off, pioneers clear mines, effective HE from artillery messes up pioneers. For the first few hours. This bought time for shifting of immediate reserves and attrited the German tanks (especially important for heavies not otherwise easily disabled e.g. Panthers and Elephants), but nowhere stopped them.

Soviet engineers of the Mobile Obstacle Detachments intensified their activities in laying mines on the German routes of advance. On July 6, engineer units of Central Front laid more than 9,000 mines, in addition to destroying some 16 bridges. During this day of fighting, 88 German tanks and self-propelled artillery pieces were stopped in these minefields -- 65 of them in minefields laid during the battle.

They also shifted minelaying detachments in front of perceived points of main effort, though those needed time to rebuild a thick enough field. While the Russians (and e.g. Glantz) emphasize their role, there are few German side battle narrative reports of serious losses to AT mines after the first few days, breaking through the initial belts. The Germans also shifted directions of attack in the south, frequently - mostly to clear flanks held up by maneuver elements, but having the incidental effect of making ATG and mine placement ahead of known axes less than fully effective.

The main process that stopped the attacks was simply the shifting of the deeply layered reserves in front of the attack points, and the arrival of those layers at the front. The force to space ratio soared in the attack sector in the north, for instance. Artillery fire also "counter-concentrated" there.

Armor counter-concentrates much better than towed ATGs do. Towed ATGs tend to be spread all along the front. Some do arrive as reserve infantry formations are shifted in front of a point of main effort, certainly. But it is the masses of tanks and SUs that seal the penetrations. Then you get large scale armor melees, hundreds on a side, that result in high mutual losses, positions becoming fixed, and exhaustion of any effort to attack at the same point. You see this over and over again.

The German northern thrust was on a relatively narrow front, the armor attacking essentially "in column". Model wanted a column formation because he knew the Russian depth would have to be countered, fought through, somehow. The overall plan in the north was for a strong reinforced corps of infantry to make the actual break-in, and then the panzer corps proper would exploit it.

The first formation was a breakthrough corps, in effect, based on infantry divisions with so many attached assault guns they had PD levels of armor. Two full panzer corps were behind those. The second of them by depth never actually reached the front. It was deployed to add its weight by the end of the first week, but diverted by the Russian Orel counteroffensive. Essentially, the Germans had 2 corps worth of armor in two waves on the same narrow frontage. This meant the Russian reserves pushed up to stop the first wave were properly positioned, tactically, to stop the second as well. Which they did.

The break in corps had 90 Elephants, 45 Brummbars, 52 StuGs and 18 StuH in two battalions plus one company, and a single PD with 70 tanks (about 40 Pz IV and 30 Pz III). An assault division from the corps to its left had another 58 StuGs and 4 StuH, 24 Marders, and 4 extra battalions of infantry at corps level. These combined also had 20 battalions worth of higher HQ artillery or rockets, doubling the organic arty of the 4 divisions involved.

The leading panzer corps up north had 4 panzer divisions - with the above as additional, higher than division level armor for the attack - and hit all of 2 rifle regiments in the first line. ATGs at the start line were not the problem. Russian ATG density in the first line was on the order of 8-12 ATGs per km. The ATGs were outnumbered 2-3 to 1 by ubertanks alone, not counting their vanilla supports. Up front mines were the primary barrier, and after that, reserves. 

The Germans penetrated 6 miles in the first 48 hours, blowing through the front line regiments (but with heavy losses to mines, not ATGs), the reserve line of the front line divisions (where modest numbers of T-34s and SU-122s tried to help but got clobbered). Then they got into a brawl with all available Russian reserves on the line of the second line of divisions in the first line corps - including the local armor reserves of T-34s.  Which they basically chewed to heck by nightfall of the second day.

Each had around 350 AFVs, but the mix between thick front assault guns and turreted tanks was reversed, 80-20 assault guns in the first wave on the left, and 20-80 in the exploitation group just afterward, on the right.

They drove for Ponyri. The first exploitation corps wound up being committed just to the right of them rather than immediately behind, when they failed to break through. This force had 3 full PDs plus a Tiger battalion and 2 StuG battalions, giving 45 Tigers (by the 8th, last company committed at the height of the battle that day), 53 StuGs and 9 StuH, a whopping 162 Pz IVs, and 75 Pz IIIs. Instead of fighting for the ruins of a long village, these fought on open hills just west of it, dotted with a few smaller villages. They did considerably better, but faced tons of Russian reserve armor.

But the breakthrough assault gun idea failed in the execution. To get them forward the friendly infantry had to live through barrage fire and heavy soft firepower of all kinds. When they advanced beyond that they lost heavily to infantry AT weapons. Moderated to the pace of the infantry advance, they still lost vehicles to AT mines and to flanking AT fire, from towed guns and from tanks. Vehicles also fell out due to damage from artillery fire, ATRs, non-penetrating hits, etc.

The Russian defenses were dug in infantry battalions with scores of ATGs of 45mm and 76mm caliber, scads of Maxim MMGs and 82mm mortars, DP LMGs and Mosins, indirect fire missions from 122mm and 152mm howitzers and guns and 120mm mortars. The infantry was dug in to company and battalion strongpoints, all around facing, deep dugouts and trench firing positions with alternates, in mutual support distance of each other and 400 to 600 yards ahead of the next layer of them and the gun nests. 

The Germans led off against those defenses with infantry divisions heavily supported by StuG IIIs with 75mm and StuH with 105mm main armament and 80mm front, 30mm side armor. The much heavier Elephants with 200mm front armor and 80mm sides were expected to support them all and keep any frisky Russian armor from interfering.

But the gun cross fire made it hard for StuGs to advance, because showing a 30mm side to even a 45mm ATG at medium range is a Bad Idea. The infantry were pinned by MG fire, sniper fire, and mortar fire. They couldn't even spot the shooters precisely, especially once forced prone in the tall steppe grass and the summer wheatfields and so forth. A pinned down infantry division force expects its supporting armor to advance in such a situation, get spots on the MGs persecuting them, and silence those MGs.

When the StuGs advanced ahead of the infantry to do so, the ATGs lit them up in crossfire. The Germans could not afford to trade a StuG for every 45mm gun on the Russian side. Attack stalls. Trying to coordinate artillery fire on poorly located gun nests a few at a time. Higher ups getting antsy. Russian heavier artillery finding the range and smashing up pinned German infantry that already left their start line but haven't reached Russian positions.

So the Elephants are ordered forward into the full Russian defense to silence the ATGs and break the crust and let everyone else in behind them. They have 80mm side armor. A 45mm can't hurt them, even 76mm ATGs need nearly point blank shots to hurt them from the side. The vehicles were never designed for this, but the need was there, the vehicles were there, they got the order, they tried to carry it out. The need is urgent - a stalled attack under enemy artillery fire bleeds continually while it waits.

And break through they do - for the first few opponents already located by the previous arms. Then they run into a minefield. A crap storm of all arms hits them from all sides.

There is a dead German Elephant reported by the Russians at Kursk that took a direct hit to the top of the turret by a 500 lb aircraft bomb. There is another that apparently took at least one direct hit on the engine deck by 203mm HE, and burned out after the resulting engine fire. There are dead Elephants that took literally scores of hits to their tracks and running gear from 45mm and 76mm AP, that took hits from 76mm AP below top of the track that punctured fuel cells and left them leaking fuel, that took subcaliber (APCR, tungsten core ammo) hits to the side of the turret that penetrated, that took multiple AP hits the *barrel* from the side, and so on.

Elephants get immobilized by mines, by running out of fuel after being holed in the fuel cells, have engines catch fire, have fuel fires, lose tracks to repeated AP hits, get drive sprockets broken losing power to one track that is still on, and so forth.

The formation still has a mission, and it continues the mission. The other arms are still behind, and haven't caught up.

Russian infantry swarms out of holes around the immobilized and left behind AFVs. They close assault them with flamethrowers and molotovs and anti tank grenades and satchel charges of high explosive. The mid 1943 Elephant has no machinegun at all for infantry-suppressing firepower (low ammo flexibles don't count - tanks need to be able to hose anything for hours).

It was a fiasco. They were a failure as a battering ram into a combined arms defense. Sitting 1 km behind the *German* front line picking off *attacking* Russian tanks, they were great at that. Forcing a breakthrough that just wasn't happening, against an intact intelligent all arms defense - not so much.

The heavy assault guns took 40% losses, total write-offs (TWO). The corps and adjoining assault division lost about 6500 men in the first few days, most of it from 23 infantry and 3 pioneer battalions. Which amounts to comparable losses among the infantry engaged, around 40%.

The Russians lost much more, certainly. The front line division in front of Ponyri collapsed on the first day, and the main fight for Ponyri was carried by the second line RD in the sector. It was burnt out within 2 days, reinforced in place by 2 airborne divisions, which held.

The Russians put in the bulk of 4 rifle divisions and an entire tank army on the third day alone, and stopped them. Each day the Russian laid 8,000 new AT mines, by day 3 the ATG density was easily twice what it was at the outset, and there were something like 500 fresh T-34s in their path.

The northern thrust failed because Russian reserves from the front line army group successfully halted the attack, yielding expensive statemate. And the Russians also had a large scale riposte ready, planned, and then delivered, in the form of their counterattack opposite Orel. This diverted the 2nd line Panzer corps in the north to a defensive role before it was actually committed. It was waiting for frontage - the north tried a column rather than line attack formation for the armor--and was about to enter combat when the Orel offensive hit.

That failure meant the reserve Russian army group was available for the southern front, exclusively. At the time of Prokhorovka, the reserves of the front line Russian army group in the south were basically exhausted. It needed the help. The Russian success in the north and the start of the Orel attack, meant that help was available and could come en masse rather than piecemeal.

The force the Russians had, fresh, to throw into the fight at that point, was numerically about as strong as the whole German attack force. And it only had to deal with the southern portion, and with the center portion of that. (A little of the right side of the left wing, too, with help from front line forces still effective).

In the southern thrust, in contrast, the German attack had 3 panzer corps worth of armor all on line, the rightward one somewhat separated from the others. Manstein knew that reserves "pancaking" at the point of main effort would thicken into a very tough front, if the attack were too narrowly focused in space. He had much greater success than Model because he hit in several locations and shifted the axes of attack imaginatively, letting tactical opportunities pull the spearheads around.

The lines of advance were divergent from the start, shifted to parallel for 2 of them during the first phase, and diverged again later. The center prong did best, the others being halted from the flanks inward. Manstein's mobile forces spent too long clearing their flanks and failed at the edges before long, as they faced layered reserves. These were not the highest powered formations with all the specials, they were typically single IDs and standard single PDs, on the flanks of the attacking corps.  Again it was waves of Russian reserves that did the stopping.

The southern attack failed on the left quite early, with 3 PD being driven eastward and failing to clear the flank of PD GD from the second day. PD Grossdeuthschland's initial attack was quite unsuccessful, the Panthers failing, unity of command distinctly lacking for the armor, and mines causing great difficulties. They still broke in successfully. But repeatedly had to hook to their left to keep their left flank clear, while major advances were made only "leaning" to the right. Attacks stalled on the left end of the southern sector well before the end of attacks in the center. The Germans were successfully defending ground already taken against large counterattacks.

In the south the Germans tried a line deployment instead of a column, three panzer corps in strength. The left corps failed a few days earlier, halted from its left flank inward. 3rd PD stalled out a week before the rest. The remainder of the corps had to repeatedly hook left to clear its flank. It caused large losses to continual Russian counterattacks there but was spent and on the defensive.

The south failed from the flanks inward, as the attack was pinched off. The last part to fail was the center of the southern attempt, as was natural - one side had to fail first and pinching in means the center prong will generally be the last still working. 

An attack that originated with 6 corps of armor at its disposal was thereby pinched down to a single active corps, 1 SS. But you can't attack an entire front with the thin wedge of a single depleted corps, having no odds edge. A failed attack by two armies, employing 5 panzer corps and another breakthrough corps was not going to succeed with 1/12 that force in one narrow sector. Panzer corps expect to launch major attacks while fresh, most tanks repaired, infantry battalions topped off with  replacements. Not with both halved. And in coordinated thrusts along multiple axes to set up  flanking threats, not a singleton straight ahead slog.  

Every point at which the Russian reserves proved sufficient reduced the scope of the offensive, until gradually there was no point left in continuing it at the reduced scale available. The Germans continued anyway, until the last defending reserves committed eliminated the last location with so much as even odds, let alone local superiority.  

Army Detachment Kempf on the right (Belgorod) was separated from the other two armies. It was not closely enough coordinated with the others, absent an immediate successful breakthrough. The reason for its use was clearly an ambitious hope the shoulder of the salient could be cut through and a deeper encirclement insertion made. The initial break in was successful as it was everywhere, for the first few days. Then reserves arrived, runners and infantry trench strength were cut in half by attrition fighting with layers of Russians reserves, and the rest forced onto the tactical defensive. It had some value as a diversion, causing confusion about the point of main effort, but in the end the Russian concentration of force in the decisive sectors in the south was superior to German concentration there, despite the Germans being the ones attacking.

All German wings of the Kursk attack were therefore completely defeated by the time the offensive ended.  Offensive concentration of armor had been defeated by defensive layered reserves simply sliding in front of them.

At that point, the only hope the Germans still had, was that maybe the Russians were out of reserves. However, the appearance of an entire fresh reserve army group on the Russian side,previously uncommitted, which showed up at Prokhorovka in the form of 5th Tank Army, showed very clearly that the Russians were not about to run out of reserves. 

The Germans had to be breaking through into the deep operational rear by 12 July, for the whole operation to be sustainable. A week of fighting that tough to cut through, once, might be livable, if it resulted in a big operational win on a scale of months and armies. Instead the loss rate shot up again, unsustainably and without breakthrough, with the edge of the panzer force already dulled by losses.

II SS panzer corps strengths before the operation, and on July 13.

Operational Tigers - 35 down to 4
Operational IV long + StuG - 246 down to 129
Lesser operational tanks (not dangerous to a T-34 at range) - 141 down to 91
90 infantry companies
21 heavy weapons companies

The reduction in runners was about half, in armored combat power more than half. The infantry losses amounted to around 50 per infantry type company, allowing some for tank crews, artillery, etc.  As some were continually coming out of repair and those were net draw-downs, the number sent to the shops is higher.  There were 248 total write offs for the Germans to mid-July on the Kursk front.  They really started losing their tanks later on, when they had to abandon vehicles in repair shops because of the Soviet advance.

Rate of manpower losses through time
5-6 July 1000 per day
7-10 July 450 per day
11-13 July 700 per day
14-16 July 425 per day
17-20 July 55 per day
6000 casualties by nightfall, July 13.

July 5th saw the highest losses from the breakthrough fighting, the 6th was still heavy. Then things got easier, though still heavy, for 4 days. Around the time of the Prokhorovka fight the German loss rate climbs again to breakthrough fighting levels. It drops back to the easier but still heavy level for a few days after that, until the suspension of the offensive.

The Russians lost a third of the tanks in 5th Tank at Prokhorovka, but it was still an intact formation larger than the SS corps after its losses, standing in the line in front of them. And that corps was the last German formation still attacking. All the others had been stopped, and I SS had lost half its tanks and front line infantry (look at runners not TWOs) and essentially all its superior AFVs.  So the issue was, could less than 150 superior AFVs, essentially none of them "uber", just L48 with 80mm fronts, attack an entire reserve army group and expect operational results? No!

The Germans could defend well enough, having PAK about as numerous as their AFVs. But they had no business trying to attack army after army with a single step-reduced panzer corps. All the others were stopped. In the north, the Russian Orel offensive happened at the same time as the southern clash, and cancelled all further offensive plans by all of Army Group Center.

Prokhorovka wasn't even the last German tactical attack at Kursk - those continued for a few more days. But it was the place where the last force that had been on the tactical offensive continually since the start of the operation, went over to the tactical defense. It thus represented the loss of overall initiative.

The scale of additional forces the Germans would have needed to succeed in 1943 after outlasting the Russian reserves in attrition fighting, against the force the Russians had, was on the order of 25 additional infantry divisions and two additional panzer corps. This is in addition to thoses remaining in AGs Center and South but not committed historically (or used defensively vs. Orel etc). In actuality, at the time Citadel was stopped, the Russians had 30 divisions left in their reserve and the Germans could not remotely match them.

The Germans threw in the towel because they clearly had no business still attacking, not due to some loss of nerve on Hitler's part, nor for any mythical Sicily excuse.  The German commanders at the time knew Kursk was a defeat of epic proportions and that it probably meant they would lose the war. It was left to propagandists at the time, and especially to revisionist historians pouring over accounting forms long after the fact to pretend it was some kind of German tactical victory. The responsible commanders knew better.  The Germans destroyed more than they lost, but ran out of forces to continue. And lost the battle. Badly. And with it the war.


PANZERBEGEGNUNGSSCHLACT AT PROKHOROVKA - DENOUEMENT TO KURSK

Because it was the last stopped and therefore the high water mark of the last serious German attempt at operational attack in the east, the large tank battle between II SS and the 5 Guards Tank Army at Prokhorovka has been made a focal point of the whole battle, sometimes of the whole war.

More than 1500 tanks -700 German, 850 Soviet ones- are said to have clashed on July 12 near Prokhorovka in a close-quarters battle. The II SS-Panzerkorps was reportedly defeated, 400 of its tanks damaged or destroyed- many of these being Tigers or Panthers.  Sure enough, this engagement occured only in Soviet history books. In fact, Lt.Gen. Rotmistrov's newly formed 5th Mechanized Guard Army, led to the German lines almost unnoticed, suffered a terrible defeat.  On 11 July, infantry from 1SS took a Russian, not German, AT ditch system in front of hill 252.2, and then took the hill, in hard fighting that lasted most of the day (jump off dawn, hill consolidated only a 2 in the afternoon).  Attempts to get any further were stopped by strong flanking fire at well as strong positions straight ahead in the Prokhorovka village. The fire from the left came from hill 252.4.

Early on July 12 came two strong counterattacks. One is described as regimental strength, infantry mostly, starting at 0600. It was broken up by div arty before reaching German lines.

The other is the famous one all the legends have been spun around. The Russians took the hill back, with an armor heavy force.  They attacked with strong artillery support starting at 0515, with tanks coming from 3 directions - Prokhorovka village straight for hill 252.2, and toward it from the right and from the left.  Rotmistrov's units attacked "one tank next to another, wave after wave" in "incomprehensible masses, racing forwards at maximum speed", as a German eyewitness reports.  What is clear is that elements of 3 brigades of Russian tanks, each somewhat reduced and totaling 115 machines all told, followed a barrage onto hill 252.2 and ejected its defenders with serious loss. And the fight that ensued lasted hours. Turkey shoots take minutes, not hours.

But that ridge was the recently seized German front line, and they naturally sheltered serious forces in the dead ground behind it.  Clearly from units reported present - Wespes do not habitually engage in 30m shoot outs with T-34s deliberately - the Germans had rear area troops on their side of the hill, before it fell.

And behind height 252,2, ran an antitank ditch at right angles to the front dug by Russian engineer troops to protect the hill.

Despite the fact that it was visible on all operation maps, it might have been forgotten upon giving the assault order.  Or the Russians might simply have wanted to get off the crest line, to exploit beyond the hill and get in among the German units at its base.  As with many fights for the crown of a hill, you get a mutual reverse slope situation, in which cresting is extremely dangerous.

As another German witness reports, "the soviet T-34s came racing across the slope one by one, partially dashing down the slope, overturning in the tank ditch which we were positioned in front of."   Other Soviet tanks discovered the single remaining bridge across the ditch and piled up in front of it, thus giving the two SS tank companies on the other side an opportunity to do "target practice at mobile targets" (Rudolf von Ribbentrop).  The T-34s were trying to cross the causeway routes through the AT system, and the defenders picked them off, blocking the routes.

But once the Germans established fire dominance on their side of the crestline, by bringing up enough armor, what were the T-34s already past the crest going to do? Ones on the Russian side or the crown, could play tophat over the crest, certainly. Those already well past the crest, would have had to reverse up the hill in plain view under fire.  Or they could look for cover on the side of the hill they were on. By, e.g. getting low in the AT ditches.

The German combat diary goes on to say that armored counterattack restored the situation and retook the hill by 1115 hours, which is not soon, but fully 6 hours after the Russian attack commenced. Although that may be the start of the arty prep rather than the time of the tank rush. When the counterattacking German armor came closer, coming up the slope to retake the hill, they incrementally re-established LOS with this or that Russian tank parked in low ground and in the ditches. And many-on-fewed them into the next world.

The German combat diary also claims when the forward position was eventually (re)secured, there were 40 Russian tanks wrecked on it. This is perfectly believable, they regularly had losses that high and it amounts to a third of the tanks that launched the attack in the morning. Russian losses in the whole region for the day were certainly high enough to accomodate that degree of loss at one of the most fiercely contested points.  As Russian archives reveal nowadays, Rotmistrov lost at least 334 tanks and assault guns within 5 days of combat. 3597 of his men were dead or missing in action. German records, on the other hand, mentioned only three total losses for July 12 at Prokhorovka.

5th Tank, its various units and attachments actually opposite the SS corps brought 615 tanks to the fight. The Germans claimed 350 kills and the Russians say they lost 300, reduction in runners that were repairable combined with TWOs. There were thus around 300 tanks left on the field on the Russian side.

In contrast, General Vatutin used his own armor correctly on the Russian right, southern face. Which stopped 48 Pz corps starting from its left flank, and including Grossdeutschland, before 5th Tank Army reached the battle.

On the Russian left - German right, the Russians fought well before 5th TA arrived, in particular by counterpunching at the long eastern flank of the SS corps penetration. This was not the same as counterpunching the panzer fist itself.

At the climax, the successful Russian action was on their right, (German left) end of the SS corps line, against SS-Totenkopf (3 SS). Its Panzer regiment was overextended, beyond the bulk of the division, in a narrow salient to the north, well to the west of SS-DR and the rest of the leading elements of the corps. The Russians sent 5th Guards Mech corps at the SS-T spearhead, supplemented by the remaining infantry forces in the area and behind a strong barrage. SS-T lost heavily in tanks as a result and was ejected from the salient there.

The Russian charge at Prokhorovka achieved very little, if not nothing at all, that could not have been achieved, at much lower cost, by continued tenacious defense, and what was achieved was achieved at horrendous cost that stood in no relation to the gain. It was all harm to the friendly war effort, none to that of the enemy.

It was enough for the Russians to put 600 tanks in front of II SS at that point, and fire on anything that advanced. No banzai charge was necessary or called for. Having a reserve Tank Army at that stage of the fight was the winning factor, not getting half of it killed to make a point about local initiative. As with so many such things, strategic factors outweigh tactical ones. What was at stake was not the battle, but half a tank army to have around for exploitation and the like. The battle was in the bag.

Propaganda trying to defend those wild charges as somehow clever is just that, and excuses a whole unnecessary fearsome f'up. Its cause was doctrinal - the mucket mucks thought they got more balls points for attacking to "seize the initiative". Vatutin knew better and it showed in his performance. Rotmistrov was unskilled by comparison, and got dramatically less out of his force.

It is clear that it was not German losses at Prokhorovka, but the overall operational and strategic situation that led the German high command to call off Zitadelle. They probably would have done so anyway within days, and the 5th Guards TA would have been around in force to support Polkovodets Rumyantsev in force, instead of being reduced to half-strength. Konev in his memoirs is highly critical of committing 5 GTA at all during the defensive phase. He obviously believed that it made no positive difference (first volume of his memoirs).

Stalin considered having the dashing general court-martialed. But a "huggermugger cartel" (Frieser) saved him: The debacle became a "titanic duel" (Marshal Vassilevski) and a "swansong" of the German Panzertruppe (Koniev). The legend prevails in the history books. The only true fact, however, is that Rotmistrov's men fought "heroically and undaunted by death", as the official Russian army account has it. Yet for internal use, a fact-finding commission states that "Prokhorovka is an example of a badly conducted operation".


KUTUZOV - THE UNSUNG RUSSIAN COUNTERPUNCH

Why is Citadel, which failed, famous, while Kutuzov, which didn't, is almost unknown? Nobody can take seriously the rot about the Germans "actually" winning at Kursk, or the excuses about Sicily, or any of the rest of it. In books from the German side perspective, one does hear about "the Orel counteroffensive" - as single lines lamented for pulling off German reserves from the northern Kursk pincer just before they are slated to hit the line. But not a word about their actual planning, progress, etc.

The basic assessment that the Germans would attack at Kursk was obvious enough on the map that all of Zhukov, Vatutin, and Malinin (Central front chief of staff) saw it. Malinin's recommendation was for pre-emption in the Orel salient, and formed the basis for Kutuzov as it was actually launched. Vatutin's recommendation to stand on the defensive first with reserves in depth was the one actually adopted. All involved show excellent appreciation of the strategic issues and possibilities. Vatutin won the debate because he deserved to win it - his planning was superb. By April 2, Stavka was convinced and everyone was on the same page.

Zhukov was better at talking to Stalin and taking stands that would force him to see reason (a matter of character and bravery in the circumstances), but Vasilevsky was the chess master intellectual of the bunch. His fingerprints are all over every major operational success, and his "play" clearly superior to the German side.

The Russians were playing bigger chess, and playing it better. The Orel salient is vulnerable precisely because the armor is bludgeoning Ponyri instead of linebackering. The Germans didn't notice armies being doubled into assault strength (and getting Guards designation), tank corps moving to the front, a whole tank army in reserve north of the entire battle area of the German offensive phase. (They did better on the eastern face, with an alert counter-concentration of arty in particular).

6 rifle divisions attack on a 16 km sector, at the join of 2 spread German infantry divisions. There is adequate infantry to widen it - 6 more RDs. The lone German PD in the area, the 5th, reacts to the breach before nightfall of the first day - the same sort of "sealing" one sees on the Russian side in the German offensive phase. But it is trying to stem multiple RDs, hasn't even seen the armor yet. The 5th tank corps goes in against them. Together they make 10 km by nightfall and are temporarily held by the 5th PD, the only available reserve.

On day two they have a second tank corps, the 1st, helping the 5th, plus a fresh guards RD, plus a widening of the front to the adjacent army. The break in is 23 km wide by 15 km deep by the end of the second day, and 5th PD is fighting for its life.

Meanwhile the eastern face attack is successfully stalled, but it consumes its local reserves and calls off the first forces to leave the southern attack, as well (2 PDs). 3 PDs are ordered to the northern break-in, to assist the 5th PD. But one is drawn away by another supporting attack, which is contains. The Russians then throw in their reserve tank army on the east face. By then the PDs drawn from the north face of the German attack are all engaged, without adequate force ever making it to the main north face drive.

The Germans realize they can't stop it and order the salient evacuated. Enough time for even that to happen requires the intervention, defensively, of mobile forces drawn from AG South - PD GD is fighting against the north face break-in before the end of July. They have more than half a dozen PDs backpeddling from converging Russian armies as the IDs evacuate.

Now, compare that offensive with the one previous, the Germans' own attempt.

But it doesn't stop with Kutuzov. Right after it, with reserves committed in the Orel salient area and forming a new line west of it, the Russians hit the southern face in Rumiantsev, in August. If the Germans beat all these units, why are they taking Kharkov the following month? Partly of course because they were needed elsewhere before then. The Russian counter takes the form of "ripple" fire by army scale offensives, which runs the Germans, first around, and eventually out of reserves.

All the limited German successes were small potatoes to the scale the Russians were playing on, and set up their own successful offensives.  There is such a thing as outthinking and outplaying an opponent army. 


RUSSIAN VICTORY: NOT MERELY A MATTER OF NUMBERS

Yes the Germans destroyed a great deal of Soviet personnel and equipment during the Battle of Kursk. But if a necessary result of that fighting was a German retreat across the Dniepr crossings with all the German losses that entailed, how do we factor that in to our "who-was-more-effective" equation?

If the Germans abandoned pretty much all their Tigers in the retreat to the Dniepr, then no the Soviets aren't painting kills on the turrets but nonetheless those Tigers were certainly no longer of use to the Germans. So is the Tiger still a great tank?

How valid is "tactical skill" as a military value if the price of that skill is equipping your soldiers with such expensive kit, it harms your war effort? Doesn't it follow that saying "The German panzers were tactically superior" is another way of saying "The German army fixation on tactics helped lose them the war, and a great case study is all those abandoned Tiger tanks inbetween Kursk and the Dniepr."?

What about those subsequent battles where the Germans got swamped by Red armor? Was that overwhelming Red tank numbers, a case of quantity defeating quality? Or was it: "The Germans were paying the price of building big expensive heavy hard-to-maintain Tiger tanks that you pretty much inevitably have to abandon if your army has to retreat fast."

There is no question that the Germans retained tactical skill where they concentrated well-trained forces for tactically-rational tasks.

But as the war wore on, the German capacity to do that on a substantial scale fell. I think it is worth bearing in mind when we try and make comparisons of tactical performance.

Speaking generally, using the Eastern Front, and in my opinion, the progression went roughly like this:

1941 - Germans are tactically competent for defensive and offensive operations from perhaps across the entire Eastern front in 1941. Even an technically overwhelming edge in tank quality does the Soviets no good.

1942 Germans are tactically competent for defensive operations for the great bulk of the front but with a few outliers, but offensively competent only a large sector of the front, call it an army group. The Soviets can only defend, anywhere, by feeding troops into the meatgrinder. Offensive operations are generally disastrous, and the only time they manage a success they either have a major weather edge or months of planning.

1943 Germans are tactically competent for defensive operations across the front generally but weakening skill forces the use of fire brigades. Unless the terrain is particularly favorable the German infantry cannot by itself stand unassisted against a Soviet offensive. The Germans are capable of offensive operations generally by a single army or two, and specifically only the panzerkorps prepped to make the attack. The days of a sustained army group offensive over large distances are gone.

The Soviets meanwhile are capable of deliberate defensive in depth backed up by multiple army-level counter-offensives. Their offensives can still be clumsy, but they can also be ruthlessly pressed, they Soviet by this point have learned how to break the German front and push an advantage. The Soviets display excellent tactical knowledge on German technique and are willing to spend lives to compensate for superior German equipment and, to a lesser extent probably, training. By the end of the year the Soviets conduct their first Front-level offensive which the Germans fail to stop, instead the Soviets call a halt themselves because of logistics.

1944 - German infantry is tactically incapable (which is not exactly incompetent but close) to stand defensively against a standard Soviet attack. Further, mobile unit fire brigades of division or rare korps size can only slow down the Red attack. The German army across the Eastern Front is capable of, in terms of effective force, roughly a Korps- or at best 2-Korps sized attack. This is nice and it includes Tiger II and Panthers, but it is pretty much meaningless across a line of contact the size of the East Front. Also, the Soviets are quite capable of shooting up the Tigers. The rest of the German force, generally speaking, is incapable of useful offensive action. Not enough men, equipment, training, morale- you pick it they don't have it.

The Soviets for their part are capable of multiple-front offensives, and routinely maneuver to handle German counterattacks. For a full-dress Front offensive they throw partisans, reconnaissance, propaganda, and the rail network of two continents into the buildup; in some cases the Red planning makes a mockery of the superiority of German staff work. When the Soviets break into the German operational depths, for weeks at a time the Soviet mobile units move at a pace pretty much just as the Germans did during Blitzkrieg. Soviet equipment practically nowhere is decisively inferior to the Germans, and at times it is superior.

1945 - The Germans are defeated and with the exception of major defensive positions like Budapest or Berlin or a precious very few concentrations of panzers, the Germans are on the defensive and when hit by the Soviets they crumble. The main limiting factors on Soviet offensive action are logistics and politics. What the German army intends to do about the Red Army is no longer relevant.

A similar progression occurred in NW Europe, with the qualification that since the Soviets had spent more time fighting the Germans they had more time to learn ways to defeat the Germans.  Nonetheless, the Allies' own internal capacity set the limits of their military operations. The Germans were just immaterial as whatever they put wherever they put it, the Allies could overwhelm it at will. It took the Allies in NW Europe something like 6-8 months to get to a point where they could dictate battle conditions to the Germans, while the Soviets had needed about two-and-a-half years.

Terrain and geography were also significant factors. In the initial stages of NW Europe when the Allies were in bocage and operating a supply line across the English Channel, and their front was narrow and restricted. Meanwhile the while the Soviets (generally speaking) had a line from the Baltic to the Adriatic to decide, where they wanted to concentrate force - AND they had a good year of practice organizing offensive operations that pretty much always worked. Finally, how much Soviet fighting taking the "edge" of the German war machine helped the Americans and Commonwealth forces in NW Europe, is another question.

Certainly, even after the first half of 1944, given the right terrain or concentration of units, the Germans could give a good account of themselves on a small scale. They had a fair tactical doctrine and it helps to have the German army officer and NCO corps running your military.


WHAT ELSE DID HITLER DO WRONG?

1. Removing Guderian and Rundstedt etc was stupid. All the commanders he sacked in 1941 he sacked for defeatism and losing their nerve. Maintaining nerve for him meant continued unshakable conviction that Germany was fated to win the war, which willing strongly enough would make so. Without needing such extraneous supports as actually mobilizing the economy.

The men directing the German war effort in the period 1939 to mid 1942 were not directing it after that point. They got fired for being right at times when Hitler and the Nazi high command were in denial. (Rundstedt for Rostov, Guderian for going over to defense during the battle for Moscow, von Bock for being right about Don to Stalingrad not wheel to Rostov then sideshow in the Caucasus, etc). The command talent leaves the building - involuntarily - 6 to 12 months before the initiative reverses.

2.  Don't declare war on the US in a futile attempt to get Japan and Russia to go to war. Hitler declared war on the US in an effort to influence the battle of Moscow, which he thought at the time could win the war in one final maximum effort. Japan's entry at the battle's height occupied the US obviously. But Hitler also hoped that Japan would reciprocate his action, declaring war on Russia in return for Germany's declaration of war against the US. He hoped the threat of a Japanese attack in the Russian far east would freeze Russia's Siberian army in place and prevent it from transfering west to intervene in the battle of Moscow.

In fact, most of the Siberian divisions had already left for the west, and others went as the train system allowed. Russia discounted the possibility of a Japanese attack not because they thought it impossible, but because they were less concerned about even a successful Japanese attack in the far east, than in loss of the battle of Moscow. They correctly sent everything they could to the decisive point. Japan declined to add to its enemy list immediately. The German army was pushed back from the Moscow approaches. Leaving Germany with nothing in return for its gift to Roosevelt and Churchill.

Hitler discounted the role of the US because he expected it to help Britain and Russia only economically, and thought it was already doing so full tilt. He also suffered delusions about supposed US "softness" and inability to conduct land warfare. None of which was remotely the case. LL expanded enourmously after formal US entry, and full US economic mobilization raised US military output by a factor of 4 in short order. Moreover, 3/4 of this output was focused on Germany. And included mobilization of 10 million men and 50 divisions sent to Europe. The Germans remained contemptuous of the US army up until the defeat in Tunisia.

3.  Don't tell Paulus to stand and get killed in the Stalingrad pocket, tell him to break out. Or just listen to the messengers again, and let Manstein  run the op with unity of command, instead of overriding him without knowing a darn thing.

4.  Listen to Guderian and don't attack at Kursk, standing on the defensive instead, with mobile reserves.

5.  Don't tell everybody and his brother to stand and die when multiple tank corps close behind them, as though it is just weak infiltrating infantry and it will all get better if you just ignore it.  On the other hand, while stand fast orders were stupid and issued too often, but they were also ignored or formally rescended more often than the post war German excuse factory lets on. 

When retreats were ordered in a timely manner they worked. Hitler approved evacuating the Orel salient.  Those ordered back across the Dnepr in time made it, only to be refused a second backstep when the larger Kiev pocket came along. The forces opposite AG North backpeddled properly without any armies cut off, despite a coast and lake terrain that favored it. Forces in the south in 1942 got away. The German southern wing got away clean after Stalingrad, despite a second cut directed at Rostov, because Manstein saw it and (belatedly) was given authority enough to act.  In other cases - e.g. the foremost AG center positions before Bagration - German forces were criminally exposed in an operational and sometimes even a tactical sense, purely to symbolically give up less ground.

Even the most successful breakthroughs of the era travelled 50 miles a day tops, with 15-25 mile days common throughout. Defenders with access to rail lines and motor transport can readily withdraw at least that fast, leaving blocking forces to delay the attackers, etc. It is a well understood military art, just one undercultivated by militaries focused on the more glamorous business of attacking. Nothing dictates the defenders must stand stock still, feet in cement, or thrusting the wrong way deeper into forming pockets (which even the Germans were doing as late as Mortain).

6.  When the generals tell you to shorten the line and prepare fixed positions, shorten the line and prepare fixed positions. When they tell you to create reserves, create reserves. And don't instantly throw them away on another grandiose death ride counterattack.  A general pull back to a more rational, shorter line was advocated by generals like Henrici, and it probably would have helped. It would also have given the Russians territory and manpower sooner, though.

Pulling out of Crimea would make little difference, a marginal help. The northern front was longer than it needed to be. Rationalizations were possible in other places, they each save a corps or so at a time and put it in reserve. Not doing this routinely kept the reserves thinner than they needed to be at the time of any Russian attack.

While German supply lines were shorter once they were back in Western Russia, terrain then became a problem.  One reason Army Group Center was so vulnerable around Minsk was because the German armor was concentrated in AG south, on the southern route around the marshes. That was where the Russians had spent the whole previous year making their main effort, and the Russians kept up the appearance it would be again. There was little armor in AG center other than StuG formations. A couple of PDs are trying to stop entire tank armies on multiple routes. Just hopeless. The Germans perhaps thought they could just shift the armor up from the south, but it wasn't nearly fast enough - the Russian offensive (Bagration) smashed 25 divisions before any of it arrived, really.

The correct recipe wasn't a fixed line as such, but a flexibly moving one, with any strong enemy blow met by giving ground and then hitting its flanks etc as it gets extended, logistically. In other words, avoid the strength of the Russian rifle formations and their artillery park, and spend most of the time fighting the Russian mech arm with most of the German army, using intact Panzer corps.

There was one weakness in that idea, though. It assumed rather more mobility for the German IDs than they typically possessed. They were leg infantry formations with horse drawn transport for the guns and supplies. They move by rail well enough if planned out carefully and shifted gradually. Getting them all to dance to a Russian tune would not have been trivial. The German generals advocating flexible defense were doing so well after the war to NATO planners who would be much richer in mobility terms, and was prospective, not simply historical.

7.  Don't send an extra army to die in Tunisia where it can't be supplied, bring the existing one back.

8.  Don't divide command up into a dozen different fiefdoms so nobody can make the real military tradeoffs. Don't waste gobs of resources on feudal baronies and burgeoning bureaucracies like Goering's Luftwaffe field divisions and the SS, rationalize allocation through the Heer. 

9. Don't send the last reserves you have against the Americans, stop the Russians.

10.  Don't order the demolition of all the infrastucture of Germany, just because you are a sore loser. Don't order useless guerilla fighting to continue when you know it is lost, so much so you're ready to kill yourself.

WAS OIL THE ACHILLES HEEL FOR THE GERMANS?

The oil question is a fair one, and the answer is they would have had to invest somewhat more in the synthetic fuel business particularly to support any expansion of the Luftwaffe, but yes they could easily have supported the larger force.

The basic German economy ran on coal, not oil. Coal drove industry directly and was the fuel for electric power. The main civilian transport system was not truck borne but the rail system, and the locomotives ran on coal. Germany had abundant coal resources, even to export significant amounts to Italy to run its industry as well as its own. While they occasionally had temporary shortages of good coking coal for high quality steel, there was no shortage of coal for raw energy. And additional inputs to the sector could get more, on favorable terms.

Germany had abundant coal and the tech to make oil from it. Its industrial economy also ran on coal, including its main transportation system, the trains, as well as power generation (supplemented by hydroelectric) and heating. It needed oil based fuels for trucks, tanks, ships, and especially airplanes. I say especially because airplanes need specialized high octane gasoline, they can't be run on cheaper diesel fuel (power to weight considerations, etc).

Oil was needed for motor fuel. Most of that was diesel, which is relatively easy to get by synthetic processes. Synthetic diesel is made from coal feedstocks. The exchange was not economic is pure world-value terms - it is like paying $60 or so per barrel for relatively low quality diesel fuel (not high octanes etc). But the quantity could be varied and the plants widely dispersed. In fact, the machinery of typical breweries sufficed with modest additions, and when Speer deliberately dispersed the target set to avoid bombing later, many breweries were converted to making synthetic diesel.

Oil was also needed for aviation gasoline, a much more demanding task. Av gas needs very high octanes. It was possible to get these synthetically, but only through the hydrogenation process which required very large dedicated plants. Germany invested in those throughout the 30s precisely to achieve oil independence in the event of war. Here you are paying more like $100 a barrel and there are much longer lead times, because the investment takes the form of large plants, and you need good estimates of required capacity or you effectively pay still higher prices.

Germany had two main processes to produce oil and oil products from coal. The more advanced hydrogenation process required large specialized plants but produced high octanes needed for avgas. The other simpler process could be widely dispersed, using not much more than the equipment of a brewery, but only produced diesel.

The Luftwaffe and the panzers were accordingly dependent on imported oil from Romania, plus synthetic production from a handful of big industrial targets. But the trucks and submarines could make due with more widely dispersed means of production. Also,  it was expensive in total energy terms to make such conversions - only 2 to 10% of the original energy content of the coal feedstock was available in the resulting gas and gas products. So they only converted what you needed to convert for vehicles - industry just burned the original coal.

Other than Romania, were no other significant deposits known and developed within western Europe at the time. The Baku area in southern Russia, though, was one of the largest oil producing regions in the world. Persian gulf oil was under development, starting in the 1920s, under US and UK investment and technical direction. Huge natural potential there was already known, but the capital to get it out was just getting going in earnest. The US was far and away the largest oil producer globally, especially Texas, but with significant fields elsewhere (Bakersfield area in California e.g., New Jersey and Pennsylvannia fields as well, and so forth). Elsewhere abroad, there was significant oil in the Dutch East Indies, and in northern South America and the Carribean (Trinidad was a major oil export point e.g. - think Venezuelan oil today).

Note that small amounts of crude imported from Rumania were important to the Germans first just economically, because it was a lot cheaper to get than synthetics and thereby freed up a lot of economically useful coal etc. But also, it greatly relieved the pressure on high octane av-gas demand. As long as the Rumanian fields and the line between them and Germany were safe, the Luftwaffe was not going to be absolutely grounded by oil problems. (And in the actual event, that was a trigger, because once the fighters were down, the rest of the oil target set could not be protected).

Germany was able to increase synthetic oil production continually throughout most of the war. German domestic oil output peaked in 1944. The peak was not economic but military - the USAF finally found the right target set and hit the hydrogenation plants (as part of the whole broad oil target set - they did not know how critical the few large hydrogenation plants were for the Luftwaffe in particular). As there was no prospect of the USAF physically smashing the plants in 1942 or 1943, there would have been no issue here for supply of a larger German tank fleet.

Once the Germans fully mobilized their own economy, they produced just as many tanks per month as the Russians did. The German tank fleet did expand in the second half of the war anyway, and through mid 1944 (the oil peak, when the bombers started breaking the plants) it was adequately supplied. It ran 8000 full AFVs and more than that again in light armor. The number of mobile divisions was around 50.

To get a still larger fleet they might have needed to expand investment in synthetic oil as part of the economic mobilization drive. You have to plan things so that shortages in one area do not constrict overall achievements but only total capacity. They way to do that was to throw additional inputs (manpower, capital, spending) at the bottlenecks, to get matched sets of resources. For an advanced economy like Germany's, and if rationally run (as Speer for example ran his portion of it), overall value is the limiting factor not mix. Make one less FW-190 and put the value saved in synthetic diesel, for example, and thereby ease the supply-demand balance for oil, and indirectly increase the number of tanks you can support. Basic economic substitution thinking.

The Wehrmacht was not immobilized by fuel difficulties. The Germans went into Russia with a fleet of 3500 AFVs, and with 25 mobile divisions. So it was perfectly possible to supply an expanded vehicle fleet, and they in fact did so.  German logistic limits in the east were not oil shortages, they were rail gauge changeover issues. They could get as much as they needed to the gauge changeover points. They could move those points eastward by relaying track, but it takes time. They could move stuff beyond those points with captured rolling stock, but they didn't capture all that much.

POL shortages at the front in Russia were local and temporary, and frequently maintenance issues (insufficient motor oil leading to higher engine wear) caused by pushing the tanks as hard as possible, trying to win as rapidly as possible. They were not absolute shortages of diesel. In the far south in 1942, because they had advanced several hundred miles beyond all railheads in a short period of time, they did face some absolute fuel shortages, which were transport related. Trucks simply ate up a lot of the fuel they could carry, moving stuff such long distances. The same thing happened to the western allies in France during the breakout. No fuel supply system in history has ever kept up with advances so rapid, without temporary shortages of fuel at the farthest tips of the advance. That is all it was, and it cleared up as soon as the front stabilized for a month or so. Tanks fighting in Stalingrad had no fuel difficulties, for example (until surrounded that is).

Only the western allies were remotely rich enough to dispense with the far greater throughput and economic efficiency of rail transport for the greater flexibility of trucks. And they did so in large part by relying on shipping instead, for their own major transport links, leaving trucks only a "lighter" role of final delivery from port to front.

As for other scarce resources that some historians have pointed to, aircraft production was not seriously limited by bauxite supplies at any time. While there were occasional shortages of alloying metals and the like at 1944 levels of armaments output, substitutes were readily available for modest concessions in engineering quality.

The German economy was management limited. Large construction projects continued through 1941. After that, civilian industry had to curtail long term investment but continued to receive the bulk of heavy industrial output. Only 40% of German steel output went to military purposes as late as 1942. They never fully mobilized their own population for labor. Foreign workers in Germany and forced contributions from other countries made minor additions to overall German output, on the order of 5-7% for each.

A single year's economy "growth" (really, front-loading of one's income stream at the expense of distant times) under full mobilization is larger than all such effects combined. And the diversion of effort from other areas to armaments, which are only a fraction of overall output, easily dwarfs both. Armaments output rises 4 times when you focus on it, not a few percent. Because it is a narrow portion of overall output under non-mobilized conditions, it is easy to expand it. Workers and plant-time and commodity raw materials (steel, energy, etc) simply shift from other industries to war related ones, and output soars.

As for food supply, Germany imported all it needed from the low countries, Denmark, and France. In the Ukraine, they got no more out with massive looting than the had received in prewar trade. The war simply destroyed production there, and the shortfalls that resulted when they took out the formerly exported amount anyway, caused widespread famine in the middle of Europe's best breadbasket farmland.

Looting did not form an appreciable part of the German war economy. Not for lack of trying, but simply because wealth is not something lying around that can be grabbed. It is produced by work. The German economy had a sixth of world industrial production, and that is what supplied practically all their war material.

There is no reason whatever the German output curve couldn't have made the accelerated it in fact achieved over the course of 1943 to mid 1944 levels, starting from June 1941 instead of January 1943. The whole output curve would simply be moved a year and an half to the left. No increase in the absolute peak is required.


KESSELRING AND THE DEFENSE OF ITALY

In spite of being in the Luftwaffe, Kesselring was an old army Prussian officer, not a Nazi Party type and not an air force creation. He was one of the few army officers retained in the smallest interwar force and responsible for parts of its training then. He was as pure a army general staff creature as existed at that point. In the mid 1930s he was transferred - by others, not at his own initiative, simply because his planning brain was wanted - to the Luftwaffe. He was an intellectual and a staffer type, used for talent not line command or political reasons, though he proved pliable enough politically to be popular with the ideologues running the party bureaucracies.

The MTO command was a Luftwaffe one simply because it was the most important German contribution to a mainly Italian theater in the early and early midwar period. The Italian air force was not equal to the task of denying the British the Med, the Luftwaffe was. There was a typical tug of war between Kesselring there and Rommel as field commander once he got going, and as was thoroughly typical the field command pulled its nominal superiors along, as long as Rommel appeared to be winning. So Kesselring didn't get his way in operations, until the Tunisia period, basically.

On Tunisia his strategic judgment was horrible and his operations technically sound and well directed. As usual, the importance of the former vastly outweighed the latter, and all his efforts were wasted. It made some sense to save Tunisia long enough to get the DAK out, but Kesselring optimistically tried to hold it and to even win by overly ambitious counterattacks. That predictably failed with the loss of 250,000 Axis troops and an irreplacable 4500 aircraft, more than half of them German. It was very dumb to fight on the other side of the Med, on thin air supply lines getting cut up by superior Allied air or thinner night time convoys. It was twice as dumb to throw away the cream of the Axis air forces in the Med in the attempt, but that is what Kesselring did. As usual, he was supported in all this because he was promising more than anyone could deliver and that is what the national leaders wanted to hear.

In Sicily he showed the reverse pattern - bad local direction (again the error was excessive optimism, more on that below) but eventually concluding, correctly, that the place could not be held and getting the heck out. What do I mean by bad local direction? He put Panzer Division HG on the main beaches in the south, and moved the more experienced 15th Panzergrenadier to the west. He thought HG PD was the stronger because it had more of the tanks - true - but it was newer to the place and still very untrained. (The previous version of the division had been destroyed in Tunisia; the infantry were green with less than a month's training as a unit and no familiarity with Sicily).

Next he thought he could hold the beaches by instant counterattack. He thought the Dieppe raid showed the way to defeat invasions, not comprehending the scale of a full Allied invasion of the kind of major fire support it had to call on. (The allies had more aircraft *squadrons* supporting the invasion than the Germans had individual *tanks* on the ground). The armored counterattacks at the beaches predictably failed as they ran into a wall of HE firepower from naval gunfire and air etc.

To Kesselring's credit, he then realized he had to run, and did so successfully - arguably his best piece of work, operationally.

Then in Italy, he thought the Italians would not switch sides, and was hopelessly wrong about that. He then was operationally competent in seizing southern Italy from them anyway. When the allies land at Salerno, he again expects to defeat them with a quick armored counterattack. It gets one day of successful "break in" that overruns one US battalion, then gets stopped by massive fire superiority. Here Kesselring saw the effects of naval gunfire first hand and finally got the point, but after throwing away two divisions plus worth of armor in the typical grand counterattack attempt.

Arguably his next best bit of operational work was selecting the positions for the Gustav line across southern Italy. He is frequently credited for the basic optimism in this, seeing that it could be held, but to me that is a stopped clock virture - he always oversold, and gets credit when it worked. The selection of the actual line was, however, technically competent as usual.

He next got to show his judgment dealing with the Anzio invasion - which, had it succeeded (which it could have with more aggressive allied and especially US command on the spot) would have made his decision to defend in the south look as stupid as Rommel thought it was, incidentally. Kesselring's solution to the invasion was - wait for it - optimistic that it would fail, plus a big instant armored counterattack. Which - wait for it - ran into a firestorm of Allied fire superiority and failed completely. The Germans would send a panzer division with 200 tanks and the allies would respond with single air raids by 500 heavy bombers saturating the battlefield with 500 lbs bombs until it was a muddy moonscape where nothing could move.

He managed to contain the beachhead for five months. It is fair to say the allies had failed, but what he got for it was stalemate for less than six months followed by large scale defeat - his usual pattern of "success".

By the time Rome fell in mid 1944, the whole theater was a sideshow, just as American strategists had always said. It was the British who thought it would be a softer target than France, where the Americans correctly saw all along that no victory in Italy would decide anything. The most that could be achieved was knocking out Italy and making the Med a safe English lake, and that was already achieved by the fall of 1943. Everything after that was an indecisive grind and a mutual waste of resources, at best marginally useful as an attrition drain on the Germans.

The big gain the Allies got from the whole campaign against Kesselring's command, from Tunisia on, was that the Med was part of the graveyard of the Luftwaffe. Even by mid 1943 they had hopelessly lost the air war in that theater, with thousands of planes lost etc. The allies could put up 10 planes to 1 by the time of Salerno and for the whole period after. This wasn't what broke the Luftwaffe over central Germany - that came later, only in the spring of 1944, and required P-51s and direct air to air combat over Germany - but the late 1943 Med fighting had already put their pilot pool into its long decline, kept their fighter count from building while the US air force count went up by a factor of 4, etc.

Hence my overall assessment of Kesselring - he is overrated. Yes he was technically competent, yes he had his occasional operational successes that can seriously be credited to him personally as a capable commander (getting out of Sicily successfully and cheaply, picking a good set of positions for the Gustav line). But he equally has staggering strategic errors (overcommitting to Tunisia) and tactical blindspots (overly aggressive with the armor and overconfident with it; poor appreciation for what allied firepower superiority did to any attempt to take the initiative even locally), for which he is unaccountable given a pass. And some of the items he is given credit for were just luck (defending southward, would have looked predictable and "predicted by Rommel" stupid if the US had taken Rome the day after the Anzio invasion e.g.

ITALY WAS INDEED A NEEDLESS SIDESHOW

To General Marshall, the center of gravity of the enemy was Germany and the way to win the war was to march straight into the Ruhr, then on to Berlin, as soon as possible. And he urged that view on FDR at every opportunity. Whenever FDR agreed to some British side show effort instead, he and the whole staff thought they had just lost a battle. They would have invaded France in 1943 if they had had their druthers. They recognized a political necessity for Torch, and thought if it stayed limited to Africa it need not indefinitely postpone France. Sicily and Italy were the reason for a year's delay. You can argue that delay helped the invasion succeed or that it would have been premature in 1943, certainly. But the American military would have gone for it.

That the Italian campaign would bog down was not only foreseeable, it was foreseen. US ground commanders and the chiefs of staff predicted as much. The pressure to go anyway started with the British - Churchill actively wanted to prevent a France operation in 1943, considering it premature, and Montgomery wantec to follow up the Sicily campaign with an early crossing of the straits, chasing the Germans that got away from Sicily. 

The pressure then switched to the political level when the Italians approached the allies with their surrender offer. The Italians wanted an immediate landing near Rome, backed by airborne drops there, and they were appalled when they learned the actual allied plan was to land below Naples. They rightly expected that woukd lead to immediate German occupation of most of the country before the allies coukd get inland. They even tried to back out of the surrender offer at that point, and to get at least one US airborne division to drop on Rome to save the new government.

The US had generals ashore in Rome in secret talks, and they assessed the situation as zero real prep or readiness by the Italians. Up to then, the Allies had expected the Itslians to truly switch sides, to defend vs the Germans, and to actively welcome the Allied forces. After seeing on the ground how shoestring the planned coup and surrender was, the US lost all confidence in the Italians doing anything. And believed anything sent beyond the range of land based fighter cover (the reason for picking Salerno) would be as good as lost.

At that point, the likely consequences of the invasion were quite clear. But the allied political level was committed to forcing the Italians to keep their surrender promise, and Ike backed that goal. The result, both predictabke and predicted, was a fight just to take southern Italy, while the Germans got the bulk of the country and the Italians just disarmed.

Were there lost opportunities after that? Sure. But long shots that might have been, not easy predictable victories. Further use of massive amphibious shipping was going to postpone France too much. Anzio was shoestring, and the shipping for it was reused for Anvil in the south of France - a clearly better target that immeduately paid much higher military and political dividends. The French fielded a meaningful army in the months after Normandy and Anvil. The Germans also lost a dozen infantry division due to Anvil. That is the kind of return the allies needed from such a commmitment of shipping and a reserve army, not what they got at Anzio.

There really was nothing decisive available in Italy. The airfields of southern Italy were useful for a while, and the theater attracted half a dozen German mobile divisions, though the cost to the allies was as high or higher. At best a marginally useful distraction. If France was impossible in 1943 for other reasons, it was a reasonable interim use of land forces. The Brits thought that if was an obvious "yes", the US weren't so sure.

WHY THE ALLIES WON ON THE BATTLEFIELD

The main advantage the western allies had was overall logistic superiority expressing itself through firepower arms - particularly artillery ammo - and rates of replacement for everything from riflemen to medium tanks. With the Russians, it was systematical outstanding operational planning coupled to numbers, masking serious and long-lingering tactics deficiencies.

The Germans simply did not have any tech edge over the allies in any arm except tanks, and that only for the heaviest 1/4 of their tank fleet - which was outnumbered 3 or 4 to 1 overall, leaving them only one heavy to ten Allied opponents. Tactically, the Russians specifically had poor tactics that were expensive in manpower, on the attack especially, relying too often on numbers instead of the right weapon, and reinforcing failure too often at the lower levels, a result of "command push", top down plans and draconian penalties for failure of any part of those conceptions, even the brainless ones. The western allies had no such weakness, and the result was that Germans could and did trade well more then 1 for 1 against Russians, but only 1 for 1 (or worse, in operational defeats yielding large hauls of prisoners) against the western allies.

Operationally, the Germans did well early against poorly prepared adversaries but suffered more and more as that unpreparedness evaporated and the weaknesses of their own operational doctrines and practices became apparent.  Those weaknesses included overcommitment to offensive action, little use of reserves, disunity of command and second guessing by superiors, blind arrogance, unrealistic demands on subformations, and shoddy to criminal replacement, relief, and logistical practices.

After 1941, the German operational "play" went to hell. The 1942 offensive featured divided objectives, and indecisive ones. Stalingrad was a predictable - and predicted - disaster waiting to happen. Failure to break out of it was another "own goal". Manstein saved the front, masterfully, but after that their "play" was again poor (Kursk and its aftermath offensives). They remained monsters at the tactical level, inflicting very high losses on the Russians, even while losing entire provinces. But from midwar on, they were outplayed at both the strategic and the operational levels.

The Germans were clearly outplayed at the operational level and above from the fall of 1942 on, on every front. That they continued to perform well anyway shows it was tactical abilities and not higher leadership, regime or senior army, that were responsible.

They also benefited from highly trained and professional staff work in a few key areas. Motorized formations simply ran on time with every need foreseen and met. They attrited in runners, but they never simply broke. The rail supply and repositioning system allowed divisions in France to be in action in Russia within one week. While political direction to mobilize the economy was notoriously slow, once it was ordered Speer-directed industry matched Russian industrial and weapons production despite serious allied bombing.

Air was a bit player in all of it. Western air did not give a commensurate return for all the resources lavished on it until the summer of 1944, through defeat of the Luftwaffe in open battle, then strategic bombing of oil plants. In resource return, a flak gun beat a fighter bomber hands down. Germany had a particular weakness in oil that only strategic bombing could exploit, and only after defeating their fighter force in sustained air to air combat. That is the only decisive contribution the western air forces made, and it had its impact quite late.


THE GERMAN CULT OF THE PANZER ATTACK

The Germans placed great emphasis on using armor offensively and on concentrating it, and they were the first to understand the need to support it with all arms - motorized to keep up and organic to the PD to ensure effective command and cooperation etc.  However, very few men on the German side fully understood the technical details of how and why they had been so successful in the early war period, from 1939 to 1941. A handful of mobile force leaders and a small portion of the most gifted officers.

Everyone else knew *that* it had worked, but not *why* it had worked. They had only a cartoonish understanding of the processes involved, and therefore of the "formula". But they believed their cartoon versions were the real thing, that the subject was not that complicated, that they fully understood how it had been done.  

Early in the war achieving an initial break-in was a more important thing to achieve, because the defenders against it mostly didn't know what to do about it. Early war Allied defenders did try armored counterattacks, but usually poorly coordinated ones with limited (if any) all-arms support. German infantry coming through the breach in depth stopped those easily enough and turned a crack into a big tear. 

In 1940-41, they drove panzer corps into entire armies and the armies evaporated. They drove PDs through Russian infantry corps and annihilated them in sequential battles with local superiority. Their doctrines stemmed from a time when they were marginally richer and accomplished massive victories against larger enemy forces, cheaply. All of which, incidentally, they had accomplished in far less capable tanks.

They did not ascribe those earlier successes to the Allies being dumb at the time. They ascribed them to their own doctrines and what they thought of as the power of the offensive.

As a result, they had an extremely offensive minded doctrine about the use of armor. Armor attacked, that was its essence. They believed mass employment in multiple-corps level attacks was the only possible way to employ serious armor. So whenever they had any to speak of, they attempted another such attack.  Later in the war the offensive emphasis became a terrible liability, as they would throw half or more of the available assets away in grandiose counterattacks. They were always seeking scale, thinking armor produced its essential effects only in corps sized quantities or upward.

They thought they were driving through a thin infantry division unprepared to defend to eat its HQs and artillery, and that the result would be some panicky flight or paralysis. They thought attacking as such was a massive force multiplier, that "the offensive is the only decisive form of warfare", that the initiative was everything, that concentrated superior tanks smashed anything in their way. And they were simply wrong about these things after 1941.

You can find officers groomed by Rundstedt (as opposed to Hitler and his cronies) with subordinates who have been attacking for a week without success, who then call it off having lost all but 30 AFVs, reprimanding those subordinates for lack of offensive spirit. Just mindblowing levels of offensive doctrine disease, "the offensive is the only decisive form of warfare" blah blah blah. (It still exists, you can find it in present US field manuals).

The fact of the matter is, it is hard to be in the receiving end of concentrated armor creating breakthroughs exploited to create favorable conditions for annihilation battle. The guys on the receiving end are roughly handled with some regularity. The French counterattacks at Sedan or Arras, the Russian attempts to seal off the German breakthroughs with mech corps counterattacks, British armor seeking Germans who've penetrated their infantry line in the Gazala fights - don't go very well. But neither does Mortain, and many others like it.

When the defender has plenty of armor in reserve and immediately commits it to blunt the attack, and the attacker does some things wrong or the defender has odds or a massive quality edge, then sometimes they are stopped - Mars, Kursk (by the Russians), opposite the Brits for a while in Normandy. But the depth actually needed to stand on defense against it is extreme, far more than anybody thought necessary early in the war.

In 1941, the Russians have armies in reserve lines, and it keeps individual breakthroughs from winning the war, but it does not remotely stop them. By 1943, they have multiple tank armies plus a full army group in reserve, without frontage, immediately behind the expected point of attack. And ride it out, but reverse it only by also attacking themselves on the flanks of the attempt.

It takes *a lot* to defend against this stuff. In the west, the Allies have hyper reactive arty counter-concentrating against the small scale stuff, massive air, all kinds of motorized ability, including otherwise underused TDs and armored cav, most ADs off the line - and when the attack is sufficiently large, they still need to throw in an airborne corps as motorized infantry to hold the line, reorient entire armies, etc.

So part of the explanation for the early German successes is simple offense dominance, while defense techniques against massed armor for breakthrough etc are still being worked out. The theory of attacking this way was technologically ahead of the theory of defending against it. I am not talking about tanks, but about tactical doctrines and operational deployments.

WW I commanders tried to get speed from things like horse cavalry. Complete failure. Infantry breakthrough failed because infantry does not operate alone in the assault, it requires the support of heavy artillery. And heavy artillery requires masses of hard to move physical material, especially acres of shells numbering literally millions, to have operational impact. Those parks, not the infantry, are what could not be moved except by rail.

The attacking infantry at the head of the breakthrough fails deep in the defender's operational rear when it encounters enemy reserves, and lacks the all arms support needed to defeat those reserves. The same will happen if you send only tanks - or tactically, if they get infantry stripped off them by artillery and soft firepower defense. Operationally, if you run into a gun front in the enemy rear you need artillery right up with the tanks. If you run into enemy armor, if you are armor heavy you brawl. If you have all arms you put your own gun front ahead of them and hit next to them, forcing the defense to have an actual line.

So it takes all arms because of counter measures. As for outrunning a retreat, the actual problem is usually that no order to retreat was given. When it was, the defenders generally got away. The need for such orders was clearly seen by professionals in all forces but violently resisted everywhere, by politicos and by syncophant officers telling them what they wanted to hear.

If the defender has fast forces, speed works equally well for the reserves. The Bulge attack created a region of weakness a hundred miles wide and tore an actual hole tens of miles wide. But it sealed within a week because the troops on either side were fully motorized and the transition to an operational defensive stance was immediate. Russian reserves at Kursk were intervening heavily by the evening of the second day. In fact, physical speed was not the issue with their commitment, but command trying to gauge when they were needed, the "moment juste" for their intervention. So depth or speed fully countered it, the same as they did in WW I. It just was known how to do this quite early in WW I, and not known how to do it until midwar in WW II - and it took more, so it was easier to find occasions when the defender wasn't "rich enough" to stop it. Often those conditions had to be prepared by prior attrition fighting, however.

Early measures against it stress the gun front. This goes back farther than you might think - clear back to the battle of Cambrai in 1917, when a German battery in the middle of the line held out like a stone under a wave, accumulating dead tanks all around it. The Germans learned the way to stop massed tanks was to fall back on a well built up gun position, and let the tanks come on well into range, then open up and smash a flock of them.

We know today that this method of defense only works completely when the attacker doesn't understand combined arms, and sends tanks in unsupported. MGs can keep infantry off, that isn't the point. A gun front is defeated by tanks cooperating with their own arty. But that takes an all arms motorized force and cooperation with the arty involved, which is typically divisional. It therefore requires definite doctrines and scales (a brigade won't do it; believing tanks should operate independently won't do it). It is a tactical method that only works against a tactically unsophisticated attacker.

It was enough to keep a German to allied disparity in offense dominance for quite some time. The Russians think the offensive all depends on deeply echeloned deployment, which is half true, but hardly explains the ease with which the westerners stop later German attacks using motorized everywhere mobility, reserve defense role arms, and counter-massing with firepower arms (arty and air).  Patton gets the point from Guderian than the critical thing is the exploitation - but hasn't caught up to the advances in defensive use of armor reserves that make tank vs tank fighting far more important than it was in the early period.  

The German armor doctrine had worked in 1940 and in 1942, and they didn't adapt well to it no longer working. They were forever throwing away their magnificent armor on useless counterattacks because they did not have a defensive armor doctrine. An example makes this clear. The commander of a storied PD who fought his whole army out of the trap of the south of France, has taken control of the remnants of a shattered Panzer brigade, a fresher one that hasn't done well the last few days, cadre from another PD, and his own PD with a reduced number of runners.

For days he batters away at a US combat command, trading Panthers for Shermans and not getting even 1 to 1. He has been clever about arty and night infantry attacks helping out, to keep it up as long as he had. But he is now down to 30 runners, having used up essentially all the armor in the whole theater. So he calls off his attacks - and is promptly reprimanded for showing insufficient offensive spirit! Not by some political brown nose at OKW, but by a picked old Prussian Rundstedt protege.

It was a general disease - have armor, attack, lose armor, defend.

They managed to get initial break-ins easily enough, even against later Allied defenses. The problems they encountered typically had to do with breakdown of combined arms when infantry got stripped off the tanks by artillery, or getting lost in a deep defended zone and hunted by reserves while buttoned, or having roads cut, mined, bridges blown, etc.

Sometimes they attack well prepared all arms defenses and just get their tanks shot out from under them. Thick front plates probably protected them from a lot of mistakes. Close terrain, poor visibility, etc, often evened the armor quality odds and then they generally did poorly when attacking.

But it is not like such techniques got them killed at the start line (at 17-pdr PAK fronts or otherwise - there weren't any, really). On the contrary, they virtually always made it through the front line. Just attacking on a narrow enough frontage with tactically serious amounts of armor can bring that much about. ATGs tend to be in penny packets, battery strength at most, all along the line, and are relatively easy to suppress or knock out.

The Germans for a while don't want to admit they've lost exclusive possession of the technique, and long after that think the lesson is that armor gets its power from attacking and possession of the initiative - and thereby throw away the reserve linebacker armor they need for a true mobile defense, recklessly counterattacking anywhere and everywhere they temporarily have armor (about enough to defend).

Germany had a man for man outperformance advantage on the Russian front clear to the end of the war. In the Russians' largest outlier successes they got up to exchange ratios like 3 to 2 against themselves, but did not reach unity. 

They aren't getting 3-1 exchange ratios vs the Russians in 1943 and the first half of 1944 because the Russians don't have an armor doctrine, and certainly not through doctrine or command advantages. They don't have any; German command by then frankly sucks and is outplayed at every turn. Vasilevsky is Deep Blue compared to the motley clowns he faces. It isn't having a handful of heavier tanks, because its only a handful. It isn't big sweeping operational encirclements because it isn't 1941 and those are going in the other direction.

But tactically, the Germans are still monsters against the Russians specifically. The Russians lose half a million men in the last *month* just storming Berlin and Prague against collapsing defenders. The Russians managed to lose more men and tanks in Bagration than the Germans did, despite kicking their ass operationally and taking all of White Russia in one go.

Vs the western powers, the German edge is much shorter and it is restricted to beating the British man for man in the western desert, while British armor doctrine specifically is still "pants". They lose whenever the UK uses proper combined arms (I say UK because the New Zealanders are the ones who get it right first, not the British specifically. Monty backs into the rest just by being careful).

The best description of the correct combined arms sequence I've ever read, from a real WW 2 action, is in the book "the Sidi Rezegh Battles", part of the official South African history of the desert war. It describes a German combined arms attack on a South African infantry brigade "box" in the open desert, the South Africans having limited tank support (mostly "Honeys"), 2 pdrs, and some 25 pdrs. The attackers had Pz IIIs and Pz IVs, artillery support, and trucked infantry for the final assault after the tanks had moved into the position.

The sequence is that first a barrage is laid, then the tanks rush a short distance forward, kicking up large volumnes of dust from their own movement. They back up into that dust, and then make short movements out of and back into it. The artillery fire plays ahead of them and similarly blinds much of the defense. Whenever any weapon opens on the tanks, the ones immediately shot at pull back into the dust clouds, others engage the gun, and artillery searches for the firing position as well. 

Only a few of the defending guns can typically "bear" at once, because others are pinned by artillery hitting other sections of the defense, or are blinded by the dust from such barrages, or can't see through the motion-created-clouds along the forward edge of which the tanks are crawling. The attacking tanks engage up to half at a time on limited numbers of defending guns. The attacking artillery is constantly plastering all the guns not immediately able to engage the tanks. 

The defenders react by having some guns go silent to draw the attackers in, and by using their limit numbers of supporting tanks to stage fuller engagements at specific times they can pick. But they are outnumbered in this, the effect is always temporary, each use reveals more gun positions or sacrifices scarce defending tanks in even exchanges or worse.

An *hour* into the attack, the tanks are crawling along the forward edge of the initial defender's positions, spitting machinegun fire to suppress even the infantry and MG positions of the defenders. Their AT network is by then completely smashed. With massed tanks crawling at the edge of their original positions to 400 yards out, the attacking infantry rides up in trucks and debuses. Anything that tries to engage them draws massed fire front the tanks. The German infantry advances on foot the last several hundred yards and occupies trenches and foxholes along the forward edge of the defense.

Then small packets of infantry lead with grenades to reduce the holdouts hiding in the bottom of their trenches, and takes prisoners. The tanks stay 100 yards behind their leading edge as the whole creeps slowly through the original defender's position. The rear of the defender position is bedlam in a dust cloud at this point, as everyone who can is decamping in whatever transport they can find, under shell fire, using its dust as their only protection from the tanks just beyond the boiling barrage's dust storm.

The tanks only lead until they were to the edge of the enemy field fortifications, then the motorized infantry debused and led from then on. The tanks weren't a quarter mile behind them, more like 100 yards - though the tank formations had some depth to them, too, not all on line at that distance. The infantry are moving in small packets, most men down either in holes or prone and covering them. The movers are grenade parties, not a bayonet charge. The tank are ready to clobber any position that opens on the movers.

As for how desert specific it was, somewhat in the wide LOS and the reliable dust behaviors certainly. In other terrain types, the defenders are cut up by terrain LOS blockages into "cells" of integrated firepower, and exploiting that means the attack using terrain, slopes, keyholing and so on. An artillery barrage still does a solid job of blinding defenders, by making them go deep in their holes if not by lasting dust clouds. The basic logic remains - the attacker brings odds, uses mobility to pick his fights, and firepower not movement takes ground. Against gun defenses specifically, tanks rely on the cooperation of indirect fires to conduct that part of the fight on terms as unfair to the defenders as possible.

All of it is combined arms. All of it is the principles of fire and movement, with fire dominance what takes ground, not movement. Movement just picks the firefights desired. No rush, relentless, unstoppable, methodical, cautious. It still runs over the defending brigade in the course of about 2 hours, utterly destroying it as a military formation, in the process.

The German record on the attack with armor against the Americans was pretty poor. The initial German edge lasts maybe 4 weeks. It is parity or worse after Kasserine. The whole Tunisia campaign is under unity for the Axis and the whole Italian campaign at it. They never had an edge in the ETO proper, etc.

Kasserine was a big German victory vs the US - for a few days, that is. Then they attacked a ridge solidly held by all arms with a corps worth of YS artillery behind it, and it wasn't so successful anymore. It the words of an eyewitness, "our guns crucified them". That was the end of the little German offensive. Another division tried again a littke later, and didn't even get that far. Overall, in Tunisia the Germans can count a two month delay to the allied timetable and that one brief tactical success in the plus column, and the loss of a quarter of a million men and a full panzer corps worth of armor in the minus column. Strategically, it was one of the dumbest ideas imaginable to fight on the other side of the Med against a far superior force with command of the sea and air. It predictably was a disaster.

On Sicily, the counterattacked the Gela landing the day of the invasion and the next day, with armor. They achieved a few hours of concern, defeat, and loss of most of their engaged armor, which they could ill afford to lose - despite basically no allied armor being ashore yet. Their remaining success in the Sicily campaign consisted in evacuating most of their German force successfully, though the Italians were a write off.

At Salerno, they launched a grand counterattack on the bridgehead early with plenty of armor. They achieved one break in that overran a single US infantry battalion, before being stopped by a gun line at the level of the YS field artillery behind it. The next day they went in again in strength, and got themselves shot to pieces, by US SP TDs, tanks, field artillery,mand the odd cruiser firing 8 inch shells - little things like that.

The Germans also suffered somewhat from allied airpower and from their own shortages of fuel, as well as mechanical difficulties, inability to evacuate disabled tanks during operational retreats, lack of spare parts dealt with by cannabilizing some to keep others running, and the like. (Sometimes these interact with tactical issues. The Germans attack in poor weather or at night or in forests to avoid allied airpower, and find they have also avoided long range engagements in favor of knife fights). But you can find case after case of the Germans throwing away half their available armor in reckless counterattacks that were clearly hopeless. And in those, they lost more heavily than the US - even facing 75mm Shermans mixed with TDs.

The higher ups snapped up any armor at all fresh and not immediately in the line, for grandiose counterattack schemes.  The right place for them would have been just off the line in local reserve, ready for action in any direction, linebacker style. But putting a PD in reserve off the line was an engraved invitation to have it transfered out of your command to somebody else. It was a big ad saying "not needed to hold the front, immediately". 

A few staffers saw what was going on. A practice had already developed in Russia that retained "ownership" of PDs by assigning them frontage. That way, they couldn't be taken from you without leaving a hole in the line.  So they left them in the line and got them ground down slowly. The higher ups retaliated by not sending new tanks to PDs on defensive missions, instead making new formations or topping off ones in the rear for elaborate full rebuilds. And when a fresh PD came out of refit, they were typically used in the overly ambitious counterattacks explained above.

By the time the PD was allowed to defend tactically speaking, it often had half or less of its tanks remaining. Those might die pretty hard, but a few at a time they eventually would.

The Falaise pocket was a direct consequence of such an attack.  There were only about 500 running German tanks left in northern France, a quarter of the strength originally sent.  Over half of them were then thrown into the Mortain counterattack, which shoved them as deeply as possible inside the forming pocket. They were stopped there by an armored division, 2 infantry divisions, and several extra SP TD battalions, as well as a strong corps artillery group and air power. They lost heavily in the attack phase and then they had to retreat a long way just to get to the center of the pocket.

Which, being a pocket in which a mostly leg infantry and horse drawn arty army was attempting to get away, was chaos. Jabos shot up the infantry and rear area service force columns along the roads. The panzers were blocked by truck wrecks everywhere. Medium bombers hit the bridges over the Seine and any west of it. Since the supply guys were bugging out and the roads were all spoken for by east bound traffic, regular supplies of fuel did not make it west into the pocket. Most of the tanks that lived through the Mortain counterattack were therefore abandoned somewhere along the line of retreat for blocked roads, downed bridges, and lack of fuel. All the wrecks that would otherwise be recovered, likewise. The stocks of vehicles "in repair" after the attrition fighting in July, all became total write offs because they could not be moved away in time.

This left less than 300, perhaps as little as 200, runners in theater. Those fought to hold open the neck of the pocket, or up north of it withdrawing along the coast. They lost themselves because they fought the Allied spearheads, because they were moving every day and some would fall out for maintenance reasons, and because damaged vehicles could not be recovered or serviced etc.  So by mid August the remaining panzer force had pretty well evaporated.

The 1944 Panzer brigades were the latest and worst example of the armor offensive disease.  Worst, because at least a rebuilt PD retained experienced cadres and had all arms in the right proportions. Panzer commanders recommended using new tanks to refit existing Panzer divisions, to get their cadres, experienced staffs, and all make use of their remaining all arms support. But OKW overruled that,and made new KG sized formations instead, out of green men. Wanted more armor formations on the map, psychologically, perhaps. More likely, they wanted to control the commitment of the new armor, and in particular to ensure it got offensive missions.

The Panzer brigades had cadres, certainly, but they performed absymally, and a large part of it has to be put down to green formations. The men hadn't worked together, and a lot of the rank and file were raw. They also tended to get committed piecemeal, and as I have stressed here, on overly offensive missions.  Until wrecked - remnants were allowed to defend but not the full strength formations.

In the September 1944 Arracourt battles in Lorraine, Hitler thought he was pulling a repetition of Manstein's famous "backhand blow" in the Kharkov counterattack, early 1943.  This restored the front in southern Russia, by catching overextended and logistically weakened Russian armor spearheads, cutting them off from supporting units farther back, devouring them, and then repeating the process farther up the trail of following exploitation forces.

OKW thought the Americans were as logistically overextended after grabbing France. Which was largely true, in the gasoline area at any rate. But the US army wasn't a horsedrawn affair. Except for a division left behind in Brittany to mop up port hold outs, all of Third Army was up with the leaders, basically. The leading forces did stall for a week, but they weren't thin. And by the time the Germans assembled a serious force, the Americans has gas again, too. The few German formations thrown in prematurely - piecemeal - were about three echelons too small to have any impact on an entire mechanized army, and were simply devoured.

Along the Moselle the Germans did put together a solid line, from Nancy to Metz. It was a good position and defended by good troops. Some of them fresh VG holding cities and forests, some of them veteran Pz Gdrs from Italy or SS formations up around Metz etc. But the Americans punched across. The Germans decided this was a perfect occasion for their grand counterattack, meant to smash what they thought would be a relatively weak spearhead thrown across a tough river barrier.

The result was the famous Arracourt battles. Panthers charged every morning in fog, to avoid Allied air power. The result was a series of knife fights at 200m, which the US won hands down. They were more often in their own defensive zone, better visibility, TDs heard the Panthers coming, Shermans flanked them, etc.

If you sit back on a hill top 2 km away with a platoon of Panthers hull down, crawling over the right bit of crest for the shot you want, your flanks covered by a half dozen other such hill tops, with PAK in front, infantry in the woods and villages, arty on call - you have a great defense. Few US weapons can seriously hurt you. But instead, thrust forward with a whole battalion of Panthers at once, down 2-3 roads a company on each, and what happens? Do you get through the front line battalion? Sure. So what?

Now you are in bazooka land. Every hedge and wood needs to be scoured by Panzergrenadiers, but they are being blasted by 105s and 155s. They hear you, they see you. You are buttoned because of the shells and infantry. Tank destroyers run you to ground. And every 105 towed or SP, every Sherman, every 57mm ATG, every zook, none of which could touch you on that hilltop, is suddenly perfectly effective, because you can't drive through an enemy army without showing side plate.

The Germans should have husbanded their uber armor and used it as linebackers, smashing the most forward US probes. But defending with armor was simply a heresy. Armor attacked. That was its reason to exist. If a PD had anything like its full compliment of tanks, it got an attack mission. PDs defended after they had been ground down to 30 runners, half of them vanilla types, no great shakes.

With the armor the Germans sent to Lorraine, fully re-equipping the crack 11th Panzer division, the 21st PD, giving 17th SS one panzer battalion, likewise for 3rd and 15th Panzer grenadier, plus TDs or StuGs for all of the above as well, and all of them employed defensively, the PDs as monster backs and the Pz Gdrs as sinew behind river lines and between the woods and cities held by the infantry - you could have fought 3rd army to a standstill, while keeping that massive force intact.

Instead they attacked and attacked throughout September until there was nothing left. 3rd army didn't go further because the supplies went to the Brits and the Hurtgen (until November, when Patton battered Metz for no good reason), but it was intact and the Germans had little left in front of them, when they could have had that powerful force. But they just didn't "get" armor as a defensive power, it made no doctrinal sense to them. Armor... attacked.

The Allies could "countermass" with artillery fire on the narrow breakthrough areas. Allied fire support and fire responsiveness increased drastically from early war to late. The German infantry could not shoulder through the holes to widen them. Once the tanks were stripped, they were hunted rather than hunters.

The only real counter to that the Germans had was scale, and operational surprise. If the attack was wide enough, the Allies couldn't mass fires everywhere to stop them. The Germans developed the idea that a whole panzer corps was the minimum force to launch a serious breakthrough fight, and two working together was considered much more sound.

They could also try to mass their own artillery beforehand and bring enough infantry depth to the attempt. They rarely were "rich" on the latter score after 1941, however, as the length of the front exploded and forces were needed to really hold them, not just screen them. If you look at early war operations, the infantry is in deep column behind the attack. In later war ones, everybody has frontage and too much of it.

Peiper and the attempt to take Bastogne both failed primarily due to not enough infantry with the lead units. By the end Peiper faced 10 to 1 infantry odds. In the attack on Bastogne by an entire corps, the guys inside the perimeter had as many infantry battalions as the attackers, and they were fresher. The break ins were one thing and there the doctrine worked well. Making something of, and sustaining a penetration was a taller order, and needed overall odds.

There are some expections to this, though. The Germans had a fair amount of armor in Normandy in July, and again in the Bulge even after they lost the initiative. On both occasions, the US had to attack Germans with significant amounts of armor. They took serious losses doing so but for quite limited periods - less than a month on each occasion. In each, the Germans lost significant forces after the attrition period, when the front moved again. On both occasions, the Germans suffered heavy attrition in the static period but as an exchange, and additional losses afterward, often cheap to the US.

US artillery and air, general logistic strength, and overall depth mattered for all of these. In Normandy, the Germans had practically no replacement rate, relying instead of new units drawn to the battlefield from Brittany and the like. The US faced about as much armor over the whole campaign as the Brits did, but the timing was different and more of it was employed offensively against them - Caretan early with 17th SS, Lehr in July, some formations thrown in from of the breakout itself and run over by the unleashed US ADs - each a piecemeal affair compared to the Brit sector - and Mortain, much larger than those but overambitious, badly timed, compromised by Ultra, etc.

Pure tank loss terms, the evidence is that the Germans did not outscore the Americans overall (head to head I mean), but might have run even with them. But understand, some of those German loses are non-battle, some of the US losses are to PAK and infantry forces, etc. In infantry loss terms, PWs are what put the overall German losses much higher than the US. When defending in static attrition fighting, the Germans regularly outscored the US in infantry. Then a Tunisia, or Cherbourg, or south of France, or the channel ports, or the Ruhr pocket, brings in tens to hundreds of thousands "bagged", and dwarfs those differences.

A Panther on defense is a terror to the weapons the US and French had at that time. Practically all the Shermans in 3rd army were plain 75s (and the few 105s in each battalion). The US TDs at the time experienced shatter failure against the Panther front beyond 500 yards. At long range and from the front, only tungsten from a TD getting a turret hit, could hurt them. The Panther kills everything it points at, out to several kms. Yet on the attack, this was thrown away. Attackers get hit from the sides and when they do engage frontally the defender can choose to have the initial range be very close, by simply using available cover.

Against the Russians, the Germans did better, but still misused their armor by using it too offensively, and could have got more out of it with a more balanced doctrine that taught them when it was better to stand on the defensive.

The Kharkov counterattack was successful because the Russians pushed the exploitation after Stalingrad very hard. To the point of logistic breakdown for the leading units. The Germans then railed in large fresh armor formations, corps sized. Kept them reasonably concentrated and used them all at once, without a lot of lead probing or warning time.

The Russians were more separated front to back by the mobility differences on their forces (most foot or horse drawn). The arty hadn't kept up, didn't have ammo, the mass of the infantry formations was far from the leaders. The units farthest ahead got the least supply. Terrain was open in many places, though there was some city stuff as well. But a low overall force to space ratio. Depleted units at the end of an offensive spread out over 2D space, thin up front. The Germans hit that thin stuff with a quite concentrated all arms force, built around fresh and superior armor.

What conditions were regularly present in the west, that weren't on this occasion in the east? Firepower dominance from arty kept well up and supplied. Bazookas rather than ATRs in the defended zone. Usually tighter terrain (though there was some city stuff in the east, and open stuff in Tunisia). Gun fronts and reserves of TDs and second echelon armor to converge on the location attacked. Arguably better combined arms doctrine - though that shifts with the period compared (not great in the west early, not bad in the east late).

One can also compare something like Kursk, where the Germans failed for similar reasons to their regular failures in the west - but accomplished far more in the attempt. Part of that is just forces - the Germans had a very powerful force for Kursk, much stronger than they had for a fiasco like Mortain for instance. One might compare it to the Bulge I suppose. There was the same initial break in and success, the same large scale melee with the defender's operational reserves deep in his zone, the same eventual failure.

But they hurt the Russians a lot more on that occasion, than they hurt the US in the Bulge. Particularly in the south. And the eventually failure had more to do with successful Russian offensives elsewhere (Orel) than is commonly realized. Kursk north is quite similar in the way it failed, though.

How do you use armor in a balanced way, as part of a mobile force conducting an overall operational defense? I used the analog of a linebacker. That means, in reserve, shifting ahead of the enemy heavy point. Setting up in strength in front of him, and then letting him come on into the kill zone. To produce a Goodwood style tank massacre, for example.

Will that sometimes involve some locally offensive moves? Sure. You reposition a subformation to get LOS, "raiding" a portion of the attackers at range. But you don't over commit to it. You aren't pushing for Antwerp or the Normandy coast. You are just trying to kill the enemy.

It all makes perfect sense if the question you are asking yourself is, where and when am I going to destroy his armor? Because then, it is obvious enough a kill sack in your zone is a more promising location for it, than off in his. If instead you are trying to win the whole campaign without having to face his armor, it looks foolish to go looking for it or to await it. You want to hit where it isn't and drive for some grandious offensive operational objective. Expecting to pocket and kill whole armies again, as in the glory days of 1941.

Well, that didn't happen and it wasn't going to happen. Offensive spirit did not produce those successes. Enemy weaknesses and mistakes did. The allies weren't that dumb anymore. You couldn't beat them without fighting them, you had to kill them by fighting them. In particular their armor. And it is just a different focus and emphasis, a different way of thinking about what armor can do for you, to consider it the "heavy wood" in a frankly attritionist battle of material, than to think of it as exploiting cavalry that was going to make the enemy evaporate by driving around him.

They didn't have this defensive armor doctrine. Instead, that just sort of happened, as the net result of a lot of counterattack attempts, and tactical skills applied with whatever remained on hand after them. That was all twice as hard as it needed to be, because the armor was decimated first at lower exchange ratios that it could have achieved.

Look at the Russian defense at Kursk. They put a front in reserve, along with a tank army for each face of the salient. That is depth. As the German northern attack peters out, they prep their own in the adjacent region. And get it going while the southern attack is still fighting the remaining reserves.

Well, what if the Germans had armor reserves that large, ready and waiting, at the time of attempts like the Orel attack? What actually happens is they pull out a corps from the northern attack area and race it to the scene, but the Russians are in and the Germans are in deep trouble already.

What is the pincers movement planned for Kursk, wasn't directed at three lines of fortifications and hundreds of thousands of mines and layered army groups, but was nearly as big, and directed instead at some bulge the Russians had created in the previous 72 hours, in one of their own attack attempts? If all the PAK nests were German instead of Russian? OK, the Russians lost a lot of tanks in a charge in the south, after the attackers there had half their heavy hitters in the shop. Think they would have fared better if that occurred 20 miles inside a German defense, with the heavy hitters all fresh?

That is what they could have been doing. They didn't, because a defensive role for armor, an annihilationist one directed at enemy fielded forces in pitched battle - under the best available conditions for it, certainly, but tackled directly - just did not fit their armor doctrine. Whenever they found themselves fighting that way, they considered it an anomaly to be corrected. By gathering enough armor and attacking with it for (by then, largely imaginary) deep objectives again.

80 to 90% of tank losses were not to mechanical breakdown. More like the reverse. What is true is about half of the tanks of any division in serious action would be in the repair categories after just a few days of fighting. But that was largely damage inflicted by the enemy, only a portion pure mechanical issues. The usual pattern is 90-100% in the operational category only before action, a small number of total write offs but half into repair within the first week (often within 3 days, in fact). Then the ratio in repair would stay at about half while the total slowly ground lower, to a quarter or less still on strength and only about one in eight still running by the end of a month in serious combat. At that point the unit was ineffective as an armored formation. It had to pause, either standing on defense in a quiet sector or moved off the line to receive replacements and repair whatever was left of tbe old stuff. It would be back up to 50% of its original runners in another months time if it received serious replacements, or a quarter if it didn't and had to rely on recoveries and local repairs.

Tanks were ammo on a time scale of month long operations, basically.

As for operational movements, a US armor division could pull off the line one day and for, up into road columns, move 150 miles in a day by road even in poor ground conditions, and attack off the line of march the third day, with nothing falling out along the way that wasn't picked up and back in action in a day or two, tops. On the other hand, a Tiger battalion doing a road march to the Anzio beachhead in February 1944 had half its strength fall out on the march, of less than 80 miles. There were major differences in the mechanical readiness, reliability, spare parts support etc across the different armies and across types. Overall readiness numbers of who,e fronts do not reflect these differences, because the more delicate types were just used much less heavily to baby them into action. You have to go down to the unit strength returns and follow the level of action the unit was in, to track this stuff. It was perfectly normal to e.g. leave a third of a unit out of action deliberately to slow the decay of readiness.

German tank management practices were poor, and German tank strength reporting is hopelessly inflated by tank "under repair" kept on strength until the last possible moment. Thus one finds periods in which half the tanks listed as on the east front with units are "under repair". 

The normal thing was that a unit simply never gave up a tank once they laid hands on it. Spares were so poorly supplied that the unit repair shops would keep all hulls, then strip out parts from some to keep other running for a bit. When something else broke - from enemy action or mechanical wear and tear - that tank went back to the shops, too. Where either it got spares off others already there, or became a donor tank, instead. The tanks in the shops were glorified parts inventory, effectively.

They were only written off if the front moved a long way, especially against the Germans, and the picked over hulks were abandoned. Until then, if there was really little prospect of getting that tank running again, it was in "long term repair". If it was in the category getting spares instead of giving them, it was in "short term repair".

If you look at runner strength in specific units, you will see it drop by a third to halve in the first few days of combat, and frequently to half those levels in 1-2 weeks. But then the total will stay there and "churn", as about as many go into the shops each day as come out of them. The formation will limit its combat use of armor to keep it so. Total write offs will be in single digits whike this is happening, accumulate only very slowly if the front line is stable. When the front moves 200 miles against them, though, suddenly all the long term repairs and half the short will upgrade instantly to "total write off". 

For the same reason, German reports of cause of loss will list half the vehicles as "destroyed by crew". This doesn't happen because they don't like their tank, nor is it a non combat loss. It just means when first knocked out it was recovered, and spent two months rusting in a shop being picked over for parts, and when the front moved they dropped a thermite grenade inside to prevent capture of a hulk that had actually been knocked out for months.

Besides those practices, the Germans also kept a sizable number of tanks in the "replacement army" in Germany, which is where training was done. The replacement army was almost as big as the army at the front in manpower terms. New tanks went there first. They went to the front in trickles, a company worth at a time, to bring a unit closer to "authorized" strength - but under repair vehicles included. Others trained in full battalions in the replacement army before equipping a new formation, or a full rebuild in the west, or outfitting and training up on a new type for months before rejoining their unit. From the second half of 1943 through mid 1944, every panzer division had one of its assigned battalions back in Germany learning about Panthers, each at one time or another as vehicles became available from the factories. A new German tank might spend 6 months between factory and field in this interim state.

The Russians sometimes drove a tank straight from factory to combat without even bothering to paint it, in the worst periods. There was nothing remotely like that urgency in German practices. The Russians kept a constant flow from output to Stavka reserves to replenishment of tank formations, shooting them off like ammo in weeks. The Germans expected one ration to last a unit a year, and just let them fight at ever dwindling strength when they actually burned through them faster than that.

German practices with infantry replacements were almost as bad. At the crisis at the Dnepr line in the fall of 1943, for example, they had only 50,000 trained infantry actually in the units at the front for all of AG South. Meanwhile well over a million men were sitting in Germany in the replacement army, and another half a million manned Luftwaffe flak, and so on. At bottom, none of German planning was based on continual losses and a continual flow of replacements. When a formation was fought out, if it wasn't totally destroyed by its own weakness, it might be sent to another front for six months to take in replacements and try to train the formation back to working together. The "organic" replacement plan while in the line had only a single field replacement battalion for a division, where men were supposedd to gradually learn their unit jobs then get integrated. But that only worked as intended if losses stayed quite low over long periods.

On operational movements and rail, yes the rail carrying capacity was high. But it was also busy carrying ammo, fuel, food and other supplies. And bottlenecked in various places by bridges, rail gauge changeovers, stretches of single line track where movement had to be choreographed in advance. The trains were limited by locomotives and the forward facilities to keep them in running order, watered and coaled, which were extensive in western and central Europe but sparse in the east (and subject to scorched earth measures). Partisans occasionally cut rails up to 1000 places per night to support offensives, and AG Center recorded up to 50,000 rail line cuts by enemy action in a single month. There is a reason you see all those security divisions in east front games, and no it wasn't to stop enemy armor breakthroughs. The main mission of the security troops was protecting the rail lines and depots along them, and repairing them after the enemy cut them up.

Yes on month long time scales, armies could be moved into position by rail. But not everywhere you wanted them. The places with excess rail capacity above supply needs dictated where you could make a stand or man a second line, not the desires of the operational commander. To get this exact would require having the real rail net and also having capacity limits not overall, but in what could be supplied or moved across its different links. If all of AG South is drawing supply from one double tracked rail line, nothing more was going to move forward along that line. It was spoken for. Etc.


BATTLE OF THE BULGE - MYTHS AND REALITIES

The German leadership, i.e. Hitler, was searching for a war-winning target, a sort of magic wand to reverse the course of the war.  The logic was that a breakthrough to Antwerp would lead, ideally, to the collapse of the Anglo-American alliance. Failing that, the idea was that the offensive would so cripple the U.S. Army that the Allies would be forced onto the strategic defensive. That in turn, the logic went, would allow Germany to concentrate forces on the real danger: the Soviet Union.

All of which was pretty much in la-la land. The British and Americans December 1944 were not the 1939 Poles or the 1941 Soviets, by a long shot.

The other factor driving the German decision to attack in the Bulge was that their main tool for warfare was a tactically efficient army, i.e. a ground force. The Luftwaffe wasn't going to pull Germany's fat out of the fire, nor were the diplomats, nor were the scientists and their wonder weapons. Sure, there was plenty of hoping and wishing, but the bottom line at the time was Germany's leaders had only one usable card left to play: the ability to defeat Allied forces of roughly even numbers on the tactical level, due to German small unit skill and equipment advantges. Not that the Germans absolutely outclassed their opponents on the battlefield, but at least in the tactical fight they were still able to hold their own.

This German advantage was the direct result of two centuries of military tradition, and also recent wartime experience. Throughout the war, the Germans achieved their major successes by assembling forces sufficient to win on the tactical level, and then rolling the dice in hopes of an operationally decisive result.

There were more rational strategies out there, but the Germans intellectually were unable to consider them. For example, a pure defensive strategy forcing the Allies to pay the maximum price for space gained made more sense for Germany, than late-war offensives like the Bulge or Balaton. A German army coup killing Adolf and suing for immediate peace in the West also would have saved millions more German lives, than the strategy (fight to the bitter end) elected by the German leadership.

If the interests of Germany were really predominant, and rationally considered, in the minds of the German decision-makers in December 1944, the logical move was at minimum, surrender unconditionally and immediately.

None of that washed with the German decision-makers, in part because a certifiable nut case was in charge, but also - and this is the bit that revisionist panzer-lovers have trouble accepting sometimes - because the German military staked the war on tactical superiority automatically (and always) trumping attrition strategy.

Which was wrong. That was a marginally effective approach during the days of Frederich the Great, but the German General Staff carried on with that hope - German quality will allow us to fight and to win two front wars.  The disastrous failures in two World Wars calls the supposed brilliance of the German General Staff into question.

The Bulge is a classic example of what was wrong with German military strategy. It was (yet another) knee-jerk attempt at winning the war by obtaining an operational victory using advantages on the tactical level. The bottom line about the Bulge offensive was that it was a stupid idea put into effect by a military incapable of considering strategies besides "winning battles = winning the war".

The lesson of the Bulge is that, if you let your army limit the strategies available to a nation in wartime, the nation can lose the war, often disastrously.

Peiper had a breakthrough and a choice of how to use it. St Vith was wide open on his left, its northern flank exposed and over a division of US troops vulnerable. Pocketing and destroying that force would have rapidly cleared that part of the road net and more than doubled the width of his initial penetration. But that was "small solution", unambitious stuff to the arrogant colonel, who proceeded to motor straight west with dreams of Antwerp, got cut off, pocketed himself, and ground to powder. Accomplishing nothing, because he applied the principle of hitting where they ain't and reinforcing success and keeping his eye on the bigger prize and always raising the stakes and decision by maneuver - and ignored destroying the fielding forces of the enemy as a distraction from all those things. He didn't want to hack at the limb at St Vith, but a shot to the brain at Antwerp. He hit the 82nd airborne and got cut off by the 30th infantry and destroyed by mere roadblocks across his lines of communication, not any sort of brain. His breakthrough did nothing because he disdained to cash it for what it was actually worth - a minor temporary force multiplier in the service of the destruction of US forces in his sector, in this case those just south of where he punched through, in what became the St Vith gooseegg.

Then at Bastogne, the Heer panzers punched at the town but as soon as they found real resistance, dropped off a single regiment sized kampfgruppe and "hauled ass and bypassed", as doctrine told them to do. And motored west for the Meuse, into empty space. Then over a few delaying blockages. To Celles, where the arriving 2nd Armored Division met them in a rapidly moving meeting engagement and blew the living snot out of them in less than 48 hours. 

Meanwhile, Bastogne was "besieged" by a single VG infantry division and that one combined arms regiment, with a whole large airborne division inside and about a combat command worth of armor and TDs to support them. In other words, a larger force inside the pocket than outside, thus hopelessly unable to "reduce" that pocket. As more forces came up, some continued the bypass and others accumulated around the pocket and did nothing decisive. The lack of the road net helped ensure that 2nd Panzer out at the tip, when it met 2nd Armored, was nearly out of gas and is Panthers half neutered.  

All the "could have taken Bastogne" stories miss the real reason it held: the Germans didn't have enough infantry. By the time they put a ring around the place and stopped more from getting in, there were about 13 US infantry type battalions inside the perimeter, with artillery engineers service troops etc swelling the infantry numbers.

The German force that was trying to (a) encircle them, (b) exploit west, and (c) crush the pocket as well, had 2 Heer pattern PDs and 1 2-regiment VG division, the latter somewhat reduced by earlier fighting. At full strength that is 14 infantry battalions (4, 4 and 6), plus 2 recon and 3 pioneer. If the recon and armored Pz Gdrs were supposed to exploit west, you have no better than even odds on the Americans inside the pocket.

Germany had no absolute shortage of infantry due to the stage of the war, although quality had declined. They misused it badly in the initial breakthrough fighting, trying to use high level doctines about infantry making the holes and armor exploiting them. In practice, that got a third of the infantry wiped out to no purpose, then the tanks came up and helped anyway, and everywhere they did they immediately broke through.

In addition, the infantry alone did well in the few places it was used in a more sensible manner - to inflitrate through woods, off road, and cut roads behind the thin US positions. The Germans had plenty of arty at the jump off line, too. If they had used their combined arms capabilities effective - infantry not armor bypassing early not late, and arty and armor hitting the thin isolated US positions that resulted - they could have made it through the US front line positions with much lower losses.

Concentric attacks at 1 to 1 odds don't typically produce rapid victories. It isn't all about the footrace. Attackers are expected to have odds, and if they don't (because reserves have arrived, offset the original concentration for the whole offensive, etc), then there are all sorts of things they can't accomplish anymore.

By the time additional Germans came up, the PDs were trying to get farther west, and met large scale additional US force outside the pocket. Armor facing the Bastogne perimeter guys declined, leaving 1 to 1 infantry and little else Better arty resupply, at best. Over a limited road net though, a lot of it horsedrawn etc. Nothing to write home about. Then portions of the force south of Bastogne had to face about to deal with Patton's guys.

The areas controlled can make it look like the 101 was a small beleagered cut off force that the whole German army could concentrate against. That comes from imagining all the space as equally filled with troops, and any space where there isn't enemy as allowing easy passage of any number of forces. Neither was true. The besieged men had a lousy supply situation (some airdrops though), but they were not heavily outnumbered.

In those circumstances, it would have been stupid to batter away at them at 1 to 1 odds and waste the only thing the Germans had going for them at that point, local armor superiority and freedom of movement. Bypassing was entirely sensible.

It also was not responsible for the later defeat that e.g. 2nd Panzer suffered around Celles. They were strung out in exploitation mode with limited supplies, and a much more concentrated US 2nd Armored then hit them. Shermans beat Panthers in that one, lopsidedly. Did it by getting on ridges on several sides of the Germans, thus generating flank shots. Plus firepower arms superiority (air, arty easier to supply and backed by corps level groups of 155s etc. Against what little ammo the German had left that far forward).

German doctrines on the roles of infantry and armor were hopelessly narrow, and not adapted to Ardennes terrain. So the argument that they could not possibly have done better doesn't fly either. Not that they would have won the overall offensive, they wouldn't have. (Russians, mid January, 300 divisions, etc). But it was emphatically not a case of doing everything right and losing anyway.

The big ambitious terrain objective and the sole minded focus on maneuver and going deep and hitting where the enemy wasn't, in short, was just as fruitless in the south as it had been in the north for Peiper. It just took another week or two to play out down there. The right solution was to hack at the enemy's exposed limbs while they were exposed. The 101 would not have held long if 2 full Heer PDs had been pounding them from 270 degrees on the compass for 3-4 days straight, instead of 2 VG infantry regiments (already reduced by a week plus of breakthrough fighting etc). The right way to cash in Bastogne being isolated was to take the place, and then have it - and more importantly, destroy the division plus of US forces there while they were without supply or support. For road net purposes, for central positioning vs US counterattacks into the Bulge from south or west, etc.

"High doctrine" is detached brass about 4 pay levels above reality trying to dictate to field officers how they should fight, based on vapid generalizations about past accomplishments, or loose general impressions of different arms. I mean cookie cutter (one size fits all) solutions from 3 star generals and up. Rather than tactically clever, well motivated thought applied to the particular problem in front of them.

For instance, the idea that the way to use artillery to support a general offensive is to fire off most of your ammo in a 4 hour long prep barrage at every point you can think of. That is sometimes sensible, when the enemy is dense on the ground and the point is to punish a too-forward deployment. Against the thin American screens in the Ardennes, 90% of it was wasted. Time and surprise wasted too. And a lot less artillery support available later on, because the rounds had already been fired off, at poorly located, low density targets.

For instance, the idea that infantry makes the holes and armor exploits them. Which assumes infantry has no operational mobility, and armor does, that the point is to free the armor, that once the armor is loose everything solves itself. This paid no attention to the terrain. The tactical mobility of infantry was actually much higher than long columns of vehicles stoppered by modest roadblocks on poor, muddy, forested roads. When sizable infantry forces moved off road, they enveloped such positions with ease.

For instance, the idea that the purpose of armor is to move, that its essence is its speed, particularly in offensive employment. So send as much of it as possible as far west as possible with as little of anything else in the way taking up road space, as you can. Which led to things like all of 1SS's armor caught in thin cul de sacs with less than 2 battalions of infantry along, surrounded by 20 battalions of US infantry. After which whole battalions of tanks were simply abandoned and the men evaded on foot.

Consider the formation of armored groups to lead the attack. What is the rationale for them? They were formed on conventional lines, the way they always were, not with a view to the terrain and enemy conditions.

The normal rationale for an armored group consisting of basically an entire panzer regiment with only a battalion or so of armored infantry, was to be able to overload enemy AT defenses along a limited frontage, typically 1-2 km hit with 50 tanks per km. That promised to overload local AT defenses and rapidly punch into the depths of the enemy defensive zone.

But for that to work, you have to be able to meaningfully deploy 50 plus tanks in a tactically coordinated way. If you are running down a forest road with only the lead platoon of vehicles able to see anything, the rest of the column is superfluous. You can't clear a roadblock consisting of AT mines or downed trees or a blown bridge, by throwing 50-100 tanks at it along a one-land road.

The way you actually clear such positions tactically, is to turn them with dismounted infantry moving off road. A modest number of tanks, working with infantry and pioneers, can threaten up the road too, of course. But they aren't the tactically decisive element, the turning movement is.

So the right composition of a leading KG in such terrain is a company or so of heavy tanks (Panther and up), a company of pioneers tied to them, and plenty of infantry astride the route of advance. Not 200 armored vehicles in column with a frontage of one Panther.

When you encounter e.g. a held village, by all means bring up several companies of tanks. Shell the place, then send the tanks in. Preferably with infantry already behind it. Don't send a full battalion of infantry at it frontally over open snowy fields. Those are the kind of positions where you will want the bulk of your heavy stuff - holdout busting, not on point.

The German army was constitutionally incapable of acting flexibly in such matters. It was built and led for one doctrine only, and a whole command hierarchy, pecking order, etc was constructed around an idealization of how things were "supposed" to work. The same can be seen in the instance on using armor to attack, not to defend, etc.

The right place for any arm is where it does the most overall good in the actual conditions faced. Not because it worked in France in 1940, or in Russia in 1941. It isn't 1941 and that isn't where you are. You can't copy glories past -- which incidentally were not themselves achieved by copying prior occasions, but by tactically imaginative new (at the time) uses of all available arms. Think through the existing (new) problem, instead.

Meanwhile, infantry attacks straight down the roads and straight at villages, without armor support, because their job was to clear routes for the armor. It continues to be believed, for reasons of overall doctrine if not status hierarchy among the branches, that armor is always the decisive element and all must serve it.  They were there to serve the armor, not the other way around, because armor is supposedly the decisive arm. And the infantry doesn't go around, because the road must be opened as soon as possible, so an attack must be made immediately, and there isn't time to coordinate much in the way of artillery, so off you go.

Compare the Chinese at the Yalu. No tanks. Worse terrain. Complete envelopments readily accomplished and the UN forces set back on their ear. Not just front line guys in thin sectors, the reserves too. How? By viewing the object not as clearing a road, but as trapping the defenders. By seeing a foot race alright, to the defenders rear. Operative word "foot".

What the Chinese did at the Yalu was not mindless human wave assaults. They infiltrated infantry through the high ground and enveloped the road-bound UN forces, setting up blocking positions behind them. The main body of the infiltrating forces then marched south, parallel pursuit fashion, seeking to reach positions south of the still holding UN forces. Leave the roads to the UN until well south, then spread across them from east and west, leaving additional roadblocks.

Repeat, deeper each time. Haul ass and bypass with leg infantry, through the mountains. Mobility does not equal motorized, and maneuver does not equal armor. Mountain infantry was the decisive *maneuver* arm.

Then and only then, you can hit the road-bound forward guys all you want. They can't hold, regardless of what they do.

The point of the comparison is that leg infantry had *superior*, not inferior, *operational mobility*, to armored and motorized forces, due to the terrain. The Chinese attack fully exploited that fact. The German hamfisted Ardennes one, did not. It instead tried to apply one-size fits all, armor-centric solutions, in terrain that made utter nonsense of them.

When Guderian got over the Meuse in 1940, infantry led the way to the far bank, while everything else just supported by fire. Armor leading is a tactical decision and depends on the immediate task. It should not be dictated from army group level.  Doctrine makes idiots of people who take it too literally and apply it in too formal a manner.

Some of the VG divisions showed the initiative to use infiltration tactics anyway, starting before their own barrage and continuing while it was still in progress, instead of waiting for it to end. They readily got through the thin US screens by the simple tactic of completely ignoring the road net. When well in the rear of those screens, they went back to roads, to block them not use them. Also attacked artillery positions. Called down artillery fire on bypassed units. Etc.

But this was an exception in a few sectors. In most, the brass directives on infantry clearing roads for the armor after the barrage, armor only to be "released" after holes were made and the task of the infantry being to open roads by frontal attack along them, were followed to the letter. With hopeless results - whole battalions of good infantry thrown away to no purpose, no holes, armor backed up and useless.

When armor was allowed to hit the line with the infantry, they broke in readily enough. They then took the lead, "according to plan", yes, the plan was stupid that is the whole point. Armor heavy forces leading, run into roadblocks, get stopped, back everybody up. Hit those frontally, kill a few and make others back up 5 km and do it again.

Along every road. Thus, every place that holds gets hit 4-5 times, and everybody through in places that didn't, helps them out not one bit.

Peiper is one of the clearest examples of failure of combined arms in military history. His force was destroyed because it lacked sufficient infantry to secure bridges and defiles in the horrible terrain, by working off road between these points to secure passage for the tanks. When US infantry and engineers had possession of these points, Peiper could not bring his armor weight to bear against them.

He had to use his extremely limited infantry in coordinated attacks along the limited and predictable avenues marked by roads and heavy bridges. Artillery took a toll of this infantry, which was never numerous enough to begin with. Once he could not longer force open any point he choose around his KG, he lost his line of communications, immobilizing the heavy tanks for want of gas.

When he did try to use his infantry for this, though, it went in dismounted. When he did charge held areas, it was done with Panthers or King Tigers. And it was extremely risky even for those. With SPWs it would have been plain suicide. Even when just caught on a road while scouting, those were made short work of by US infantry and engineers.

When he didn't have infantry for it, his huge KG with fantastic equipment (King Tigers, Panthers, etc) was stopped for hours by small hasty minefields, scratch forces of engineers, AAA, a few TDs, etc, and blown bridges.

What they should have done is put the infantry in the lead not to attack but to infiltrate and bypass, ignoring the roads not trying to clear them. Then, along the roads, the armor hits positions frontally, with all arms support. Infantry already being behind those positions, when they are beaten they will evaporate, not stand again 5 km back. With armor involved in all those frontal attack portions, no useless fiascos of whole infantry battalions shot to pieces to accomplish nothing.

The German army had a route march default standard of 5 km/hr.  A days march was considered 40 km (8 hours marching time), a days forced march was 60 (12 hours marching). The latter was considered to impair combat readiness of units, except paras and the like. Standard march schedule for infantry was march an hour, rest fifteen, march again and they had thirty minute breaks every two hours, and a one-hour chow break every four hours. I think this must be the same more or less in all armies, as humans are the same everywhere.

The infantry is the maneuver element. The armor is a battering ram to hit the hold outs. Infantry goes deep as fast as their legs will carry them, stringing roadblocks behind every US position still holding forward. Armor, on the other hand, batters ahead along the roads easiest to clear because infantry is through and behind them. Once all the way clear, it focuses not on road trips or bridges, but on trapping as many defenders as possible and battering the hold-outs. Arty likewise, sets up on the east side of holdouts and shells them.

The Germans got all the roles wrong among the combat arms. They made infantry the road-opening battering ram, armor the deep exploiter (when it could barely move), gave all the road space to armor so it had to do the shelling of towns etc because the arty was left behind or out of ammo wasted on the prep or both, etc.

Why? Because they did not adapt to the task in front of them. To thin defenders, to achieved surprise, to waves of road-mobile reserves, to the flow of the battle in other sectors so far, above all to the terrain.

Breakthroughs work by parallel pursuit logic. Meaning, once the attackers are through anywhere, they march to the defenders rear faster than the defenders can retreat. If defenders want to instead hold somewhere, let 'em, and push deeper in the other places. More defenders farther forward means fewer behind them, which is where the real battle is being fought. Spread behind them. Clear roads after the forward guys are cut off, or after they see what is happening and try to bug out.

The Germans thought they needed to deliver a boatload of tanks to the opposite side of a forest with a limited road net, and to do so in as little time as possible. So they tried to open as many roads as possible. There was little reinforcing of success. A few times at the Our, some Heer PDs shifted to an easier sector where others had already broken through. But only after their infantry ahead of them had failed to open the roads straight ahead, despite head on battering. This was stupid.

The maximum penetration actually achieved was about 60 miles in about one week, for a rate of 9 miles a day on average. The main objective, Antwerp, was 110 miles from the start line. 

In contrast, during the first phase offensive in Korea, over worse ground, Chinese infantry moved the line 30 to 40 miles in 3 and 4 days, respectively, on the eastern and western ends of the line, enveloping several divisions in the east, and destroying a ROK corps in the west.

The Germans did not see their infantry as a decisive offensive arm. They did not see the improved ability of tanks to smash isolated positions, rather than hitting them head on with infantry, or being stopped by them without having any infantry to turn them with. That let the same formations stop a column, backpedal, stop it again, backpedal, stop it again, etc. Put one infantry battalion on the road behind those defenders one dark night, and the sequence stops. Defenders evaporate.

There ought to have been opportunities for some more rapid moves within an infantry spearheaded offensive, when e.g. a certain road was cleared and some armor let loose. If would grab a portion of the road net and isolate additional defenders, instead of all running up one road.

But the general surge west could have been conducted at a cross country, foot pace, and it would not have been appreciably slower than the rate actually achieved by armor columns along the roads, given the frequent roadblock fighting they faced.

The Germans also failed to focus on inflicting losses rather than grabbing ground. At St. Vith, for example, they nearly pocketed a division plus. But all the emphasis was on getting past it and west. They battered it frontally the whole time, trying to improve the cleared road net. Arty didn't help as much as it might have, because the roads went to armor, and because they had shot off much of their ammo in the prep barrage.

When Peiper gets through, it is all Meuse Meuse Meuse, that's the plan. So he doesn't take the time to cut off the men to his south, when he readily could have. Instead he keeps looking for the next bridge, always thinking just one more will mean no more defenders in front if him. Hello, there are defenders in front of him clear back to Normandy. But he might have taken out the ones in St. Vith, and tripled the force up abrest of him. More than tripled its infantry, too.

When the SS up north hit the Elsenborn position, they batter it frontally. Why? South of them there is a breakthrough, why aren't they shifting behind it to exploit? Need more road net to move more tanks. Um, you might have sent a full FJ division off road, around the southern flank of the Elsenborn position. Stoppered roads do not mean not opportunities for decisive maneuver. But the German brass could not grok subordinating tanks to infantry because of infantry superior mobility. That does not compute. Entirely true as a fact, in Ardennes terrain - or Korean mountains, same point - but they could not let go of ideas learned in wide open, armor-friendly terrain.

German performance in the Bulge was pretty darn bad, for what they had and for how asleep they caught the defenders. As for the odes to the bravery of the Americans stopping them, one division surrendered outright and most of a corps ran for their lives. There was plenty of morale failure on the defending side. But it didn't take much to disorganize so ham-fisted an attack.

If the US forces in the sector had all been destroyed by the time the airborne corps arrived, and much of that airborne corps were then pocketed and demolished, the Americans would have been in much worse shape than they actually were. It is quite feasible with the forces the Germans used, if used in a more appropriate manner.

The frontage expanded dramatically after the break-in succeeded. About three times, maybe four if you count interior walls for pockets and such. Yes the Americans rushed men to the sector, but that extra space swallowed quite a few of them. They were not appreciably denser off the road net at Christmas. On the north flank maybe, and on a thin sector on the south flank as 3rd Army approached. But the Allies didn't have to stop infantry infiltration, they only had to block the limited roads.

As for what the Germans ought to have done with their armor instead, in the grand scheme of things, they should have put real reserves in western Poland. Then maybe the Russian January offensive might not have made it to 35 miles from Berlin in one jump, wrecking an entire army in the process.

From every military point of view, it was colossally stupid to throw away so much armor, and it led directly to catastrophe for eastern Germany: 46 years of it.


WWII TACTICAL BASICS

I'll try to illustrate the various distinct systems and specific modes of attack they typically make use of, with some concrete examples.

The basic idea is that the attacker always has a battalion sized force -though if armor heavy, that may be mixed between armor and infantry companies etc - attacking a defense of a reinforced company in position, in an "up" defense (meaning, not reverse slope), with somewhat favorable but not impregnable terrain. For each example I'll give the attacker plan and dispositions, and characterize the expected flow of the combat, and the approach's specific ideas, rationale, strengths and weaknesses.

To be concrete about it, the defense is assumed to have one company of regular quality infantry, with 2 small heavy weapons sections, each with HQ, MMGs, and a mortar (or pair of light ones). The defense also gets a couple of light guns, and a light FO (e.g. 81mm). AT is limited, maybe one heavy PAK and a few infantry AT teams. The defense may have no reserves or reinforcements expected, or may as a curve ball occasionally get one extra platoon or a couple of AFVs halfway through the fight, or both. Another curve ball would be an upgrade of the FO to medium caliber (e.g. 105mm or 120mm mortar).

The attacker has either an infantry battalion with a single AFV platoon in support, weapons teams to match and a few FOs --- or has a mechanized force with a reinforced infantry company and more like a company of armor (which could be mixed "vehicle" screen stuff or mostly main battle tanks - national methods vary on that score). Again some nations will have more artillery than others or may use it differently. But the basic problem is always, attack and destroy a defending reinforced company with a superior attacking force, the superiority either coming from raw infantry numbers or from superior armor along with approximately equal, to slightly superior, infantry.

Mixes and matches are possible, I will not attempt to give all possible combinations. Instead I will give a characteristic method of attack for each nation and arm, or occasionally two. Different nations might also have their own constraints as to loss tolerance, level of risk that can be run, time available, typical attack timing and conditions, etc.

I hope this series is interesting. These are real tactical systems, simple enough and formulaic enough to actually be implemented by mortals, to be trained into masses of competent professionals, without requiring perfectionism or genius. And implemented competently, any one of them is dangerous. And no, they aren't all the same thing nor are they arranged in some rank order of best and worst. They are concrete and practical tactical systems.

The principle of a forward detachment can be used at any scale. It just means something down 2 step sizes is sent well ahead of the main formation with a scouting or screening mission. 

RUSSIAN mech corps recce was typically a motorcycle battalion, or a regiment of them in the case of a tank army. Their role wasn't really based on stealth, however. Infantry recon did recon by stealth (Recon A in CMBB terms), especially night infiltration, remaining stationary and just observing during daylight hours. Or working as pathfinders in an assault, sometimes.

But the cyclists (Recon C, realistically mounted on jeeps in CM terms) just flooded the road net with bifurcating formations, splitting at each junction and flowing through the whole capillary structure like water, larger groups on the larger roads, etc. They avoided heavy contact and went around, but weren't particularly sneaky.

When they encounter any enemy some dismount and keep them under observation and others back off. The rest of the formation is already exploring all the alternate routes. They will maneuver off road with infantry through cover to turn a small enough position, or seek to fight through a roadblock using a few armored cars, if they think it is weak enough.

But that is during a move to contact or while the whole major formation is moving through empty space. Once actually in contact, the cyclists are in a supporting role only. Screen the flanks, scout down new side routes, but the job of point and of battlefield recon for it would pass to the tanks (with riders, of course). Typically with motor rifle support, obviously. (But the whole motor rifle brigade had a mission of holding stuff already cleared by the tanks, in the division of labor within a tank corps).

What is the advanced detachment, battalion for a corps e.g., doing tactically? It has a recon and screening mission so it does not deliver a full assault, but only skirmishes. It is willing to fight weak enemy screening forces to penetrate further than a few cyclists could, to get more information about the location of the enemy main line of resistence. But it is not expected to deliver a full operational scale attack. It might occasionally transition to a fixing role in an echelon or column attack by the lending brigade of the corps, along the axis nearest its chosen route. But that is an adaptation, a reversion from forward detachment use of the battalion to its main body use.

These tactics are incredibly old. The cyclist role is the same as that of light cavalry or cossack scouts in the Napoleonic era, and the advance detachment role is the same as that of a Jager advanced guard in the same period. Gain intel by flooding the countryside with tiny subdivided elements for the first. Screen and skirmish on the main body route only, well ahead of it, for the second. The means of transportation and types of weapons changed, the principles and tasks did not.


THE GERMAN TACTICAL SYSTEM - ATTACK

The Germans were generally past masters of combined arms tactics. They performed considerably better than any other army at the lowest scale, throughout the war. This was about half good doctrine and training and the other half excellent low level leadership. Equipment had essentially nothing to do with it.

Despite losing overall, the Germans still managed to inflict about 5 times the losses on Russians as they took from them. It was not strategic brilliance, though they had surprise in 1941 and the Russians performed quite poorly that year. It wasn't brilliant operational "play" - the Russians outplayed them in pure "big chess", maneuver terms, from 1942 on. It wasn't primarily technology or weapon systems - they nearly won in Pz IIIs and lost in Tigers and Panthers, against T-34s in both cases.

The Germans were just tactical tigers, small "t". They used the right weapon for each job, had professional officers, disciplined noncoms, etc. Each of the Allies had to find their own counters. US leaned on logistical superiority and firepower arms - arty and air. Russians leaned on scale, operations that put a unit an echelon larger up against each German,. etc).

As a result, taking down even the vanilla German infantry corps was always expensive. The biggest German tactical weakness was throwing away their armor by using it too aggressively, which made it a lot easier to deal with them afterward, than they would have been had they retained it for "linebacker" uses. But they were tough enough even with such weaknesses.

Do the Germans have to occasionally counterattack? Certainly, they did so a lot, they were sometimes quite good at it on a tactical scale. The Germans were tactically quite skilled throughout the war, on all front. But their strengths were not where many suppose, in the late war anyway. It wasn't repeats of the 1940 to 1942 armored breakthrough formula. That worked so well only against defenders who did not yet know how to counter it (by a defense in depth, shifting large reserves in front of any break in).

The Germans were good at a scale below that, more tactical still. Night infantry attacks. Traps on defense. Skillful use of even limited amounts of arty, hitting the right places to catch the most men. The stuff their shoestring remnants of armor managed to accomplish once on defense is regularly impressive. When they did have serious amounts of armor lying around to throw in defensively, they stopped anything. That happened in Mars, at Anzio, for the Brits in Normandy. It didn't happen more often or last longer because half their armor was thrown away on overly ambitious grand attacks.

Example of a German infantry battalion combined arms attack with support from a single StuG platoon, heavy weapons, and 2 105mm FOs. It decides to use line tactics to attempt a double envelopment, a favorite ambitious German maneuver. The three companies are all deployed on line, and within each company the platoons are again deployed in line formation. A single platoon is held in second line behind the center, with one StuG, and forms the only overall reserve. At the joints between the companies there are heavy weapons platoons each with a 105mm FO and a single StuG; each StuG initially carries 2 HMG teams from these. Each platoon in turn is in blob formation aka two rank line, with a few half squads detached 50m ahead of the leading line as a scouting wave. The whole formation thus has immense width. In addition, it may be lengthened still further by extending the wing companies to 4 platoons, using their company HQs.

The time to carry out this sort of attack is dawn with fog or dusk with rain or snow, or at night. It may be attempted in better visibility in tight enough terrain, (e.g. nearly continuous woods) but not in the open in full daylight. The higher the infantry quality level the more likely it is to succeed.

The whole skirmish line moves off at once, initially on move to contact. The extreme ends may even run briefly to give the whole some forward "bow" before contact with the enemy, but they should not push to full tired. Heavy weapons are on move, but will be slow enough they trail the forward infantry line.

Whenever any of the half squads makes contact, the nearest platoon may move to support it and fire back at whoever shot up that scout, but the rest do not veer toward the contact. They stay in their lanes and continue to move forward, cover to cover. Any group checked by enemies stops and returns fire briefly, but is careful not to exhaust squad ammo. Assume contact is made along the middle of the frontage, heavy weapons groups instead steer to positions that can observe any group spotted so far. Those and the StuGs by direct fire, suppress the foremost enemies. 

The wave continues forward and curls past any active enemy shooters, avoiding their LOS wherever possible, using low ground, natural cover, and LOS distance limits.

The idea is to press as many infantry groups as possible, as far forward as possible. Every scrap of ground not physically occupied by the enemy is seized, or cleared and passed. Spots physically occupied are screened lightly by a small group not assaulted. Instead the slow weapons set up opposite the foremost and plaster them in turn.

The attackers don't really care what shape the defense has assumed. They ooze around it and conform to that shape, whatever it is. Tactically as much time as possible is spent moving and beyond enemy LOS. Squads are dropped in spots of good cover if there are unbeaten enemy still in view of that location, but no great attempt is made to build up lots of men there or to beat those enemies in a direct squad to squad firefight through numbers alone. Not initially.

As the enemy formation takes shape, the 105s are used on full platoon positions, mortars and StuGs on single heavy weapons positions. The enemy is expected to be unable to maneuver because closely confined by bypassing infantry with overlaping or nearly overlaping LOS. Artillery then hits located enemy unable to dodge. Ideally, the whole line overlaps the enemy on one or both sides, and those clear to the end of the map reorient inward to roll up flanks.

These tactics put strain on individual small groups of the attacking infantry, which sometimes hit strong areas of the defense with little help, but are expected to go to ground and hold on without it, at least screening the enemy hit. There isn't much of a reserve to meet failures and it is meant to be used opportunistically to smash the easily killed instead.

Against an IDed position, the formula is to first fix it and bring HMG teams to bear on it, then hit it with 30 rounds of 105mm HE (half a battery load), and sometimes a StuG or 81mm mortar in addition. After the HE barrage lifts, close in rapidly from two directions with the adjacent infantry platoons, always using more than one.

As parts of the defense are eaten in this fashion, the platoons nearest the success push deeper into the defense and envelope the neighboring defenders.

This sort of attack can require time to fully develop. The execution needs a fine mix of aggressive exploitation of weakness and a willingness to stop dead and just screen when strength is hit instead. Local subunits need to act on the overall situation and exploit whatever weaknesses the enemy leaves. The enemy is also given chances to make fatal mistakes, like trying to move too much after already closely beset - that can add a reversed cover differential to the existing odds edge.

That is a typical maneuverist use of linear tactics by German infantry. Notice the importance of the limited visibility conditions to make it effective.

Next I will give an example of a turning movement by a German panzer force, using screen and column tactics.

The force here might have a single Panzer IV platoon, a motorized panzergrenadier company plus a 4th platoon take as armored with SPWs, plus supporting weapons halftracks - 2 SPW 251/9 and 2 SPW 251/2. Also a radio FO, preferably 150mm 4 tube variety. Much of the infantry and the tanks might be veteran quality.

Then use the following unorthodox (but entirely typical of these methods, in that respect) tasking.

A feint and screening force gets a single Panzer IV, a reduced Panzergrenadier platoon (HQ and 2 squads), and a heavy weapons section of 2 HMGs and a mortar. Their mission is to screen the entire frontage and demonstrate there. The HMGs are to cover the open ground with fire at least, the Panzer is to make noise and threaten here and there, the infantry should be half squads and prowl around, into cover and hiding and back out again. The idea is to look like up to a company. Later on, the Panzer and weapons will support by fire at range. The mortar is to ensure if a gun takes out the Panzer at least it dies in reply.

The main body, meanwhile, has the entire balance of the force, and is in column on the left side of the map. Initially they are "coiled", but step out sequentially and gradually narrow their frontage. The SPWs are all assigned to a heavy weapons group lead by the company HQ, with one squad attached, and one of the SPW 251/2s The 37mm halftrack can be the HQ's mount or the FO's. The SPW-1s get the remaining HMGs and mortar, and the attached squad. One platoon of panzergrenadiers, dismounted, leads the column in blob formation. A second rides the panzers in second position. Then the weapons, while the last position gets the last platoon supported by the SPW 251/9s and the remaining 251/2.

The mission of the main body is to travel right around the left flank of the defense, avoiding anything powerful and crushing anything in the way too weak to stop them. The first platoon acts as scouts and use move to contact, and initially the rest of the column does not show itself. They can catch up rapidly, and in the meantime the scout platoon and diversion force elsewhere are not distinguishable, really.

When a force stops the scouts - that they can't just swing around - the column launches, on "fast". The panzers close up to the scouts, drop their riders and with them and the scouts, destroy the blockage. The column then advances forward and turns inward through the defense, maintaining speed if at all possible. The FO should by then be walking his aim point ahead of the attack, which is mostly carried by a compact fist of panzers overwhelming enemies at close range - escorted and followed up by panzergrenadiers, but the idea is not to hang back with the tanks and merely plink from distance.

The heavy weapons pick a spot with a view over the interior of the defense and set up. Their mission is to paralyze adaptative repositioning by infantry, interlocking their lines of fire with the overwatch weapons in the screen in front. The 251/2s also need to be available to wax any gun that challenges the panzer fist. The last platoon is a mere reserve and replaces losses in the leading pair. The company HQ in the middle of the main body can gather squads and join the battle line up with the panzers as required. The 251/9s trail early, and replace lost tanks later on, as the enemy AT defense degrades, to supply ammo depth and maintain momentum.

Ideally the whole main attack of the column is delivered from the left rear of the original defensive position, having found a route clear around to there free of defenders. In practice this is rarely possible on smaller CM maps, and an attack launched at a corner of the defense is accepted as a substitute.

Tactical combined arms coordination needs to be very high. Everyone fights only the specific sort of enemy he is best at destroying, in close cooperation. The timing of column start needs to be well planned and adapted to the intel found so far. And once started, it should be driven with the utmost recklessness and speed, without any sacrifice in combined arms coordination. (Which is the hard part). Losses to the point units need to be topped off almost immediately from the trailing elements of the column and the push continued without pause.

The point of this particular method of attack is to maximize the impact of surprise about the assault's direction and focus. The reasons a column formation is used are - to minimize the width of an uncovered corridor needed to make the early movement, to focus the point of attack and thus overload the forces hit at each moment, to maintain the intensity of combat power brought to bear on that focused point against losses taken, and to move that focused point rapidly through the defense before it can react. Local odds are meant to be high at any moment in time, but impacts must be delivered in succession along the main axis to destroy any appreciably portion of the defense. 10 to 1 odds on a single squad, once, will not destroy the defense. A slow grind will not gain anything from the unexpected avenue of attack - the defense will have adapted by the time anything appreciable is hit, if it goes too slow. The intended effect is for the attack to have already smashed a portion of the defense and dislocated and discoordinated all of it, by the time it has reacted effectively to the unexpected direction of the main strike.

This sort of attack benefits from limited visibility and in the paradigm case would be delivered on a clear night, with visibility of few hundred meters. It does not need much time, it needs fussy micromanagement, and the opportunities for boneheaded error are numerous.

That is a typical example of a deception or misdirection attack using screen and column, by German panzer forces.

The basis of the German system was the division and the kampgruppe. The KG was the tactically relevant unit, the division was the combined arms bag of assets that created and tasked them. KGs were generally formed around a regimental commander and his HQ. Assets were then added to give it all the arms needed to fufill its intended mission or role. At a minimum this might mean an infantry regiment with attached 105mm battalion and a company of PAK - at a maximum it could means 2/3rds of a Panzer division operating on a single axis of advance. Cross attachments were generally at the level of company or battalion.

The corps organization was important operationally for the panzer forces, with a single panzer corps of 2 PDs and 1 motorized infantry generally operating on a single direction and point of main effort for breakthrough purposes. (Later in the war, the motorized division might be Pz Gdr or might be missing entirely. On the other hand, a Tiger battalion was typically added at corps level). Once through the line they could spread to encircle things, but usually just trailed the motorized infantry behind them as a containing wall for anything pocketed, the PDs going straight on.

The infantry started with conventional triangular formations and 2 up 1 back deployments. This was found to be a luxury and they soon went to much flatter deployments, with typically only a single line of reserve battalions, or sometimes only a single reserve battalion in a division sector. The companies could be 2 up 1 back or all on line. But they stopped layering regiments, let alone divisions.

Specialty recon units were designed to find out whether enemy were present at all, not exactly where (which was the purpose of battlefield recon). They did this by pushing columns of vehicles down every capillary of the road network in a given region, looking for roadblocks and the like. If they took fire anywhere, the lead vehicle backed up into full defilade and radioed in the contact.

They might occasionally "develop" light contacts by using the rest of the battalion, calling up a company or so at a time. Then they would not recon by death, but deploy platoons etc off road, overwatch with their heavy weapons (gun and mortar equipped halftracks or SP arty), and flank the road. The ACs themselves were meant to protect against pure infantry forces, which were by far the most common in all armies and the ones most likely to be encountered first, farthest forward.

Basically they flowed only into areas found to be completely clear of the enemy, and did not attempt to force their way into defended locations. The deploy and flank with supporting fire drills could clear very small roadblocks and outposts, and thereby find the actual real positions of the enemy - but these forces had essentially no ability to defeat a full battle position. And it was a waste of their special equipment and skills to try.

Occasionally the Germans would bulk up the divisional recon battalion with real AFVs (often Panzer Jaegers or StuGs, another free floating divisional asset) and use them as a mobile reserve or an additional KG besides the regimental ones. In those cases, once real enemy were encountered they did not lead with PSWs trying to get themselves killed, but with full AFVs.

Battlefield recon on the other hand was typically done with dismounted infantry patrols, or occasionally pairs of full tanks operating ahead of a column. Under strong overwatch from the rest of the force, ready to deploy to attack and destroy anything that fired at either.  All units performed battlefield recon with their organic equipment, not specialty recon formations.

In battle narratives of light armor units, over and over again you find the comment, "checked by AT fire" or "unable to proceed due to flanking AT fire from location X". They simply halted the larger unit if there was anything firing at them that could hole even a lightly armored vehicle. No razzle dazzle. Light armor losses also typically run far behind those of full AFVs, in major battles. Because they simply were not used nearly as aggressively, when strong enemy positions were known to be present.

The heavy weapons network (HMGs, mortars, IGs and PAK, light Flak) and coordinated artillery were considered the backbone of positional defenses. The bulk of the infantry was used very aggressively even on defense, with instant local counterattacks by a single sub-echelon the standard response to anything. A company would send a platoon, a battalion would send a company, etc. It wasn't always from reserve - they'd be delivered laterally too, or by pulling a unit out of the line rapidly, leaving only a screen and the weapons.

This could get expensive, and units actively fighting were step reduced up to 3 times and still left in the line. They would be folded into KGs of a more intact division, or just one with an effective staff and prior responsibility for the sector. The staff daily rated all infantry type battalions for manpower strength, with the stronger ones earmarked for offensive roles, including the counterattacks. The idea was the squad MGs defended while it took rifle and grenade numbers to attack.

Artillery fire was coordinated by artillery regiment HQs, supplimented by special Arkos frequently built around one. These provided the surveying, target location, plotting and mapping, and FO pools, and centralized ammunition logistics. Sometimes a single regimental Arko would be given the fires of an entire corps, e.g. to meet a critical attack.

But normally there was considerable use of "dedicated support", downward. A battalion of artillery would be assigned to a given KG and physically located with it, and individual batteries might be dedicated to individual battalions or front line companies. The artillery battalion was the main unit of support for field stuff, but larger guns were parcelled out by individual battery.

There was a clear doctrinal subordination of the artillery and its role was thought of as helping a specific maneuver unit survive its battles, hold its ground, or take its objectives. Not e.g. inflict maximum losses on the enemy or achieve corps or higher objectives by reshaping the operational battlefield etc.

Maneuver element commanders at division were in the drivers seat. Higher HQs demanded things from them, sometimes ridiculously impossible things, criticized and threatened. They generally did not micromanage, though later in the war there was a byzantine level of procedure over the commitment of serious reserves etc.

Germans, in contrast to Allied Forces, had to husband their limited infantry and artillery carefully.  For this reason, they typically attacked on a narrow front, using one force to fix the defenders and then the main body as a "fist" to overwhelm the defenders with superior infantry locally.  Artillery barrages were then called in to break up counterattacks.

The PDs in the Heer formations were very light on infantry. In the early war they were top heavy with quite light tanks, but the number of tanks was reduced as their weight increased, making for a more managable tank infantry ratio (around 1 to 2 in organization size terms). The infantry portion fought very "flat" to make up for it (meaning, all on line, no reserves), and the other infantry type assets of the division (recon, pioneer) were frequently pressed into service as additional infantry weight.

PDs with less infantry than a typical ID could have defensive sectors twice as long. They were expected to make up for low numbers with mobility, by screening less active sectors thinly and marching the others to the sound of the guns. The armored KG would act as "fire brigade" to restore any broken section of the front, by backstopping or more often by local counterattack.

Armored KGs within PDs were typically formed from the modest armored portion of the Pz Gdrs, a single company or battalion, plus the recon battalion and sometimes a single company of armored pioneers. These all had numerous gun armed light vehicles in addition to troop carriers. These would then work with the bulk of the panzer regiment, though one battalion or 2 companies of the panzers might be attached to a different KG.

The result was a typically a sub-formation with N tanks, 2 N light armored vehicles, and not much in the way of dismounted infantry. A single artillery battalion was usually attached, SP late in the war, motorized before then. A battery of 88 Flak and a company or so of light was also typical. It was meant for exploitation and for strong attacks well localized in space. It tended to take up a lot of road space, though, and when attacking from march only a portion would typically manage to engage.

The remainder of the PD was a motorized infantry KG or two with modest tank, StuG, or Marder support, which was used to hold stuff or to accomplish infantry missions related to terrain (river crossings, night infiltration, woods or block clearing etc).

The ideal panzer attack terrain for the Germans would be farmland with moderate trees. That is open enough to be good tank country, because the farmland terrain type is relatively open for the same vegetation setting. Anything with light trees would also be good tank country, except a city obviously. The American style of fighting would prefer heavy trees if farmland, or village or rural if moderate trees. Obviously, the more cover, the more the tanks depend on their accompanying infantry to clear bits of it and create infantry-AT free paths of advance for the tanks. Since the US style of defense depends on stripping the infantry off and still having an intact infantry defense themselves, they want cover not wide open ground.

Halftracks are glorified trucks. Units riding in them have some protection against indirect, scarcely aimed arty shrapnel during long approaches, and better off road ability than most trucks. That is all.

Halftracks rode mounted behind large bodies of full tanks, which smashed the enemy AT network before they arrived. I don't mean a platoon, I mean a full tank regiment ahead of a battalion in SPWs.  They fought infantry only enemies mounted at times, particularly in open country. Occasionally they would be used mounted to "dash" into a large town or village, seizing a corner of it (frequently behind a small spearhead of full AFVs), then expanding from there dismounted. Or in night raids, a similar "coup de main" use.

The rest is mostly doctrinal story-telling, not field practice, especially in heavy fighting. If you look for SPW losses at Kursk you find they are handfuls only for entire PDs over the whole period of the heaviest assaults. (While half of the medium tanks are sent to the workshops, and the grenadiers lose 30-50% casualties).

Or you look at cases like Panzer Lehr's July counterattack in Normandy (the most heavily equipped with SPWs unit of the war), and most of the SPWs are parked under trees on the approach roads, with just 1-2 behind platoons of tanks on some roads. Halftracked infantry works with full armor in combined arms formations. And there is little a HT can do that a tank can't do better. There is, however, plenty that tanks can't do that dismounted infantry can do - pass various terrain obstacles, search through buildings, dig defenders out of trenches, exploit strong terrain defensively, scout or observe with great stealth, infiltrate quietly at night etc.

It is those roles that armor needs from its attached infantry, not more "tank - lights". And infantry can only deliver those things it is better at by dismounting. This doesn't mean vehicles aren't useful for infantry working with armor - they are. But their main role is operational not tactical, allowing the infantry to keep up with the tanks and go where they go.

In the case of armored HTs, they keep up better through barrage zones, and are less likely to be "stripped off" the tanks they are supporting by indirect fire or a few hold-out MGs. That delivers value not by razzle dazzle to 50m from a defended position, but by driving safely 500-1000m behind a tank battalion or more, that has already cut its way through the enemy's heavy defenses.

And that will matter 5 km up the road when the tanks come to a bridge, and want infantry to get across upstream to help flank the position. But they will do the last dismounted, not mounted. If they stay mounted, they aren't contributing anything a Pz IV can't do for itself, better.

A very common armored tactic was the "transitional dash", especially into the edge of a defended village or town. This was used in Russia and was quite common in the Bulge. The lead is usually a small number of real AFVs - usually tanks, occasionally StuGs or Jagds, a platoon or less typically to minimize the possible losses. In the Bulge, a pair of Panthers was a typical case.

These leading AFVs make a dash for a limited part of the village or town. The rest of the armor unit is supporting by fire or overwatch from farther away. The dash is meant to put firepower right in the town, and also partially to scout the route. If they make it without loss, then SPWs follow along the same route, pull just inside the building area, and the infantry inside dismounts. They spread through the buildings around the lead AFVs, and transform that little corner of the village into German territory.

After which the fight within the village or town usually proceeds by the usual tank-infantry team methods. The use being made of the SPWs is first of all dash speed, to follow up the tank rush rapidly, rather than with a significant delay. In addition, the basic idea is to find a hole in the ATG coverage. Which may be considerably easier than finding a hole in the MG coverage. The micro location where the entrance is made is meant to be unoccupied. The leading tanks will try to make it so, if it wasn't to start with and they discover that by being fired upon.

This worked quite often. Sometimes the leading tanks would be destroyed by heavy AT weapons after pushing too far into the town. But they were usually right about the initial dash. The basic fact being exploited is that villages and towns are frequently far too large for the defending forces contained within them, to seriously cover everything. If every building needed defenders, it would take a division to hold places that actually have to be held by companies or battalions.

Buildings break up AT weapon lines of sight, too, once the vehicles get close. The infantry is needed rapidly, however, unlike other places tanks lead. Because the danger to the tanks from infantry weapons is serious, if they lack infantry support while remaining stationary in their little corner of the town for any length of time. Tank riders might also do this. But the risk from small arms is obviously lower in SPWs.

For German infantry, the attack method was almost uniformly "envelopment". Meaning, the attacking formation sends one subelement at the defenders to fix them in front, but it only feints, and the main body then swings around one flank or the other. The flank attack typically takes a narrow route, not a wide wheeling line. All the emphasis is on speed and achieving tactical surprise. This is true even of infantry attacks - the local counterattacks even in an infantry defense still conform to this pattern, except the existing defense acts as the fixing screen.

When infantry formations were called on to act offensively in operational terms, they were generally bolstered by assault guns, particularly later in the war. These typically went wherever the infantry main body did and did not attempt independent maneuver. They fired from range on targets directly ahead from well within the infantry main body. Strong artillery support was also considered sufficient to enable plain infantry to act offensively, particularly in any sort of terrain (other than open I mean).

On the attack, artillery fired short but violent prep fires of typically 30 minutes duration. Most of it lifted by the time of the actual maneuver element attack. It would be resumed if the maneuver attack failed, on hold outs etc. Most of the artillery was aimed at front line enemy units with direct damage as the goal. Small batteries of longer ranged guns - 170s, 150 guns rather than howitzers, 105 guns in each PD - did counterbattery work and interdiction fire at routes and bridges etc - but in quite low numbers. They relied on good signals intelligence to pinpoint enemy batteries.

Offensive infantry tactics emphasized close approach and the use of explosives. MGs and mortars gave covering fire, infantry worked forward by hopefully unexpected, flanking routes, and then grenades or demo charges were used on each enemy position in sequence. Only modest numbers are delivering these at any one time. The main body provides a "well" from which additional grenade parties are drawn, maneuvers to grab more ground, cuts up retreats with its LMGs, provides more cover fire with those and rifles, etc.

The Germans understood the role of cover fire to be blinding the enemy and allowing maneuver. They did not expect ranged fire to demolish enemy positions. Actual destruction was to be achieved by encircling a position or moving maneuver elements to point blank with it and overrunning the position.

The Germans placed more emphasis on night infantry action than the western allies but considerably less than the Russians. They also got better at it as the war progressed. Night infantry fighting was predominantly a matter of stealthy infiltration, sometimes supplemented by grenade and SMG raiding or trying to induce the defender into panic firing at thin or non-existent targets. The main effect was sought by having a unit in place and dug in by the following morning, able to interdict new areas by ranged fire. They also used armor offensively at night in "coup de main" actions, episodically.

It was also common by the time of the French campaign to form so-called Vorausabteilungen (VA - Forward Detachments) based on the motorised parts of the division. The VA of 1. Gebirgsdivision contributed significantly to the encirclement battle around Uman. It was the only way the division had to keep the retreating enemy unbalanced. 

In Russia, many German infantry divisions formed special "fast units" that actually were motorized. These were typically formed around the panzerjaeger (AT) battalions, which were the only organic units of an ID typically authorized motor vehicles (beyond a few staff cars and a minimum of supply trucks - most supply was horse drawn). Some divisions had a company of StuGs or Marders in these battalions. The trucks from the rest could be used to lift an infantry company, and an assortment of guns (some div arty howitzers, some towed PAK, etc). They could then act as mini-KGs, fire brigading from point to point. The infantry and guns might be left in the new position, and a new set picked up for the next effort. This was most common later in the war (1943-44) on defense, as a reaction reserve, a (very) poor man's substitute for a supporting PD in second echelon.

Some IDs in Normandy seemed to have instead created "reaction battalions" of infantry, bicycle mounted. If they had any AFVs those were part of the reaction force. Many formations had a single company in some battalions bicycle equipped. When the whole battalion repositioned, that company could go to the position first, while the foot sloggers and any supporting horse-drawn guns straggled in, in their own sweet time. The bicycle company would hold the deployment area in the meantime.

All the above points are in keeping with the dominant tactical emphasis on surprise.


THE GERMAN TACTICAL SYSTEM - DEFENSE

The main advantage the Germans had tactically was not their armor - which was superior but also frequently misused and not a large net outperformer overall (particularly not against Americans), but the quality of their infantry, particularly in defensive fighting. In Russia, their division to corps level artillery control was also highly effective on defense, particularly against the Russian penchant to overload narrow attack sectors. Which reflected superior small unit tactics and good infantry equipment and training - especially the former.

For Germans on defense, the primary tactic was "trap and slink".  The first line of defense was designed to "trap" probing enemy platoons with obstacles, snipers, minefields, mortars and keyholed fire from support weapons, as well as denying open ground areas with HMGs.  Mortars also fired to disrupt enemy overwatch and assembly positions.  Collectively, the intention was to blunt and disrupt the enemy thrust by forcing the attacker to redirect its efforts to rescue trapped units, while conserving the German infantry force for as long as possible.  It was normal for German heavy artillery to be falling on the second wave of an attack within 10-20 minutes.

Infantry fallback positions were prepared, with covered routes from the frontline positions; these were manned as the main Allied barrages and/or tank rounds began to hit home.  Typically the second line would be anywhere from 400 to 800 yards behind the first. It was not really meant to support the first while under attack, even by heavy weapons fire. It was meant to be a position the front could retreat to if necessary, and where reserves could reinforce, to "thicken" into a full front line again with minimal loss of ground, if the front line was lost. These positions were never directly observable from the first line, forcing the attacker to leave the first set of holes to tackle the second line.  In the meantime, the mobile reserves would arrive in time to aid in the defense and counterattack to eject the disorganized attackers from the first line.

Prepared defense systems had miles of trenches in multiple lines with communications between them, occasionally tunnels from deep dugouts to firing positions or bunkers, continuous belts of wire miles long and sometimes multilayered, sometimes extensive minefields hundreds of meters deep, water obstacles, etc. Naturally the attackers picked their shots to avoid the worst of these things.

Heavy weapons would either be located with infantry strongpoints, or staggered between them in a second line (checkerboard pattern).  The weapons used this way included light flak, PAK, infantry guns, mortars, and sometimes field artillery. The idea was to cover the ground between infantry strongpoints by direct fire, especially against infantry intrusions. Obstacle belts sometimes covered the areas targeted, as well.

This allowed the infantry to hold more concentrated positions, instead of being spread across the entire front in linear deployments. Infantry held its immediate area with small arms and reached out with MGs and sometimes mortars. Plus local counterattack "sallies". Both infantry positions and heavy weapons positions were dug in and often wired in as well.

The reach of the heavy weapons strongpoints was a kilometer or two in all directions, terrain permitting. The whole system also included artillery observors, directing the fire of 105mm and 150mm howitzers farther back. When heavy weapons were thin on the ground, sometimes 105mm howitzers would be incorporated into the second tier heavy weapons positions. More often, they'd go back at the regimental reserve line.

Against the American style of firepower attack, the Germans often used reverse slope defenses, putting the hill between the defenders and the attacker's side of the field, completely blocking LOS.  That helps separate the overwatch Americans rely on from their maneuver elements. Hills help defenders. But they especially help German infantry force defenders (who unlike armor, have limited range with infantry, while their ranged weapons are stationary) from firepower method Allied attacks.

A few delaying MGs, a sniper, some listening posts, a mortar OP - may be forward with LOS, but just enough to see what is coming and maybe delay it a little. The defending main body deliberately avoids LOS to the attackers, rather than seeking it.  This ensures the defenders cannot be hurt by the attacker's ranged weapons.

None of the attackers has LOS to anything - nor do they have any idea where the defenders are - until some of them reach and begin to cross the crestline.  At that point they are silhouetted against the skyline, at very close range to defenders, and none of their friends farther back can help at all.

The defending infantry is on the backside of the ridge, either on the slope or at the bottom - how high to "hug" the hill is a key judgment call. It is a "head game" with the attackers and their artillery plan - be where you aren't expected.

The defending ranged weapons - guns, MGs, etc - are typically well behind the defended ridge, on the next ridge back or just a ways across the valley etc. The idea being, they integrate their LOS and fire, and can hit everything on top of the ridge or on the defender's side of it, while being still at long enough range to be well protected from e.g. attacking infantry first onto the ridge.

Sometimes the crest line is also mined. Mines or wire are frequently added just behind the crest line, to block movement forward and off of it, into any sort of cover on the defender's side.

The attacker's side of the hill is simply conceded to them. But anybody who crosses gets hit by the kitchen sink. (Sometimes mortars or artillery are dropped on the far side, to disrupt dense attackers massing to cross together etc).

Against Soviet armored attacks, German infantry or front line Panzergrenadier forces used towed PAK from hiding to try to stop the tanks, and heavy weapons nests built around HMGs and a few 81s, plus 105mm FOs, to try to strip the infantry and force all the truck mounted guys to stop well away from the defenders.

Infantry, well dug in or on reverse slopes, hides patiently and hopes the heavy weapons never let the enemy riders and infantry get near, while they "slink" out of direct fire from all the tanks and guns. If the T-34s come close without those, they try for them with panzerschrecks and fausts and AT mines and grenade bundles. If they stand off, call it holding.

If a German AFV platoon can arrive to help, great. It tries to ambush the foremost T-34s without exposing itself to all of their friends. In the infantry forces those might be Marders or they might be StuGs. In the panzer forces they would usually be Panzer IVs, while the lucky ones later in the war might have Panthers.

If the Russians dismantle the PAK net rapidly and keep all arms up with the tanks, the defense will crumble. The Russians can usually trade through modest numbers of arriving AFVs and keep right on going.  But a "hot" PAK might run through a whole platoon, or the arriving armor might dominate a narrow approach showing frontal armor only and get lopsided kills, or the HMGs and 105s might strip the tanks of their riders and support.

German infantry doctrine was to launch local counterattacks against every break-in  (e.g. when a river was crossed, or any line breached, or a hill taken). The general method was wing attack or turning movement on one flank by roughly 2/3rds of the available force, in depth, not on-line.  Ideally such attack forces would be directed at a single company of defenders, at the front line anyway. A larger attack of 2-4 such groups side by side would limit the number of reserves any one prong encountered. On the downside, sometimes attacks were encountered much denser enemy forces than expected, giving each prong more like a battalion of defenders, even in the front line.

All armies on defense tended to keep AFVs off the immediate front line (to use their mobility in reactive defenses, and to avoid drawing fire).  This made for comparatively weak AT defenses at the immediate front line early in the engagement. That was one of the things the armor-heavy German attack ideas were meant to exploit. 

When the Germans had sufficient mobile divisions in reserve, they usually did stop the given break-in. They still got an attriting brawl and their infantry got mauled trying to get away. But they weren't pocketed a la Stalingrad. In Mars they stopped it cold, because they had such things.

Where German forces were inadequate to man a line, as was often the case on the eastern front after 1943, they resorted to strongpoint defenses which were defended in between only by obstacles and fire. The whole front was strung with wire, with HMGs overwatching the area and mortars kept ready to fire, plus a field phone to the 105s back at division.  But those gaps could be, and were, penetrated by the Russians with increasing frequency as the war went on. A typical illustration is the battle around Iasi.  The defending Axis forces have elements of 4 divisions. But divisions "in name only", meaning step reduced. And in such terrain, that would mean a thin outpost line and main positions half a kilometer to a kilometer back, as local strongpoints from platoon sized up to reduced battalion sized, each with all around defense.

The basic German defense doctrine was the one they developed during WW I to avoid being defeated by local concentration and artillery suppression, and it remains the basic system the Germans used in the east.  That tactical system has been called the denuded front, in comparison with practice near the start of WW I of lining continuous front line trenches with solid lines of riflemen.  Instead it was based around a few fortified machinegun positions, concealed, and cross fired to cover each other rather than their own front, in an interlocking fashion.  The idea being to make it hard to take out just a piece of the scheme.  Most forces were kept out of the front line to let enemy artillery "hit air".  Wide areas were covered by barrage fire and obstacles (in WW I generally just wire, in WW II plenty of mines as well).  Barrages and obstacles have the feature that they multiple in their effectiveness the more then enemy sends; his local odds does not help him, it hinders him or raises his losses instead.  The MG and outpost network is meant to defeat penetration by smaller enemy numbers, while barrages crucify their masses if they overload those.

If many of these tactics sound like WWI trench warfare, that is because the basics were developed in the last 2 years of that war. Formations tended to be thinner on the ground in WW II, and the gaps between strongpoints wider. But the internals of each followed WWI lessons, that were still sound on a small unit level.

Then the main body of the defending infantry defends from considerably farther back, and executes local counterattacks into portions of the defensive system reached by the attackers.  The idea is to spend as much prep barrage time as possible deep in underground shelters, and only come up and forward to mix it up with enemy infantry after they are mixed in with your own positions and hard for the enemy to distinguish and coordinate fires on them etc.  This also was meant to exploit the confusion that even successful attackers were generally in, after crossing the outpost and barrage zone described above.

That is an effective enough system, but it isn't foolproof.  The thinner front and separated strongpoint positions it uses are vulnerable to stealthy penetration, night infiltration e.g., rather than frontal attack on a large scale.  The local counterattack part of the doctrine can be taken to extremes and get rather expensive for the defenders, resulting in mere brawling inside the defender's works, and just exchange off with the more numerous attackers.  What it really relies on is the enemy being defeated by the artillery fire scheme and ranged MG fire over most of the frontage, so that the counterattack and brawl stuff only happens in a few exceptional spots, where the defenders have a safer route to the front, better information about where the enemy is, what routes are left clear of obstacles, and the like.

The main line of resistance, once hit, generally tried to solve the fire discipline dilemma by firing quite late, when the attackers were close enough to really destroy them, not just drive them to ground.  Harassing mortar fire and a few "wait a minute" MGs were all that fired at longer ranges, to delay the enemy and prevent them being able to maneuver easily, mass in front of the defenders safely, and the like.

At a higher level, the division's artillery regiment commander, divisional commander, or regional "Arkos" tried to manage the larger battle by choosing where to intervene in the outcoming attack with the weight of divisional fires.  They didn't distributed those evenly, or according to need.  Instead they would have a plan of their own, to stop the Russians cold in sector B, and just make do in sectors A and C.  They divide the attack that way.  Then shift fires to one of the break ins, and counterattack the other one with the divisional reserve.  The basic idea is just to break up the larger scale coordination of the offensive by imposing failure where the defenders choose, by massing of fires.  They can't do this everywhere, but it can be combined with choices of what to give up, who pulls back, what the next good position is, and the like, as a coordinated scheme.  The function is "permission" - you only get forward where I let you get forward, not where you want it.  If the enemy tries to get forward in the place the defenders "veto" in this way, they just mass their infantry under the heaviest artillery and multiple their own losses.

Those doctrinal perfect approaches sometimes could not be used in the conditions prevalent in parts of Russia.  In the north, large blocks of forest and marsh are so favorable for infiltration tactics that separate strongpoints with only obstacles in between just invite penetration every night and loss of the position.  The Germans often had to abandon their doctrine in those areas, in favor of a continuous linear trench line.  And then, they often didn't have sufficient forces to give that line any real depth, but instead had to defend on line, manning that whole front as best they could.  In the more fluid fighting in the south, on the other hand, the Germans could and did use strongpoint schemes.  The Russians got significantly better at night infiltration as a means to get into or through those, as the war went on.

Against Russian armor the German infantry formations also had a harder time of it.  In exceptional cases they could prepare gun lines with enough heavy ATGs well enough protected and sited to give an armor attack a bloody nose, but normally they were not rich or prepared enough for that.  Keep in mind that the Russians were quite good at tank infantry cooperation in their mech arm - by midwar that is, early they hadn't been - but lagged in the development of tank artillery cooperation.  Which is what tanks need to deal with gun based defenses efficiently.  The German infantry formations themselves tried to just strip tanks of their infantry escorts and let the tanks continue.  The Russians would sometimes make that mistake, and send the tanks deeper on their own.  That put them in the middle of a deep German defense that would know more about where they were and what they were doing than vice versa.  But that is really an "own goal" thing - if the Russian tanks just stayed with their riders and shot the crap out of the German infantry defenses, the Russian doctrine worked fine.

On a deeper level, the Germans relied on their own armor to stop Russian armor.  Brawling frontally with reserves, often enough, sometimes aided by superior AFVs.  Sometimes by counterattacks that sought to cut off the leading Russian spearheads, and prevent their resupply (with fuel above all).  That worked less and less well as the war went on, however, because the Russians got better at keeping multiple threats growing on the map, gauging defender strength correctly and waiting for all arms to consolidate gains, and the like.  There was also just less of the fire brigade German armor later in the war, and it had less of an edge in tactical know-how.

There are also some weaknesses of the Russian doctrine that the Germans tried to exploit.  It can be quite predictable.  You can let them succeed at things to draw them in, in a pretty predictable way.  The Russian mech way of attacking was at its best against infantry defenses, or vs armor against heavily outnumbered defenders.  If they pushed too hard at a strong block of armor, they could get a brigade killed in a matter of hours.  If you have such an asset, you can try to string the two together - let them hit a weak spot precisely where you want them to come on hard into your planned kill sack.  They aren't doing a lot of battlefield recon to spot such things, they are mostly relying on speed to create surprise.  If you let them think they just made a brilliant and formula perfect break in, they are apt to drive hard trying to push it home, and not to suspect that its is a trap.  But a lot of things get easier if you have a Tiger or Panther battalion lying around, don't they?

A strongpoint defense is a scheme for defending a whole sector, as well as a single element within that scheme, the strongpoint proper.

As a scheme, the idea is to have large portions of the frontage covered only by obstacles and ranged fire (both direct and artillery registrations), with at most a thin screen of outposts and listening posts as a supplement to those, as the overall "linear" defense. No even spreading of the available force along the entire line.

Then strongpoints act as anchors between sectors only covered in the manner described above. They are themselves typically layered in 2-3 belts or lines, but are discontinuous. A blob here, nothing for 800 meters, a blob there, nothing for 600 meters, etc. Then, behind the 800 meter gap but 1200 meters farther to the rear, another such blob.

The usual formation strength assigned to a single strongpoint is an infantry company. But that varied. A reduced company because some forces were detached to the outpost line would be the most common variation. Or a reinforced company (extra platoon), in the middle of a battalion defensive scheme, say, meant as an "overage" that could act as a reserve. But think company as the baseline amount.

The second or third line "tiers" could be formed around artillery or mortar formations with some infantry attachment, or could be looser, less fortified positions (assembly areas, rally points) for mobile reserves (tanks, mechanized infantry, etc). Again these would be more likely in the last tier of the strongpoint layers.

The core of any strongpoint is some form of range firepower that can reach out to either side to cover the obstacle barriers between that strongpoint and the next along the line. The strongest schemes would overlap the effective ranges and lines of sight from two adjacent strongpoints, to that both could "bear" with their ranged weapons on any force assaulting either one, let alone a force trying to pass between them.

That ranged firepower component could be as limited as a pair of 82mm mortars and a few heavy machineguns, or as elaborate as a PAK, field artillery, or light FLAK battery. Or an infantry gun section, you get the idea. Something bigger than rifles and personal side arms. There would also be FOs in each strongpoint, with authority to call down div arty fires on registration points in front of their perimeter, and between the strongpoints, in dead ground areas for direct fire especially (a low draw, a large wood, etc).

The forward defense screen is an obstacle belt. Mines were the favorite form, with uneven density, some heavy enough to actually block passage, some just light enough to deter it by looking like the previous. Dead ground areas could be mined without being covered by direct fire. Wire obstacles, on the other hand, needed to be covered by direct fire. Natural terrain would be incorporated here - water barriers, steep terrain, bogs e.g.

Next string a screen of small outposts, fire team size, along the frontage. These would be around 200 meters apart, the idea being listening post coverage at night, and close small arms coverage during the day, overlapping from one to the next. These might have covered routes to them, or might just have to be manned or relieved in darkness. One log bunker, or a fire team in a foxhole, is all we are talking about here. Overall they are a "tripwire", early warning system, and meant to prevent the whole position from being scouted or penetrated without a full attack. There wouldn't be more than a single platoon deployed on such duties (at any one time that is), even for a full battalion scheme.

Ok, that covers everything about the scheme and why it is expected to work, other than the actual strongpoint itself. Those are typically all around defense, but might be weaker in a rear direction away from the enemy. They use platoon sized sub-forts, linked by communications trenches. Plus heavy weapons positions, best case in log bunkers, sometimes open firing pits (e.g. for mortars, infantry guns, or howitzers). A mortar position toward the rear but within the strongpoint is a typical addition, perhaps a second rear position that serves as a company CP, or a reserve point.

The platoon subforts and company CP area each would get a dugout, a deeper fortification with overhead cover in which to shelter from artillery fire. Depth of a cellar or more, wood ladders to get out of them, tunnel rat living. Usually only one per platoon subposition. Then radiating from that, short communication trenches to firing trench positions (fire step, embankment with sandbags, that sort of thing), which let the riflemen and LMGs cover one of the approach routes to the strongpoint itself. Their main mission was direct defense of the strongpoint proper against enemy infantry assault. Each subfort might also have associated heavy weapons (HMGs at a minimum) that had a role in the strongpoint to strongpoint, open areas fire scheme. These heavy weapons could also help defend that part of the strongpoint from direct attack, but that was not their main mission. Interdicting the obstacle barriers and unmanned open ground to the next strongpoint over on their side, was.

A typical configuration of one of these platoon subforts would be a semi circle of firing trench looking over say the east face of the overall strongpoint, one log bunker HMG to the left and 20-30 yards behind that semi circle, communication trenches of all of those to a central dugout, which could also hold a local reserve squad to "repel borders" by remanning a threatened point or "grenading up the trenches". The perimeter of the platoon subfort itself might be covered by wire obstacles at 50 yards or so - meant to be far enough away to prevent approach within grenade-throw of the fighting trenches, without crossing the wire. But otherwise close enough that small arms from those trenches would be murderous to anyone trying to make such a movement. The layout of the individual subfort would however confirm to the nature of the ground, sighting opportunities, etc.

Last elements of the scheme... It was expected that in quiet periods, the enemy might try to infiltrate through the gaps e.g. at night, so one of the active parts of the defense would be occasional night patrols of squad to platoon strength into the uncovered areas, to see what was moving around out there.

And second, when actually under attack, it was expected that some strongpoints in the whole scheme would be hit harder than others, while others would be left alone or rapidly defeat their local attackers. Reserves could be gathered from those, and from the second tier strongpoints if unmolested so far, to retake any lost portions of the defensive works by a local counterattack. The ideal was to organize and launch those as soon as possible after it was learned a position was lost, or even when it was still just threatened. The hope was that the occupiers would be so disorganized and lack battlefield situational awareness at the conclusion of their fight into the strongpoint itself, and could thus be temporarily vulnerable to a sharp counterattack (up communications trenches / covered routes wherever possible), even by numerically shoestring forces.

With that idea in mind, all the defense weapons and sighting schemes included someone or other having the job of being able to plaster friendly positions that fell to the enemy, to cover such attempts by fire. The company HQ position might e.g. be "reverse slope" to the original enemy start line, but have observation to the platoon subforts, for example. Artillery or mortars from adjacent strongpoints could also have the range to those positions, to drop fire on them if they fell, whether to support a counterattack or just to pin down the intruders and keep them from getting any further.

LOS is limited over large portions of the marshy wooded terrain. The Russians are leading with small detachments of FTs and SMGs to overpower listening posts in the woods. The idea being to blind portions of the defense and cut a way in. With the main body of mixed rifle and SMG platoons following behind, meant to deal with strongpoints and MLR positions behind the outposts. Where they hit air, they bypass or help hit a nearby strongpoint from 2-3 sides. Following waves lap around the positions still holding out.

The Germans are using their artillery and heavy weapons (mortars etc) in strongpoints close to the MLR for several reasons. One, they aren't as reduced as front line infantry strength, and their defensive power and manpower are needed to flesh out the defense. Two, the defense is thin enough in that kind of terrain that the Russians are going to get through somewhere regardless, so a linear infantry defense far ahead of the guns is impractical. The guns get infantry defense by being located right with the MLR infantry in its strongpoints. Three, each strongpoint needs the ability to reach out and influence the battles around it, cover the ground between, etc. With the infantry odds so long against them, infantry counterattacks are not a practical way of doing that. Sending one platoon off into the wide woods crawling with Russians is just a death sentence, so they send fire missions instead (exploiting the high Russian target density, etc).

The drawback to that deployment of the guns is that they are closer to the front and thus vunerable to counterbattery fires. The Russian guns would be pretty far forward to reach through the whole German defended zone, since this was a major set piece attack.

The Germans evidently preferred to risk KO by such fires than to risk overrun in the rear by bypassing Russian infantry, probably because they were hoping for poorer Russian infantry-artillery cooperation - and for their positions being unlocated in the forests. Which it seems the Russians did not suffer from as much as the Germans hoped, had IDed enough gun positions beforehand for the initial barrage to seriously mess them up, etc.

The German strongpoint was a regimental Kampfgruppe,based around its attached artillery battalion - 12x105mm - and reserve infantry battalion. Which would have its own battalion mortars. The 37 guns mentioned as captured, and "including 7 assault guns", were probably the artillery battalion's 12 105s, regimental infantry guns (6-8) and mortars (6-12 81mm per battalion), and whatever Pz Jgrs were attached to that KG (likely the remaining strength of a StuG or Marder company).

You'd have to imagine the other two battalions in the KG out in front of that strongpoint, and probably somewhat to either side, as the screen. Lower in strength than the reserve strongpoint, and spread over 4-6 positions and a dozen or so listening posts, in two "belts". The idea being for the listening posts to detect incoming attacks and gauge their strength and direction, then fall back to the up-battalion fighting positions. The massed guns in the KG strongpoint then allocate fires to break up the attacks ahead of them in sequence. The assault guns and an alert company back in the reserve position are standing by to counterattack to reestablish the line here or there as needed. That would be the plan.

But the reality of the execution would be, the guns get suppressed by counterbattery, the OP-LPs get overrun. Confused fighting at the forward strongpoints, some holding up the first wave but inundated by the second or third. They don't do any better because the artillery they counted on does not come down in support of them. Large portions of the Russian first wave, passing between the forward positions, reach the reserve KG position around the guns, and lap around it. As their supporting waves come up, they attack, and the defenders have lost too many of their guns already to hold out well. Thus the large bag of guns at that one location, and the German description of mere holdouts here and there by nightfall and basically destroyed.


THE LANDSER

The enlisted in the German army in 1944, particularly in the west, were not veterans of years of campaigning. Most of them hadn't even been in the army 6 months earlier. Even the "veteran divisions" were mostly only veteran in cadre - their officers and NCOs - not in the ranks. The reason is simple - men in the ranks just don't last very long in a major war when you are getting the crap beaten out of you.

Second, esprit de corps and victory are two very different things. The Germans didn't get a lot worse rapidly just because they started losing, nor after they had been losing for a while and those who had won for a long time were mostly dead or invalids or prisoners. The reason being precisely that esprit de corps doesn't depend on macro victory - nor on propaganda for that matter. It is about one man's loyalty to those right next to him and the risks and sacrifices he is willing to make for his immediate comrades, not anything to do with how the whole war is going or why the higher ups want the war in the first place.

12SS was entirely green in Normandy. The men had never seen action before, not only not as a unit but for all but the cadre, ever. They were barely 18 years old and some were as young as 16. The cadre was veteran and the unit fought well, but experience had nothing to do with it. They didn't have any.
17SS was also entirely green in Normandy, and its cadre was considerably less experienced, and the unit less lavishly equipped. It fought very poorly in its first action, doing OK on the attack but losing heart at the first check, and breaking in outright panic as soon as they were counterattacked by US armor. The front had to be held for them by steadier FJ forces already in that part of the line. They recovered and went on to fight OK - not great, just OK - in Normandy, where the unit took quite heavy losses. It fought again in the Lorraine with a new batch of replacements. But just comparing this formation at first contact with the US airborne and US armored forces they encountered, all the experience edge was on the US side.

You might think the older SS formations were at least all battle hardened veterans. But 9SS and 10SS were only formed in February 1944, and had fought only 1 serious action before being redeployed to the west. They were blooded and therefore not green, but they had only a few months of real combat experience. 

But 2SS was one of the oldest of the SS panzer divisions, so at least they must be long service veterans. Well no, because the unit was being rebuilt after extremely serious losses in Russia. More than half of the men were completely green when they got to Normandy, their only previous "action" being wild murdering of French civilians just before the Normandy fight. You might think at least the cadre was very experienced, but actually they had a shortage of nearly 50% in lower officers and NCOs.

Which means the only truly veteran SS formation in Normandy was 1SS. It too had taken serious losses in Russia, but not as serious as 2SS.

This pattern repeats in the other services, the pattern being "uneven, all types represented". Panzer Lehr was an elite formation formed from the staff of the military schools, but Normandy was its first fight as a field unit. 116th Panzer was entirely green; it had never seen action and was still forming when the campaign began. 2nd Panzer was truly veteran in the same manner as 1SS, if not more so - it was one of the best divisions in the German army. In the infantry, the 352nd behind Omaha was formed around veterans and extremely well equipped. The 700 series right beside it was full of overaged German draftees who had never seen action, plus "press-ganged" Russians and Poles ("Osttruppen"), and its equipment was half that of its neighbor. Many of the latter surrendered as soon as it was physically safe to do so.

In short, the German army of 1944 was not uniform and not uniformly veteran, in particular. It was instead all over the map. Some green but fought well, others green and weak, some with expert cadre, some with lousy green cadre (static infantry divisions e.g.), some with only half a cadre - every level of actual experience you can think of was represented by one formation or another. 

The same was happening on other fronts for similar reasons - a high rate of loss and destruction creates not uniform experience but churn and chaotic variety, depending on both the "vintage" and the recent battlefield "fate" of this or that unit.

Hugh Cole in "the Lorraine Campaign" describing running into an ad hoc German infantry unit formed out of the cadets of the Metz officer candidate school (the so called "Fahnenjunkerschule Regiment" of division 462, which otherwise had a bunch of low quality fortress troops)

"All the advantage was on the side of the enemy, who was fighting from steel and concrete, knew every yard of the ground, and held the main heights which gave observation over the area and facilitated counterattacks. Furthermore there was a hard core in the heterogeneous troops facing the 2nd Infantry, tough products of the Metz military schools, now formed into special assault detachments and burning to distinguish themselves. These units were not content to fight a simple delaying action, but adhered rigidly to the German tactical doctrine of continuous local counterattacks designed to recover all lost ground and bar the approaches to the separate fortifications. Early on the morning of 8 September a large German raiding party filtered into the lines of the 1st Battalion (Maj. W. H. Blakefield) and killed or captured two officers and sixty-six men before it could be driven off..."

The unit was too small to matter in more than a local sense, but it was elite by the full dictionary definition. It is of course an incredible waste to use an entire class of future officers as mere infantry in a back and forth trench raid fortress fight, but man for man they were certainly more effective than the same number of random conscripts.


VOLKSGRENADIERS - LATE WAR GERMAN INFANTRY TACTICS

Volksgrenadier formations were the result of a structual reorganization of the '44 infantry division. Many fought very well, sometimes appreciably better than mobile arm forces more lavishly equipped (e.g. around Nancy, infiltrating tactics in the early Bulge fighting). They generally had experienced cadres, were well equipped with infantry weapons and were not without artillery.

The manpower for the divisions was far from scraping bottom of the barrel. The men came from the replacement army, from rear echelons of all services, from the navy, from Luftwaffe ground personnel (bloated with manpower as they ran out of fighters and fuel) and from removal of exemptions for classes of workers in important industries (and the economy peaked around the time they were drafted partially as a result).  The VG started forming in the summer and were manning positions in the field by the fall. They were important in stopping the western allies at the borders of Germany. Quality declined after that, with units filled out with kids by the end of 1944 and regularly so in 1945.

The reason Volksgrenadiers received machine pistols was not due to poor marksmanship training, or a shortage of rifles. The Germans had plenty of rifles - they made something like 21 million of them during the war, far more than the number of MPs made. Much of the VG actually still had rifles, not because that was the plan but because there weren't as many MPs as wanted for all the new formations.

The reason MPs were wanted was to allow small numbers of men to have a large impact in close quarters fighting. The SMG was invented specifically with trench warfare in mind, as "trench brooms". German infantry got very good at close defense, which exploited small unit tactics, good NCOs, and special weapons like panzerfausts. If you are waiting for panzerfaust range to spring an ambush in the first place, you don't need the range of a rifle, and extra instant firepower is a welcome addition instead.

At Nancy, the Germans threw several Panzer brigades along with 2 shells of full PDs (used for HQs, arty, etc) at an American AD, and did no better than exchange down, if that. But a VG division fighting in forest, with night attacks and in morning fog, ran that US AD out of infantry in a matter of days and put it back on its heels.  "Alternating sectors of high and low ground isolated the American detachments at outposts on road blocks and made them fair prey to attack in detail. German infantry were consistently able to win at least temporary success by attacking under the cover of darkness or fog, blinding the American outposts with flares, pinning them in position with automatic weapon fire, encircling and then sweeping over the position." 

In the Bulge, VG divisions successfully put battalions through the US lines in forest marches, attacked artillery batteries and support elements in the battlefield rear, cut roads, etc. That is what you need infantry for. Sub-elements that didn't have enough - e.g. Peiper - couldn't keep the roads to the forward elements open. The attack on Bastogne failed mainly because the force inside the pocket had at least as much infantry as the force ringing it outside.

Infantry has a specific combat power, which is terrain dependent. If infantry is of sufficient quality it delivers this combat power - and by and large, the VG divisions did so. It does not depend fundamentally on ranged small arms to deliver it.  Infantry fights in close terrain often because that is the operational task of infantry. You don't put it on an open field unsupported. You defend at river lines, in large forests and hilly terrain, in towns. If you have fausts (and mines) and the enemy has armor, you set up short range ambushes in these places, defend from reserve slopes, etc.

The long range fight is dominated by artillery fires, and by armored forces where the terrain allows them to operate easily. Ranged fire by infantry, useful in some forms of defense (areas surrounded by open e.g.) relies on infantry heavy weapons to deliver it - MGs and mortars - not on side arms. The VG had plenty of excellent MG42s and 81mm mortars for this.

Both the US army and the British army have at various times had fetishes for long ranged rifle fire, and advance notions only marginally less silly than the cult of the bayonet, on the subject. The reality is most infantry combat is dominated by heavier weapons than small arms, and this is particularly true of the ranged portion of the fighting. None of which differ substantially from army to army or turn on the choice of small arm.

The only place where it is not true that heavier weapons dominate the fighting, is in conditions where they cannot operate effectively, due to limited range and visibility conditions. At night. In forests or jungle. In urban areas. In those situations, heavy weapons are still used but they do not carry the entire fight. And those are precisely the occasions when SMGs (and grenades, actually) shine.

The VG divisions had MG42s. Lots of them. They had mortars. No the 120 at battalion was never standard, as we've established on other threads, and very few formations were ever equipped with them. The 81mm was standard throughout the whole war - 2 per company plus 4 at battalion.

The Germans produced more than 75 million rounds of 81mm mortar (and even more than that, of 105mm howitzer). The Allies didn't suffer even that number of casualties. Not only do you not need to hit with every bullet, you don't need to hit with every HE shell. There is a reason up to 70% of casualties are from HE fragments, while bullets are only a quarter or so (and MGs cause most of those).

The rifle vs. MP decision turns largely on the expected defense scheme the infantry is to use, whether it is "up" - contesting wide expanses of open ground, actively firing, etc - or "back" - on reverse slopes and inside terrain, short ambushes, night counterattacks, etc. The second works by avoiding superior attacker firepower in the long range systems (not rifles, artillery and tanks).

If you are going to fight on the Russian steppe rifles are clearly better, though SMGs will have special role uses. If you are going to fight back defenses in wooded hills at the edges of Germany, plenty of uses for SMGs will be found. Oh and even at TOE, part of the VG was standard pattern LMG+rifle infantry, and they weren't all equipped with MPs up to TOE. Rifles remained common, with a loadout more like security infantry types in CM. Far from choosing MPs because they were cheaper, they still had rifles coming out of their ears and couldn't get enough MPs to equip units according to their desired plan.

What does SMG equipped infantry fight with at 250m? Same thing all infantry fights with at 500-1000m - radioed fire missions from div arty, mortar fire from organic mortars, MGs firing bursts. What do riflemen generally hit at 500-1000m? Not a darn thing. A few specialists or men with scopes, sure - and the VG had those too.

Rifle and LMG infantry gets more than half its firepower at range from just the LMG. You can keep all of that and not have short range surge FP. Or you can have much higher short range surge FP, and give up the rifle half of the distant stuff.

Since small arms are a minor part of the distant stuff, infantry prefers to remain stealthy to revealing themselves by ineffective long range fire, you still have all the heavy weapons and the MG half, you have rifle pattern infantry still organic as well - it is a minor thing to give up.

When you can have both because you have true assault rifles, you take both. Oh and you don't need a 4000 joule rifle round, a carbine round will do, because the firing that matters will generally take place at 300m or less. You can carry twice as much of the lighter rounds, too. That is what everybody did after the war - and the Germans started doing during it.

A Jaeger division in contrast was a light infantry division, with only 2 infantry regiments and no tanks at all. The Jaeger designation means "hunter". They had been initially intended for forest fighting and were lighter on motor transport, used somewhat lighter artillery, and were trained to move and fight off road. The nearest thing in the rest of the order of battle were the mountain divisions, which were also light infantry divisions, but specifically trained in climbing and similar skills for mountain use.   But units so designated were employed as skirmishers, open order fighters, and (operational scale) irregulars rather than formed close order infantry formations back to the Napoleonic wars (and in some cases even earlier). So the term came to mean "forest fighters". A German Jaeger infantry division was basically a "Forest divison" just like a Gebirgsjaeger divsion was a "Mountain division". 


THE RED ARMY WAR MACHINE

There was nothing wrong with Russian interwar doctrine - which incidentally was not copied from the west. In so e ways it was the best in the workd, particularly the understanding of the need to sequence multiple large scale operations, the logistics limits on them, what the role of new mechanized forces was going to be, and the like.n it wasn't as good as the German doctrine in tactical details, combined arms principles, and some of the German maneuver tradition going back to Moltke the elder, but nobody else had that stuff down, either. Tbey had their internal political fights over it - the party basically feared that proper modern doctrine made generals tech heroes in a manner they feared was essentially tied to fascist politics, which was both paranoid and stupid, and they destroyed the brains that had come up with it in the purges, set back training and adoption etc. but the military acadamies had taught it to a fair portion of the senior officers, especially the younger ones who would rise to top commands during the war itself.

The more basic problem on the doctrine side was that it was still just academic theory. It had not had time to reshape the army along the lines of its thinking, and where it had, it had done so in impractical ways, for lack of serious experiment and training in full scake exercises and the like. The army could not implement the mobile part of the doctrine. The officer corps in particular, its lower ranks especially, was not remotely up to the standard of the Germans or even of the professionals of the western armies. In training, education, time in grade, staff work, etc. Bravery they could do, obediance they had done, about all there was to work with. Yes that reflected the purges, but also the scale of the force and its rapid expansion to that scale, its reliance on reserve mobilization (necessary given that scale in any event), lack of wartime experience, etc. at most, a small cadre had some battle experience from Spain or the brief fight with Japan - and the party tended to distrust those with the former experience. The Finnish winter war had been a disaster and showed how unready the force was, and didn't correct that, though a few of the officers involved got started off its lessons.

The two biggest weaknesses were combat service and support (CSS, more on it below), by far the biggest, and poor combined arms handling at the tactical level, particularly all cooperation with armor. They compounded each other, with weaknesses in the former forcing departures from book doctrine on the latter, that then failed. Behind the CSS failures lay inadequate staff ability, the officer management bandwidth to conduct the mech arms orchestra flawlessly. This was made worse by overly large mech formations with an org chart that wasn't streamlined enough and put extra levels of command between the key deciders and the execution, by lots of obsolete equipment (think early 1930s era T-26s, flocks of them) in a poor state of readiness, by inadequate facilities to keep anynof it working, and by lack of realistic large scale training (as opposed to unit level training or carefully staged set pieces).

On the org aspect, a prewar mech corps had two tank divisions, each with its own brigades, and those tank heavy. It had 2000 trucks at TOE, and 600 to 1000 tanks, depending on the makes. There were dozens of these. A huge portion of the tanks were old T-26s and the types were mixed, as were the truck types. To get a formation like that to move over a limited dirt road net from point A to point B with gas for everyone where and when they needed it, without traffic jams and without roads blocked by broken down tanks, with repair and spare parts to get the fall outs moving again, and then exoecting them to arrive with all arms together and coordinated, in communication with each other across weapon types, form them up into fighting combined arms teams, and go in to a schedule to hit the enemy in a well coordinated way - all proved beyond the capacity of one schooled muckety muck and his staff of four high school graduates with a pack of index cards, a phone and a couple of pencils. I exaggerate slightly for the sake of clarity.

What actually happened is they didn't manage it, one column got stopped by a T-26 regiment running out of gas, holding up 200 trucks behind, carrying the infantry expected to be part of the show; the other tank division got a brigade of newer BTs to the jump off point and looked around for all the folks supposed to attack with them, waited three hours, finally heard they wouldn't be ready until tomorrow morning, thought "that's crazy, this battle will be over by then", and drove down the road unsupported and attacked off the line of march as best they could. After scaring the German front line infantry, lost in the defended zone, they blundered onto a gun line and lost a bunch of tanks. They try again with minimal changes an hour or two latter and the Germans are readier for them than ever, and fails. The next day, an infantry battalion detrucks and tries, but expects the BTs to lead and do things for them; the try and fail, the infantry presses, and gets killed too. Nobody has heard from the artillery, which is 20 miles away in a traffic jam.

The CSS failures are huge by western or even later war Russian standards. A third of the tanks fall out on a road march. There are not planned arrangements to pick them up and fix them. The front moves and a road is cut. A full brigade worth of tankers get out and walk, in retreat, leaving their broken down hulks just sitting there. Another brigade follows the wrong dirt track, runs out of gas, and the trucks with the gas went someplace else, and by the time it is even sorted out whar did happen - let alone what has to happen next - there are Germans across the intersection between them.

Up at the operational level, a full mech corps hits the German lines, two days of confusion are reported, the corps is now a brigade, and the Germans resume their march. The Russian officers report losing their tanks to swamps (the swamp monster, I call it, because it appears over and over in these excuses). It fiesn't help that the Luftwaffe is strafing the columns making traffic jams worse, and German signals intel locates every radio with a range of more than a few miles and has told the Luftwaffe and army artillery where the Russian HQs are within hours, whenever they switch the set on. So soon the officers are trying to coordinate this sprawling mess with dispatch riders, who do or don't arrive with orders hours old that were issued without a clear picture of everything in the first place, and were nonsense on stilts two hours later. Then every muckety muck tries to clear it all up with their own orders, and the regiment commander has one order from brigade and another from division and a third (12 hours okd) from the original corps plan, but his (tiny) staff is telling him he can't physically do that anyway, because support X hasn't cone up and route Y is clogged and there is only enough gas to reach Z.

Now decide. You have five minutes. It all goes pear shaped pretty quickly.

Some of this clears up as the decreipt T-26s drop out of the force. Some as the screwiest commanders get killed. Sone as people learn their jobs better. But above all, the army reduces its ambitions and goes to tank brigades and gets thise working, the recreates division sized tank corps with a much flatter structure only after those are working. The types get more uniform, with the reliable and cross country capable T-34 becoming the workhorse. They only go back to trying to run tank armies after all those are working properly, and they use thise only with a lot more planning, and only a handful of them (with lots of independent division scale tank corps working for combined arms armies instead). The staffs get bigger and much more professional, and it all gets real and realistic. Just a lot of poor slobs get killed in the meantime.

On the attack, it took the Russians some time to learn the difference between a measured approach to concentration and "overstacking".  Success turns on terrain, defender alertness, counter-concentration efforts, tactical skill of the break-in, etc. Just packing them in, when that was all the Russians had going for them, regularly resulted in bloody fiascos. Add good intel directing effective counterbattery and prep, tactical surprise, effective use of terrain to mask parts of the approach, etc, and you can get a success. But stacking alone does not produce it. 

The reason was already understood by the Germans in WW I and incorporated into their defense schemes. Getting more combat power by packing in infantry increases exposed area to area fire weapons in direct proportion to any increase in outgoing combat ability. It therefore multiplies damage taken by the same factor as damage inflicted.

Worse, there are high area firepower defense means that have very low target signature to attacking infantry. Howitzers over the horizon, dug in and well hidden MGs, minefields and obstacle belts - none of them give a hoot about how many riflemen there are on the other side of the field. They are not suppressed by the increased outgoing. So their impact multiples up in direct proportion to attacker density.

If they are dense enough, they inflict losses on any attacking force sufficient to radically disorganize it and to crack its morale. The attack may then occupy ground - nearly undefended, taking out a few MG nests and LPs and seizing the first obstacle belts and trenches - but it will sustain losses in the process out of all proportion to anything it inflicts back.

The lesson was therefore learned that concentration by infantry fails against adequate technical means. In WW I, there were two tactical solutions to the defense dominance that resulted - relying on massive arty fires, and tactical surprise. The former could work but was ridiculously expensive in material terms if the defensive positions were well prepared, and could still fail outright if the defenders did simple things like evacuate their forward positions on warning of an attack. The second had a better track record but was hard to achieve reliably, once the scale grew beyond the trench raid level.

The Russians had a fetish of concentration on attack sectors. It did not mean overstacking but depth, the waves explained above. The sin being avoided as evenly spreading the force all along the line, thereby making all the defenders effective and nowhere getting maximum use of technical means and combined arms. Even spreading was used only for defense and even then only for a minumum variety of weapons and the basic depth. Meaning a rifle division in 2 up 1 back formation with its organic 45mm, 76mm, 120mm, MGs, etc. Everything more specialized was supposed to be in the right place instead of everywhere - which in practice still meant spread, but over ~1/3 of the line where it would do the most good, instead of the whole line. So if a rifle army has 6 RDs and an antitank brigade attached, all of the ATB will be covering the sector of the 2 most threatened RDs. Instead of 12 ATGs per RD, 4 go without and 2 get 36 each, enough to put an extra battery of 76mm with each rifle battalion.

Problems presented by terrain and seasonal factors were a key driver for tactics and formations.  A sample report:  70% of the bridgehead south of Bendery were covered by forests and gardens (meaning farmland?); there were few good roads. Paths had to be made through thick underbrush, which severely restricted the mobility of Soviet troops. Lakes and swampy areas led to a splitting up of formations. There were no commanding heights inside the bridgehead. Lower lying areas suffered from a high ground-water table (40-80cm below ground) making the construction of gun and tank pits as well as trenches difficult. In some areas trenches had to be created by piling up earth, and tanks supported by logs. [...] In the area of combat black, heavy soil is dominant, with some clay. After heavy rains and during the flood season in spring and autumn the country lanes soften up and are difficult for wheeled vehicles to drive on. [...] The network of country lanes, alleys, and particularly the rail network was poor; there were few villages inside the bridgehead. The majority of settlements was on the rivers, in gorges and valleys.'

Compared to the other belligerents, the Red army was organized differently, tasked differently, placed less reliance on close coordination with artillery fires, wasn't based on small probes by limited infantry elements to discover the enemy and subject him to more of those fires, etc.

The Russian force is divided into its mechanized arm and the rifle arm (called "combined arms" at the army level, but still distinct from mech).  Each had its own specific mix of standard tactics.  There are some common elements between them, but you should basically think of them as two distinct doctrines, each tailored to the force types and operational roles that type had.  Conceptually, the mech arm is the arm of maneuver and decision and exploitation, while the rifle arm is the arm of holding ground, creating breakthroughs / assault, and general pressure.  Rifle forces were numerically dominant and provided the structure of lines and provided mass for attacks. They were also expected to lead breakthrough fighting.  The mech arm is numerically only about a tenth of the force, but is far better armed and equipped, and controls more like 2/3rds of the armor. They did most of the attacking after the first break in, and a fair portion of the defensive fighting as reaction reserves.

The Red Army's operational units were rifle armies, tank armies, and tank or mech corps. Rifle armies accomplished things with their organic rifle divisions, and frequently had a single tank corps assigned when they had an offensive role, and/or a few brigades or regiments of tanks or SUs. 

The Front is the first element of the force structure that does not respect this distinction and is entirely above it, and Fronts are not uniform in composition, but always contain forces of both types (just sometimes only limited amounts of the mech type).  From the army level down to the brigade level, the distinction applies at one level or another.  Below that level it still applies but cross attachments may blur somewhat, but normally at all lower levels one has clearly either the mech or the rifle force type and uses the tactics appropriate to that type.

The army level is the principle control level for supporting elements and attachments - much higher than in other armies (e.g. for the Germans it was almost always the division level, with little above that level in the way of actual maneuver elements). The army commander is expected to "task" his pool of support arms formations to this or that division-scale formation within his command for a specific operation, depending on the role he has assigned to that formation.  This can easily double the organic weapons of such formations, and in the combined arms armies, is the sole way the rifle divisions get armor allocated to them.  What are we talking about here?  Independent tank brigades and regiments, SU regiments, heavy mortar regiments, rocket brigades and battalions, antitank brigades and regiments, motorcycle recon regiments and battalions, extra pioneer battalions, heavy artillery formations from regiment up to divisions in size, etc.  Basically, half of the guns and all of the armor is in the army commander's "kit bag" to dole out to his divisions depending on their role.  A rifle division tasked to lead an attack may have a full tank brigade attached, plus a 120mm mortar formation to double its firepower at the point of the intended breakthrough.  Another rifle division expected to defend on relatively open ground, suited to enemy tanks, may have an antitank artillery brigade attached, tripling its number of 76mm guns, and a pioneer battalion besides, tasked with mining all likely routes and creating anti tank ditches and other obstacles, etc.

Tank armies generally had 3 mech corps, 2 tank and 1 mech being the most common form at mid-war.  Tank corps were the minimum operational units of armor for fighting in the mech fashion. The brigades of a Russian mech or tank corps are their analog to US combat commands or German Kampfgruppen.

A tank corps has a motor rifle brigade of 3 infantry battalions - enough to assign one battalion to each tank brigade.  Each tank corps also had a motorcycle recon battalion and a pioneer battalion. These would often have their own missions elsewhere, but they rounded out the infantry support.  Some forces would double one of these subcomponents while dropping another, rather than everyone having a proportional slice.

Self-propelled (SU) regiments consist of one of the following: 12 SU-152s, 16 SU-122, or 20 SU-76 (plus a command vehicle, typically). SUs are thought of as artillery formations, and are organized as firing batteries of 4 pieces. A battery in the artillery is a company-sized, not a platoon-sized formation (because it needs ammo detail, fire planners etc).

Heavy tank regiments had 21 tanks. There were also independent tank regiments equipped with lend lease vehicles, typically 40 or so, that were used to support the infantry for the most part (Valentines and such). There were also independent regiments equipped with Russian equipment, typically mixed T-70s and T-34s. In 1942 there were a lot of light tanks (T-60s e.g.) that were spread around supporting infantry, too. Sometimes these were with mixed formations that had a few KVs and T-34s, but frequently those were missing, and an RD might just have a regiment of T-60s and split them up as mobile MG nests and scouts etc.

Then there were larger armor formations that were subordinated to infantry armies. It was common for each army to have a tank brigade, and ones given an offensive role often had a tank corps assigned to them as their breakthrough lead and exploitation force. Sometimes a few regiments of SUs were attached at army level, too - particularly late in the war, when there were scads of them. These would be assigned to a particular sector to beef up its antitank ability or to enable one rifle division to attack more effectively. 
The same happened with the independent tank brigades - those would generally pair with one RD, rather than being split over several.

An independent tank brigade has an infantry battalion, thus a rider company for each of the 21 tank battalions.  The supported rifle formation would supply any additional infantry required.

These different layers of modest independent supporting armor forces let the higher ups pick the armor to infantry ratio. There were maybe 5 formulaic levels of this:

1. A full tank army had 3 mech corps and attached SUs, sometimes a heavy tank regiment as well, and was expected to fight purely in the mech style, and was given important independent operational missions.

2. A single tank corps, on the other hand, was expect to act as a sword for the army it was assigned to, but fighting in the mech style. Usually it was kept together, though often one brigade would be held back in reserve, and the other two might find themselves reinforcing adjacent sectors with the prior infantry formations still present. On defense in particular.

3. A single tank brigade was not expected to fight on its own, but instead teamed with some larger formation and gave it armor support. Sometimes it would be split to defend. Or after a rifle regiment leads an attack, it hits the breech as a body and tries to widen it for the next one.  Independent tank brigades and regiments were used to support rifle formations. 

4. Single regiments aren't expect to fight alone either, and instead are supporting some combat team, subordinate to a particular division or mech corps commander. And they might well be penny packeted, as low as one platoon of SUs supporting an infantry battalion.

5. Last there is the level of "no armor", which you see for static defense or fighting in terrain unsuited to tanks. Also sometimes early one, say through mid 1942. But later, attacks in terrain where tanks could move at all would have one of the above levels of armor support. In cases of "none", towed guns used direct were the ranged overwatch arm, rather than tanks.

Sample levels of armor support in different operational roles - 11 Guards Army in Kutuzov hada major breakthrough role, and had been bulked up to the size of 2 standard armies. 2 tank corps worked alongside it and exploited through its breech - 1st and 5th - but remained operationally independent and subordinated to Western Front. 11th Guards itself had 4 tank brigades, a heavy tank regiment (KVs), a separate tank regiment (LL), and an SU regiment. The army total was 280 AFVs for 12 RDs. The neighboring 50th Army, initially defensive and screening a long sector, but eventually pressed into a subsidiary diversionary attack, had 1 tank brigade and 1 SU regiment, 87 AFVs total, for 7 RDs.

The Front level had 2 tank corps each with its own SU regiment, 3 extra tank brigades, and 5 extra tank regiments. It could and did dole out the independent brigades and regiments to beef up RDs in this sector or that. About half the armor was in the 2 TCs.

So overall, that front had 2 tank corps, 8 tank brigades, 7 tank regiments (for KVs and LL), and 5 SU regiments. It used half of the independent armor - a quarter of the total - to support the initial breakthrough effort and kept the other half initially in reserve to meet events. And unleashed the major TCs - with half the armor, used en masse but fighting mech style not rifle style - on day 2 of the offensive (basically).

What is characteristic of this thoroughly mixed system is that it puts flexibility in the hands of the Front and Army commanders for operational planning, while the lower divisional guys can't rely on a single set amount of support coming from a TOE. They get what the muckety-mucks give them.

The actual mix of weapons present in an area therefore depended on 1 TOE less losses and 2 higher level decisions about where to put all this extra stuff. The TOE at the division level or below was a base level or bare minumum. They'd have more of whatever the mission called for, added on top by army or front command.

The mech guys fought more nearly at TOE - their TOE just included lots of these extras, typically at mech corps level, occasionally at tank army level. Even then the tank army stuff was usually assigned to a given mech corps for the duration of a single operation.  

The striking portion was the tank brigade, with a single battalion of infantry to the equivalent of a western tank battalion's worth of tanks. Thus quite tank heavy. The infantry typically rode on the decks of the tanks. If some followed in trucks e.g. for weapons etc, it was a secondary measure. Indirect artillery coordination was minimal and limited to the 76mm and 120mm mortar stuff mentioned above. Basically tanks with riders were expected to be able to take ground on their own. They were massed and it usually worked, though a failure in the face of a PAK front or superior AFVs could get expensive. Lacking arty etc.

The mechanizeed corps had a bit more infantry weight than the tank corps and generally had the role of holding the ground taken until rifle formations closed up. The offensive part of the mech way of fighting was quite tank heavy. The tank corps was effectively their armor division, and its permanent brigade structure was there version of KGs or combat commands. Meaning, all cross attachments and such occurred at the brigade level, and everything other than the main 4 brigade themselves was given to some one of them for its mission. One was frequentty kept out of battle as the corps commander's reserve, and anything not really assigned would be put with it. The tank corps structure of 3 tank and 1 motor rifle brigade was meant to strike with tank heavy forces and hold the ground taken with mech infantry.

The mech infantry was purely truck borne, and intended to keep up with the tanks in an operational sense, but fought dismounted as ordinary infantry. The organic "antitank" regiments of the mech formations were their main field artillery as well - 76mm guns, motorized. They also used 120mm mortars, again motorized. Nothing heavier was expected to keep up with the mech or to stay supplied - though MRLs were also used in major operations, frequently for just 1-2 shoots then leaving to resupply. So when motor infantry went to hold something, it occupied ground already taken by the tank forces, dug in infantry, set up 76mm guns for direct and indirect fire, registered 120mm mortars and their own organic 82mms - the last typically direct lay - and held until foot rifle formations relieve them.

The overall system was echelons in depth, a macro version of traditional line and column tactics from clear back to the Napoleonic period. Compared to others, the Russians used much greater depth. This was a reaction to empirical unreliability of single layers and subelements. Flat deployments of all major subelements on line were almost never used. Defensive deployments were generally 2 up 1 back to cover frontage, while attack deployments were frequently in full column, a major unit getting the frontage of only a single sub-unit. This was true for both rifle and mech components, though mech were a bit more likely to use 2 up 1 back on the attack, looking for a weak point rather than overloading a chosen one.

All echelons and formation types were expected to provide their own scouting and their own inherent fire support - though it was frequently fairly modest - and had ways of accomplishing their typical missions without any outside assistance. There was much less favoring of a single echelon level as the coordinator of all actions. And important decisions were shoved much higher up the chain of command than was typical in other country's systems.

There were all sorts of specialist unit types, which were generally folded into the formations they were supposed to work with as attachments or 4th or 5th pieces of their command span, each an echelon level smaller than the unit they supported. But to a much greater extent than other armies, they also pooled these an echelon level or two higher, and then assigned them to larger formations than usual, to bump up their combined arms ratio in this or that category.

This was effectively a method of centralizing the force composition decision at a higher level, typically army. Thus, AA would exist as divisions of 4 regiments each about enough to protect a single division sector, by pushing their battery subcomponents down to regiments. But an AA division was used, in order to put the decision "where does the AA go?" in the hands of the army commander or his chief of staff. He might delegate regiments to each of his divisions but he might instead concentrate it on a single sector or use most of it to cover artillery positions or supply routes etc.  The same was done with AT formations, 120mm mortar formations, rocket formations, larger caliber artillery formations, motorcycle recon formations, etc.

Every division is given enough of the supporting arms to just barely fulfill its minimal standard role, and everything needed to do it better is pooled up in the army commander's kit bag, and doled out by him to shape the battle.  Similarly, the army commander will retain major control of artillery fires and fire plans.  Those are not a matter of a 2nd Lt with a radio calling in his target of opportunity, but of a staff of half a dozen highly trained technicians drafting a coordinated plan for days, all submitted to and approved - or torn up - by the army commander.  This highly centralized system was meant to maximize the impact of very scarce combined arms intelligence and tactical skill, which could not be expected of every green 2nd Lt.  

Within the rifle divisions, each level of the org chart has its own organic fire support, so that it does not need to rely on the highest muckety-muck and his determination that your sector is the critical one today.  When he does decide that, he is going to intervene in your little corner of the world with a weight of fire like a falling house; when he doesn't, you are going to make do with your assigned peashooters.

The divisional commander is assigning his much smaller divisional fires on the same principles, with the understanding that those smaller fires become not so small if the army commander lends him an extra 36 120mm mortars for this one.  The regimental commander may get his share of the divisional fires or he may get nothing outside what his own organic firepower arms can supply - but he gets a few 76mm infantry guns and some 120mm mortars and a few 45mm ATGs so that he can make such assignments even if he gets no help.  Frankly though the regiment adds little - it mostly assigns its battalions missions, and the regimental commander's main way of influencing the fight is the formation he assigns to those component battalions.  Formation in the very simplest sense - he has 3 on line to cover a wide front, or he has 3 in column on the same frontage to provide weight behind an attack, or the 2-1 or 1-2 versions of either of those.  It is not the case that he always uses 2-1 on all roles.  The most common defense is 2-1 and the most common offensive formation is column, all 3 one behind the other on the same frontage.  Notice, this isn't about packing the riflemen in - those will go off in waves at proper intervals front to back.  But it puts all 27 of the regiment's 82mm mortars (9 per battalion) in support behind 1 or 2 kilometers of front line.

The fire support principle at the battalion level is not implemented by having one of the component battalions support the others by fire from a stationary spot, with all arms.  Instead it is a combined arms thing inside each battalion.  They each have their 9 82mm mortars and their 9 Maxim heavy machineguns organized into platoons, and the "fire support plan" is based on those infantry heavy weapons.  Battalion AT ability is minimal - 2 45mm ATGs and a flock of ATRs, barely enough to hold off enemy halftracks and hopeless against whole battalions of tanks.  But that is because the higher muckety-mucks are expected to know where the enemy tanks are going to come and to have put all the army level ATG formations and their own supporting armor formations and the pioneers with their minefields and obstacles, in those spots.

Down inside the battalion, the same formation choices arise for the component rifle companies as appeared at battalion, and the usual formations are again 2-1 on defense and all in column on the attack.  And yes that means you sometimes get really deep columns of attack, with a division first stepping off with just a few lead companies with others behind them, and so on.  This doesn't mean packed shoulder to shoulder formations, it means normal open intervals 9 times in a row, one behind another, only one at a time stepping off into enemy fire zones.  These "depth tactics" were meant to *outlast* the enemy on the same frontage, in an attrition battle, *not* to "run him off his feet in one go", nor to outmaneuver him.  The later parts could be sidestepped to a sector that was doing better and push through from there.  The last to "pancake" to the front if the other had all failed, would not attack, but instead go over to the defensive on the original frontage and hold.  One gets reports of huge loss totals and those "justifying" the attack attempt when this happens - the commander can show that he sent 8/9ths of his formation forward but they could not break through.  It is then the fault of the muckety muck who didn't gauge the level of support he needed correctly or given him enough supporting fires etc.  If on the other hand the local commander came back with losses of only his first company or two and a remark that "it doesn't look good, we should try something else", he will be invited to try being a private as that something else, etc.

The rifle formations did not generally have tanks - sometimes modest levels of support from an independent armor brigade, or SU-76 formation later in the war - so the heavy firepower and overwatch role was performed by a different subgroup. It was the heavy weapons formations and artillery attachments. This included the MGs, the mortars, and the ATRs at the bottom of the echelon tree, and then added small antitank guns, infantry guns, 76mm guns in direct lay, and observors for those and for 120mm mortars indirect. All were regiment or below weapons in practice and under rifle formation command. Their role was overwatch fires, to react to fire hitting their own unit by taking out whoever was messing it up. They also formed the backbone of the defense when in position, both with heavy HE and MG coverage against infantry, and the AT net vs. armor. Range and relative immobility are their leading characteristics.


STALIN'S ORGANS: THE RED ARMY ARTILLERY

The Red Army artillery system was crude, but effective. Its efficiency drawbacks and limited flexibility are presumably obvious to people who know western systems. But it solves 3 tough problems that the Russians needed addressed.

First, it gives the higher commander a way to shape the developing battle. He decides where the artillery weight falls. It isn't pulled away by frantic units trying to save themselves - which there are in abundance, regularly. Central direction means artillery is used en masse where it is most needed - operationally speaking. The shells are not wasted on some secondary front because some FO is aggressive.

Second, it eases the logistic, unit shifting, and planning burden involved in keeping all these heavy tubes positioned and supplied. The ammo is saved unless an express order for its use comes down from on high. Staffers can plan out units of fire and combat days, a month in advance if they have to, and the calculations will be accurate. They can translate units of fire into tons of throughput and solve railcar loading problems, site dumps, allocate horse teams etc.

Westerners letting any battalion that wants to, fire off 5000 rounds a day, are leaning on fleets of 2 1/2 ton trucks that can move anything anywhere in an instant, on demand - the Russians have nothing remotely like that.

Third, the Russians have lots of tube production capacity but not so abundant ammo production capacity, and very weak logistics links once you leave the rail line compared to either. This system lets them multiply tubes everywhere, and then feed the ones that are close to the action, without moving them. And just leave the ones away from the action in position, but not fed. This might seem wasteful in tubes or the combat power per gun, but those are not scarce. Ability to move stuff is scarce, and ammo. So "preposition" the tubes, and some dumps, and then feed the ones that need it because the action is near them this week.

Why did the Russians go for tons of tubes? Partially just to ensure each subformation could serve as a delivery mechanism when asked to. But also logistically, high tube number meant a huge surge fire capacity after a long period of static front - but one they could not keep up. Flurry and lull. High tube number makes the most of the flurry part.

When the whole front moves 300 miles, the Russians have to pick up the whole apparatus and set it up again. That means railcar loadings, trips over repaired lines as fast as they can be fixed, rail unloadings, wagons out to the battery position. For the guns and for every shell. The rate determining step is not how fast you can cock the cannon, but how fast the horseteams and stevedores can do all this work. So when you've got lots of time from a relatively static front, you can blast as powerfully as you please. But when it moves, not so much. Ergo, you better get your firing in during that window, so the surge firepower has to be huge, because firing time is not going to be (with everyone in position, ready, supplied etc).

You don't get huge surge firepower to work by waiting around for neat targets. When the chance is there logistically, you grab it, and dump everything you can on every enemy area within range.

Artillery is pooled at the army level. Some is initially under Stavka control - the whole Russian army's central reserve - and it passes to Front command, but those are organizational "way stations" on the way to an army level assignment. Entire "breakthrough artillery corps" will be assigned to a single rifle army. With more besides - scores of independent regiments each of 20 or 24 guns. Half of all the tubes in the force are in these higher level pools, and they are the heavier half.

The armies that get them, get them because they have some key overall mission given to them by their Front or the overall high command. Example - 11 Guards Army is to spearhead the northern prong of Operation Kutuzov, aka the Orel counteroffensive.

OK, then it gets a whole breakthrough artillery corps - 8th - plus another artillery division - 14th - plus 12 yes that is right 12 more independent gun artillery regiments (122mm guns) plus 5 independent howitzer regiments plus 2 mortar regiments plus 2 rocket brigades and 5 rocket regiments - plus 3 AA divisions and 4 extra AA regiments (37mm) and 2 extra AA battalions (85mm). Overall, the army has 2650 guns and mortars 76mm and up and 140 MRLs. For 12 rifle divisions - over 200 guns per division, against more like 50 on the divisional TOE.

In 1944 and 1945, the Soviets managed to mass something like 300 guns per kilometer and fired barrages ranging between 45 minutes and 90 minutes. The artillery density got higher, up to one gun per meter at the start of the Berlin operation.  These totals come from adding up all the guns in an army and dividing by the width of its attack sector. An army might have 6 rifle divisions and a couple of tank corps (which are division sized), plus dozens of attached arty "regiments", attacking on a frontage of 20-30km. A third to half would be heavy stuff (depending on how many higher echelon independent regiments were supporting the attack), another third 76mm, the rest mortars.

Then how are they used? Well, the army picks an attack sector and stuff half its infantry in that sector, with more behind in second echelon. And the guns pile up behind that part of the front. Acres of them, layered by their ranges and missions. Some long ranged 122mm guns with counterbattery missions need to reach deep so they are pushed up close to the front. The divisional and regimental 76s and 120s are also close. The rockets come up close when it is time, but don't stay long. The bulk of the 122s and 152s are farther back, able to hit the first couple lines of German positions but otherwise sheltered by their range, spread to ease logisticial burdens and avoid being a perfect counterbattery or air target, etc.

Massive amounts of ammunition are stockpiled by all these guns. Remember the logistics system is mostly rail, with horses and wagons hauling stuff from rail line to firing position - so the build up takes weeks to months. And the stuff isn't going to move again, not rapidly.

Collection of intel was a core task for divisional and below staffs during the attack preparation. Higher levels of command would compare the amount of targets reported by divisions. If you were (well) below the average in reporting targets in your divisional sector, it could happen that the Front commander pays you a visit, and gives you the option to either report more targets, or attack on D-Day without artillery support (so happened to one Colonel commanding a rifle division - the meeting with Konev was apparently quite frosty).

During the barrage, artillery would also leave small corridors uncovered, through which assault companies/battalions would move, while the Germans are still in their dugouts. That way they would be in the trench, welcoming the Germans coming out of their dugouts when the barrage ended (vividly described by a survivor of the initial assault at Iassy).

It could also happen that the initial barrage was curtailed/cancelled, because the Germans had given up their first trench position to avoid it.

Finally, Soviet air support operated together with the artillery, and presumably integrated into the fireplan (again vividly described by the Iassy survivor).

At zero hour, they throw the kitchen sink at the German lines. They fire hurricane barrages for 3 hours on the morning of the attack, while the attacking infantry are still in their own holes. Not coordinated with ground movements, just a big fire plan based on whatever intel they've managed to collect before the whole show starts. 

A typical Russian prep barrage would open with all guns firing for just a few minutes (like 5 or 10), then particular targets being engaged by assigned battalions for the bulk of the barrage period, and at the end all guns firing again for a brief period.

During the bulk of the barrage period, each battalion has targets it is supposed to deal with within the planned time. But exactly when within that time is basically up to the firing battalion. They have some ammo allocation and some target list, and the length of the whole barrage is meant to be enough for each to fire on a succession of positions, adjusting between and not wearing out the gunners completely, etc.

Rockets, if available, would fire at the begining and/or ending periods only. The lightest tubes might or might not be firing in the middle part of the barrage, depending on the target "hardness" (since their main role against dug in guys is just to make them duck or stay in their dugouts). Often the light stuff (e.g. divisional 76s) would fire a rolling barrage ahead of the infantry, during the attack rather than beforehand.

What are the targets? The final fire is directed at the forward infantry positions, because its job is to keep heads down as you own infantry actually advances. The initial fire is at well located positions, expected to be manned - you are trying to catch them napping. The assumption is after the first few minutes the defenders are pretty well under cover. It still makes sense to keep shooting, but only in tight patterns over small targets with high calibers. You are trying to destroy heavy weapons especially with that part of the barrage.

They would be shooting many km deep into the defending position. During the middle portion of the barrage, every located enemy battery would be targeted, every HQ, every reserve position. Harassment fire would hit chokepoints like bridges, and near sections of roads.

An in depth German defensive system has front and reserve lines in some staggered checkerboard, with platoons up front, company reserve and weapons positions, and typically the same again for a "back" battalion and regimental weapons, with supporting batteries perhaps incorporated or perhaps an additional layer. So there can be 4-5 lines of strongpoints to address.

Kaboom, front line positions are sent into orbit and their defenders pinned deep in their dugouts. "Our forward defenses looked like a freshly plowed field" is a typical German side comment.

During the attack itself, the long ranged guns are still in range, and they are firing at phase lines. Divisional 76s may fire a rolling barrage ahead of the infantry advance. 122s are firing counterbattery, or hitting known enemy reserve positions to keep the men there deep while the front line positions are hit. Some of the bigger guns are drizzling in a few shells an hour on the transport routes, the rail lines and roads and bridge areas. Just interdiction, to discourage large movements.

Up at the pointy end, the barrage has lifted as rifle forces go in. They are racing Germans to the front of the German trenches - Germans climbing out of their dugouts, digging out of fallen crap, trying to maneuver through caved-in communication trenches - while Russians race across no man's land. If a few Germans at their MGs can delay the Russians, the rest of the Germans will get time to deploy.

New targets are still appearing: MG nests, holdouts, a manned trench system an hour after the barrage. What does artillery do about these?  The full breakthrough artillery corps and all those regiments of 122s do precious little. Instead it falls to the 120mm mortars and the 76mm guns, the stuff pushed down to regimental command, to deal with them. Sometimes by direct fire. SUs do the same thing, direct fire.

The heavy stuff is still used on the second day, with new phase lines based on where they got on the first day. A few batteries have inched forward - to the edge of the moonscape made by the first day's barrage. But if the attack is going well, in 2-3 days they will be out of range of the original positions of the guns, and their ammo stockpiles. And the supporting fire will drop off to nothing - from the big higher echelon stuff, that is.

When the German defenses harden again, guns will gradually collect opposite them, as logistics and time allow. A position that has held out for a month in an otherwise moving front line, will find a whole park opposite. Battering away day after day, as ammo can be brought up to fed the guns. Each time, firing at the map coordinate because it is known it is German owned rather than friendly. Whether there is anyone there that instant, whether they aren't deep in cover, whether it would be tactically useful - who cares? There are Germans in that town, shell that town.

On defense, similar methods. Now the artillery park is set up behind the expected axis of enemy attack. It is layered somewhat deeper, because they understand the front line may move against them.

Where is the enemy main effort today? Everybody within 10 miles fires at it. They aren't waiting for a call on the radio saying "Fire mission! enemy in the open!". Instead, general Konev arranges for staff colonel Demerov to coordinate fires against the enemy grouping on the Belkov direction, and the colonel calls or visits a dozen batteries and gives them their orders, signed and in triplicate. These say, "at 10 AM, fire at sector Belkov A" or what have you.

The defenders in that sector just know that their attackers get inundated with shells from time to time. If they want to organize reactive fires, they instead use the organic mortars and direct fire guns (76mm etc) that are part of their own unit and answer to their own colonel. If they tried to order an independent 122mm gun regiment to fire in their support, they'd get "Who authorized this? Where is your signed order? Do you think you are Stalin or something?"

The local tactical commander does not have the authority to control all this higher echelon stuff. It is directed to support him by the higher commander who gave him his mission. That commander tells him about it, so he understands what will be done to help him etc. They may coordinate it all the night before in a council of war in some tent or hovel. But he does not command it, it simply happens in his sector.

The reason all units have their own organic fire support however modest, is because it is the only thing they "own" for certain. Everything else might be directed by some muckety-muck to some more urgent task. The company and battalion can count on their own mortars, the regiment on its own assigned 76mms and 120mm, with others perhaps added to them as attachments because the mission is important etc. That is all.

And deep into a running battle, those may be the only things supplied or in the tactical area, anyway. The big stuff moves slowly. It isn't a scalpel.

For mech units, the riding infantry makes the enemy open up, but tanks do the killing. Light mortars would still be there, with an anti-gun mission. The tanks provide their own "rolling barrage".
The mech guys have their own motorized 76mm guns and 120mm mortars, and sometimes MRLs, which are always motorized but frequently just one-shot and withdraw for resupply, style weapons. Occasionally there will be a single motorized regiment of something bigger, 122s or 152s, attached to some given tank corps for the duration of an operation - but rarely, and only when motorized. They benefit from all the big stuff on defense in an important sector or during a breakthrough - without "owning" it. But once they exploit or the line moves, that stuff is gone. They use direct fire from tanks and SUs, or the reactive lighter stuff.

Exploitation forces might be committed either during or following the breakthrough. In practice it was much more common that the first armor was committed while the defense was still holding, but strained, than after a breakthrough had already been achieved by the rifle forces. There are exceptions that went "by the book" but they are the rarer cases, and usually depend on favorable circumstances (wooded terrain and surprise, extensive arty prep that was unusually well directed, very thin defenders, etc).

What usually happened is the rifle forces conducted the initial assault, took the forward enemy positions, and then wallowed there in increasing disorder, brawling with arriving reserves. They sometimes got the second position or through the prepared ones altogether, but they seldom broke clean through. Their forward edge could be held by relatively thin forces, because confusion and loss spread throughout the defended zone.

This came from holdouts and pocketed strongpoints and "wait a minute" MGs, from flanking fire etc. But most of all it came from defending artillery fire hitting the breeching site, which tended to pin the bulk of the attacking infantry, even if it could not stop them completely. The more active bits pressed beyond the shelled zone but were contained by local infantry reserves and fire brigades of more mobile units and if necessary alarm units drummed up from pioneers Luftwaffe services, etc. Sometimes a major defensive reinforcement would arrive and simply backstop the dissolving front line infantry one, with a new line.

So the first tank forces were usually committed with the fight still in progress. Typically is was the tank corps of the attacking army, rather than a full tank army (though there are a few exceptions to that, too). They'd pick a spot and hit the line, and usually get through easily enough. This was a matter of a full tank brigade on a narrow front, with the whole rest of the corps behind it in column.

Once they were through the immediate front line, tanks leading, they exploited straight to the rear to just get clear of the front line defensive zone. The logic was parallel pursuit - race the defenders to their own rear. If they remained in place at the front line, great. Rifle forces would follow in the wake of the whole corps, and widen the penetration by rolling up the flanks of the defenders opposite each shoulder of the breech. The tank guys did not have to worry about that part, it wasn't their job.

Their main job was to get through the inevitable arriving reserves, typically motorized divisions with tanks etc.

Doctrinally, their organic motorcycle recon were supposed to spread from the column as soon as it was clear, scattering in all directions and letting themselves get thinner and thinner on the ground. They were to report back enemy positions and just as important, open routes. The tanks instead stayed concentrated and went where they planned.

In practice the motorcycle recon were not usually that aggressive, and usually drew screening missions along the flanks behind the column, instead. They'd ride out a few clicks as flank guards but didn't race to contact in all directions, really.

The tanks did stay concentrated and they did just go where the plan pointed them. There was little "opportunity pull". The operational plan called for some distance of encirclement, and they drove for it.

If they wanted to try multiple distances (a "small solution" and a "big solution" in German staff terms), they'd send a different operational force for each - e.g. the Tank Army gets the big objective while 1-2 tank corps get the small one. Or sometimes the full tank army gets the small one and a mere cavalry corps takes its chances on the Germans not being ready for a deeper hook.

The goal was never geographic really, it was to destroy some portion of the German army by cutting it off from the rest. Geography and the arrangement of forces - especially the latter - dictated what seemed feasible on that score. It was a matter of tying together the threads created by two or more breakthroughs, to kill the stuff between them.

They perforce ran into the reserves the Germans sent to stop such things. They had SOPs they used for this, pretty formulaic rather than adaptive. The lead tank brigade stays well concentrated and hits whatever it hits, hard, line of march attack. No pushfooting or looking around for open flanks. The idea is to blow through thin screens and only be stopped by a real position.

If or when the lead brigade gets a bloody nose trying this, the following forces can try another route, typically a short hook. Sometimes this is tactical, just turning the position that stopped the leading brigade and then driving right into the same guys that stopped them, from a flank. Sometimes they will go around rather than into the blocking force.

Typically the motor rifle brigade guys are being trailed along behind, setting up screens, and aren't up with the point. But they may come up to "fix" a block from the front, to allow the lead brigade to change direction. The tank corps commander typically keeps one tank brigade as his reserve. He will throw it in wherever it looks good - right at a block to break it down, around the same flank as the second, whatever.

The idea was that the Germans could put up a strong position at one or two bottlenecks or a screen everywhere, but could not be strong everywhere. So hit first and turn second, and one or the other is expected to work. Not meant to find out which before hand, just find out by attacking.

With tank armies the same ideas were used, but the two tank corps were typically given parallel routes, and the army as a whole followed the more successful one. The mech arm definitely had the "reinforce success" idea down pat, by late 1942 at least. A full tank army could have a whole mech corps as its reserve, and so could meet even a whole arriving panzer division and smash or turn it on a time scale of days.

They generally had success or failure largely based on German readiness and reserves, and secondarily on how sensible the depth of "bites" was at the planning level. If they went for bites that proved too large, the Germans would hold the jaws apart and both sides would find themselves in pretty much straight ahead fighting. If they got them small enough their close and eat something, but if too small that might be one infantry division or corps and not change the campaign all that much. The first mistake - too large - was much more common.

It could still work out. The mech guys brawled the arriving German reserves and in the meantime the rifle forces were mopping up the German infantry and expanding the initial break ins. The mech fighting had the net effect of keeping the German reserves from doing much to help the latter. Which then typically withdrew as best it could, with losses. The panzer forces held the way open long enough for them to get out, most of the time - but often leaving lots of equipment behind etc. And in the cases where they caught the Germans with weak reserves, the Russian mech just plain won the mobile fight, closed the trap exactly as planned, and an army or more died.

It was a quite effective system and robust to operator error, so to speak. But it wasn't a masterpiece, and losses could be high. The breakthrough forces fight the German deep reserves well in the rear of the original line, without much in the way of extra artillery etc. And with rifle formations coming up only slowly.

If the tanks got overextended and the Germans sent enough, they could set them back. Even more common, the Germans sent not quite enough, the Russians bludgeoned them and bludgeoned them some more, and the Germans then gave way or backed up - but the Russians lost a lot in the process.

They did not give up their operational objectives while sizable forces were intact. Instead they committed them in sequence. Fronts launched armies at week and 100 mile intervals. The Germans had to be ready everywhere and run back and forth, then brawl unit after unit breaking through their infantry lines at an operational, not a tactical scale. (Meaning the PDs fight 20, 50 miles behind the old front, which moves in consequence).


THE RUSSIAN TACTICAL SYSTEM -- ATTACK

Standard tactics involve infiltrating as close to the defenders as possible, often at night, and trying to ID his exact positions. Patrols look for gaps between enemy strongpoints and get to whatever good terrain they can, lying quiet until dawn once they get someplace useful. It was a technique made possible in part by limited German manpower for the amount of frontage, and their preference for strongpoint defenses, which were defended in between only by obstacles and fire.  If possible, a whole battalion will be inserted "inside" the enemy defense system, in company sized groups. The ideal was for the first the Germans learned of it to be when they found themselves cut off at dawn by men already behind them. Or better still, when the Germans got shelled at dawn and didn't even know the guys that called the fire were already behind them, and waiting for them if they withdrew. (German accounts are always complaining about how good the Russians got at this, from 1943 on).

In woods or urban areas, you can try it even in the daytime. The emphasis is on stealth, that is why armor is not used. Arty might fire diversion missions, make noise, and try to keep some defenders heads down while it is happening, but doesn't seriously try to break the defenders. The infiltrators report enemy positions for arty fire missions, and can isolate bits in daytime with their organic MGs. Defenders have to counterattack them or withdraw, or it becomes easy to kill the men bypassed.

It was also standard Red Army practice to feign an attack by a battalion at night, while the divisional intel staff is sitting in overwatch with a map and a pen, drawing in firing posts as they open up. The Germans did of course know this, and designated 'Schweige' (silent) MG posts which would under no circumstances open fire before the big day. The Soviets in turn knew this, and tried to make their feint attacks believable big ones to get the Schweige MGs to open up.

The infantry method of attack was to assume column formation on the subelements and then go at the enemy in echelon waves. This does not mean run him off his feet in one go. On the contrary, it means probe on a narrow front with a full strength unit, typically matching or outnumbering the defenders opposite in a single wave. They approach as closely as they can. When halted by fire they get what cover they can and fire back, as well as calling for all forms of fire support. The next wave then tries on the same portion of the front, after a bit of that fire prep. Repeat until the enemy gives way or there is only one subelement left in the attacking formation. The last one does not repeat the attack, but digs in and holds whatever is safely Russian after the previous.

This amounted to reinforcing failure, compared to German ideas, and the Germans regarded it as the height of mindless untermenschen stupidity, wanton disregard of human life, folly, stubborness, etc. In fact it was sound attrition tactics adapted to modern combined arms conditions and to "command push" planning. Attacks were planned from the rear at a high echelon level, and expected to produce definite results that the rest of the plan depended on. It was not acceptable in such plans for various units to report that the situation did not look good in their sector, please try somewhere else. Nor could a successful commander call everyone to follow him and expect to be obeyed - or even heard. The higher level commander was responsible for giving his subformations do-able tasks and for providing them the mix of weapons they would need to succeed, in a combined arms and terrain-tactics sense. The subcommander was responsible for "laying his ship alongside the enemy" - i.e. fighting like the dickens on the terms his superior gave him.

A plan needed both to work, but the demarkation in responsibility as crystal clear, and on the whole meticulously enforced. Meaning the lower commander who shrunk from action would be shot, while a superior who gave hamfisted orders that were not achievable with what he provided would be relieved. The lower commander was not responsible for success but for the attempt, for fighting. Presenting a large casualty roll excused failure, and bucked  responsibility up to the mucketee-muck who ordered the fiasco. Success was always welcome. Failure in the mission without debiliating losses to explain why the attempt had failed, or to demonstrate that it had been undoable, was inexcusable.

Russian rifle forces characteristically used "column tactics" in frontal attack. The principle was attrition and victory through possession of the last intact reserve. Typical support would be a couple of high caliber but unreactive FOs, low quality (e.g. 2 122mm gun FOs, conscript), and perhaps one green to regular reactive medium FO (120mm mortar e.g.). On map support would be available from a flock of mortars and Maxim MMGs, plus ATRs, and probably a pair of field guns (76mm usually, occasionally only 45mm meant to cover any wooden bunkers etc).

A typical time would be dawn in clear skies with decent ground, dry or in winter, light snow only. This method presumes plenty of available time for the battle and a high loss tolerance, but limits risk - both of failure and of any loss of the attackers' own original positions. The aggression level is moderate to high, level of micromanagement medium, skill level required of the commander is low.

The tactical arrangement of the battalion is column of companies, each company deployed in line of platoons across the field, or across only half of it sometimes. All companies have the same assigned frontage, they are arranged in waves behind one another at intervals of around 200 yards. Each component platoon is in "blob" formation, aka 2 rank line. Only minimal scouts are out ahead of the main body, if any are used at all. Heavy weapons teams are in covered locations at the start line and arranged in the gaps between the rifle platoons in the forward two waves.

The plan of attack is straight up the middle, or a wing attack on one side of the board, but conducted straight ahead. The entire battalion is oriented on the same axis and stays in that orientation throughout. A prep fire of the unreactive heavy artillery is timed to begin in the first five minutes and to finish by minute 10 at the latest. It is directed at expected enemy positions with large amounts of cover directly ahead of the intended attack, and may use "target wide" at spread aim points to distribute heavy shells over a wide area, while more closely saturating the chosen aim points.

What is expected of the lower level commander in these tactics is that he "lay his ship alongside of the enemy", as Nelson put it before Trafalgar.  In other words, close with the enemy and fight like hell, hurt him as much as your organic forces can manage to hurt him.  Bravery, drive, ruthlessness - these are the watchwords, not cleverness or finesse or artistry.  

Characteristic movement orders are advance and human wave. The distances for each are 50 meters to 200 meters, and this applies to the leading edge of the battalion. Following companies are using move and maintaining interval, waiting for the men in front of them to vacate a given body of cover before moving up to reoccupy it. The forward movements are all occuring simultaneously at first. Once heavy fire is encountered, roughly half the front company is moving at any one time, while the remainder fire, rally and rest.

Roughly half the heavy weapons support by fire from the start line, if it has LOS to any enemy positions. The other half move forward behind the first company to reach better firing positions, but set up and go stationary once those are reached. Once they are all in position, the initially stationary weapons teams may move up to join them or may pass beyond them, leapfrog fashion, to locations still closer, from which to fire. But always a full "block" of cover behind the leading infantry.

The overall effect desired is relentlessness, melting the defenders with firepower and continually creeping closer to keep that firepower intense. If the last company has drawn up opposite the defense and the defense still hasn't broken, then it does not press home but goes stationary in the last decent cover reached, holds there and fires at any spotted defenders. In the meantime, higher HQs patch back together whatever they can of the broken rest of the battalion. Only once those have rallied does the last fresh company attack itself, and the rallied "company" takes its place defending the cover already reached. If this last attack also fails, the whole thing is called off and the reduced battalion goes over to the defensive and retains the ground already gained.

To get relentless from expensive tactics, you need a lot of depth in the deployments, hence the pure column form of attack e.g. a regiment attacks with up to 8 company waves on a width of only 1-2 companies - saving the last to hold its own frontage along with the weapons - rather than say 6 companies wide with shallow reserves. It is meant to *outlast* the enemy on the chosen frontage, to have the last reserve locally. When one of the early waves succeeds, the remainder continue without loss and the momentum of the attack stays strong. Effectively the front wave is shielding the others and helping carrying them deeper into the enemy position before they are harmed.

What is happening in the combined arms tactics within that rifle column attack?  The leading infantry companies are presenting the enemy a fire discipline dilemma - how close to let the advancing Russian infantry get before revealing their own positions by cutting loose.  The longer they take to do so, the close the Russian infantry gets before being driven to the ground.  Enemy fire is fully expected to drive the leading infantry waves to the ground, or even to break them or destroy them outright - at first.  But every revealed firing point in that cutting loose is then subjected to another round of prep fire by all of the organic and added fire support elements supporting the attack.  The battalion 82mm mortars, any attached tanks, and the muckety-mucks special falling skies firepower, smashes up whatever showed itself crucifying the leading wave.

Then the next wave goes in, just like the first, on the same frontage.  No great finesse about it, but some of the defenders already dead in the meantime.  Same dilemma for his survivors.  When they decide to hold their fire to avoid giving the mortars and Russian artillery and such, juicy new things to shoot at, the advancing infantry wave gets in among them instead.  And goes to work with grenade and tommy gun, flushing out every hole.  The grenadier is the beater and the tommy gun is the shotgun, and Germans are the quail.  Notice, the firepower of the infantry that matters in this is the short range stuff, because at longer range the killing is done by supporting artillery arms.  The rifles of the most of the infantry supplement of course, but really the LMGs and rifles are primarily there as the defensive firepower of the rifle formation, at range.

Tactically, the leading infantry is expected to draw fire and get messed up. The remainder of that wave - to either side and the second line of each platoon hit - fire back, along with any heavy weapons that bear on the shooters. Everyone who has rallied to good order and is at the front edge steps out again on advance or human wave, making for the next patch of cover closer to the defenders, but never directly on top of any living defenders.

The column slowly chews through the defense by outshooting those who fire at the leading edge of the column. Men fall out and are left behind to rally under the command of company HQs. Each body of cover reached by the column is kept "topped off" by men from later ranks, and therefore spits back fire without let up. Defenders directly in the path of the attack are expected to either be outshot or to run dry of ammo by the time the 2nd or 3rd wave is firefighting against them. Continual new shooters are expected to reveal themselves to prevent close approach. Whenever there aren't enough of those in an area for any specific time window, the column oozes forward another 100-200 yards in that area, and its small arms firepower thereby increases in power.

Single point shooters like guns and HMGs are hit by multiple mortars and by the field guns. Several MMGs also hit each one as long as they are up and firing, and one remains on each that is suppressed, to prevent rally. The reactive FO, if available, is used up on the largest body of defending infantry that stands up to the first wave, after that wave "breaks" for the first time, and before the second attempts to hit the same spot again.

It is slow and it is bloody and it is inefficient - but it is relentless.  The thing being maximized is fight and predictability - that the higher ups can count on an outcome on this part of the frontage proportional to what they put into it.  Where they need to win, they put in enough and they do win - hang the cost.  It isn't pure suicide up front - the infantry go to ground when fired at and they fire back,and their supporting fires try to save them, and the next wave storms forward to help and pick up the survivors and carry them forward (and carry the wounded back).  In the meantime the men that went to ground are defending themselves as best they can and sniping what they can see;  they are not expected to stand up again and go get killed.  That is the next wave's job.  The first did its part when it presented its breast to the enemy's bullets for that first advance.  The whole rolls forward like a ratchet, the waves driven to ground holding tenaciously whatever they reached.

When cover fire pins enough of the defenders, somebody will get close enough for tommy guns and grenades, and that will finish it. Everybody takes their share of the pain. It is thought that there is no getting around it, that flinching from enemy fire as too strong to attack will just leave another hard fight for tomorrow. They don't expect to get lopsided clean kills by going around or any other razzle dazzle, they just wade in and take their licks, to give their own back.

When an enemy position succumbed, all the following waves would continue through it and lap around the edges of positions on either flank. The holdouts standing up to the repeated attacks would draw more and more of the available supporting artillery and heavy weapons fire, and a new wave would hit them. Eventually they'd crumble under the arty, or accumulating losses, or their ammo would give out, or a shock group would get close and lucky, etc - that was the idea. Of course it was also expensive if none of those things happened, or soon.

That is the rifle, combined arms army, way of fighting.

The Russians got a lot better at that part of infantry fighting as the war progressed. In 1941 they were pretty awful at it. As late as October 1942, they were still doing things like having all the 76mm guns and 120mm mortars fire with the main artillery in big prep fires long before the actual attack, and leaving most of the MGs in fixed defensive positions. The result was infantry attacks that consisted almost entirely on riflemen trying to advance onto intact German positions (since the prep never knew exactly where they all were etc), which typically failed with huge losses. By 1943 they were using all their supporting arms much more effectively, and divided artillery use between division and above stuff (which fired to a plan or prep) and the reactive regimental team and below stuff (which fired on targets as they appeared). Direct fire by field caliber artillery was a key Russian method here, much more heavily used than in other armies.

The Russian mechanized way of fighting is also quite different from other armies.  There are some common elements but again it is better to think of it like a whole different army with its own techniques.  Where the rifle arm emphasizes depth and relentlessness, the mech way emphasizes rapid decision and decisive maneuver, which is kept dead simple and formulaic, but just adaptive enough to be dangerous.

The basic Russian mech fighting approach is small numbers of infantry scouting for numerous tanks, which shoot the heck out of anything run across. Then SMG infantry wades in and murders cowering survivors. The main idea is to systematically kill the defenders along chosen approach routes with tank HE, with infantry taking a subordinate role (scouting, protecting from close assault, mopping up).

The rockets prepare the area, then the motorcycle guys run up and make contact, supported by a few T-34s who help them pull back if they hit too much, and help them blow through tiny outposts.  As soon as the recon is checked by something, the main body picks a direction to hit that something from, and launches a tank company with SMG riders at the target on a single axis. They get heavy mortar support as soon as it can be arranged.

The motor rifle company typically "fixes" or provides a base of fire, using its heavy weapons and the supporting artillery. Some of the T-34s may also stay with them until called on to support the main attack, or lead them in a secondary one.

The standard formation executing the attack is the tank corps, which consists of 3 tank and 1 rifle brigade, plus minimal attachments of motorized guns, recon, and pioneers.  The rifle brigade is 3 battalions and is normally trailing the tank brigades and holding what they take.  Sometimes it doubles their infantry weight and sometimes it has to lead for a specific mission (force a river crossing, say, or a night infiltration attack that needs stealth - things only infantry can do), but in the normal offensive case it is just driving up behind something a tank brigade took, dismounting, and manning the position to let the tank brigade go on to its next mission.  It has trucks to keep up, and the usual infantry heavy weapons of 82mm mortars and heavy MGs, but it uses them to defend ground taken.  Notionally, the rifle brigade is the tank corps' "shield" and it maneuvers it separately as such.

The business end of the tank corps is thus its tank brigades, which are its weapons.  Each has a rifle battalion organic that is normally physically riding on the tanks themselves, and armed mostly with tommy guns.  The armor component of each brigade is equivalent in size to a western tank battalion - 50-60 tanks at full TOE - despite the formation name.

At the lowest level, the tactical way tanks with riders fight is a version of the fire discipline dilemma discussed above, but now with the critical difference that the tanks have huge firepower against enemy infantry and other dismounts, making any challenge to them by less than a full panzer battalion pretty suicidal.  What the tanks can't do is force those enemy dismounts to open fire or show themselves.  Nor can the tanks alone dig them out of their holes if they don't open fire.  That is what the riders are there to do - kill the enemy in his holes under the overwatch of the massed tanks, if and only if the enemy stays low and keeps quiet and tries to just hide from the tanks.  That threat is meant to force the enemy to open fire.  When they do, the riders drop off and take cover and don't need to do anything - it is the tanks that murder the enemy.  Riders pick their way forward carefully after that, and mop up as necessary if there are enemy left alive.  This is all meant to be delivered very rapidly as an attack - drive right at them, take fire, stop and blast for 5 or 10 minutes tops, and move forward again, repeating only a few times before being right on or over the enemy.

The parent formation is maneuvering, looking for enemy weak spots, especially weak spots in his antitank defenses, following a standard formula called an echelon attack.  

The standard formation is a kind of staggered column with the second element just right or left of the leading one, and the third off to the same side as far again.  The individual tank brigade uses this approach with its component tank companies or pairs of companies, and the whole corps will use it again with its brigades.

The first echelon heads for whatever looks like the weakest part of the enemy position - in antitank terms - and hits it as hard as it can, rapidly, no pausing for field recon.  The next echelon reacts to whatever that first one experiences, but expects to wrap around one flank of whatever holds up the prior element and hit hard, again, from a slightly changing direction.  This combined hit, in rapid succession, is expected to destroy that blockage or shove it aside.  The third echelon following is expected to hit air, a hole made by its predecessors, and push straight into the interior of the enemy position and keep going.  If the others are checked, it is expected to drive clear around the enemy strongpoint - it does not run onto the same enemy hit by the previous elements.  If the enemy line is long enough and strong enough to be neither flanked nor broken through by this process, well tough luck.  Some other formation higher in the chain or two grids over is expected to have had better luck in the meantime.

There are of course minor adaptations possible in this formula.  If the lead element breaks clean through, the others shift slightly into its wake and just exploit - they don't hit any new portion of the enemy's line.  If the first hit a position that is clearly strong as well as reasonably wide, the other two elements may pivot outward looking for an open flank instead of the second hitting right where the first did, just from a different angle.  The leading element can pull up short and just screen the frontage if they encounter strong enemy armor.  Then the second still tries to find an open flank, but the third might slide into reserve between and behind the first and second.

A typical tactical formation might be a motor rifle company, 2 T-34 platoons with SMG riders, and a recon section with a few T-70s and a motorcycle platoon (Recon C in jeeps). Heavy weapons and artillery support are limited - a single group with a pair each of MMGs and mortars for the first, and a single medium FO for the second. A typical time for this sort of attack might be dusk, or dawn with fog.

The force is divided into 3 teams, first echelon in the center of the map, second echelon half way to the left edge, and third echelon on the left corner of the board, all the way back to the board edge initially. First echelon in the center gets 2 motor rifle platoons, the T-70s, and the heavy weapons, second echelon gets one T-34 platoon with riders and the 3rd motor rifle platoon, plus the FO, and the third echelon on the left flank gets the 2nd T-34 platoon with riders, plus the motorcycle infantry, mounted.

First echelon is initially in line formation, the other two are each in column. So right to left across the frontage one sees a motor rifle platoon with a T-70 supporting it, the heavy weapons, another motor rifle with T-70, then the third motor rifle platoon with an FO, trailing those, and a T-34 platoon behind it. On the far left there the other T-34 platoon, farther back still, with the motorcycle infantry behind them in the far lefthand corner.

The first echelon moves off behind a few half squad scouts, each supported by a couple of full squads and a T-70. Between then the weapons are initially in overwatch, but will move up if they don't have LOS to likely enemy positions yet (e.g. under limited visibility conditions). Meanwhile the second pauses for a few minutes then steps out using "move", with the tanks trailing. Notice the use of vehicles in the first echelon is meant to generate tank noise, to help conceal where the main body of AFVs will be. The third echelon is initially stationary until the second has progressed beyond the start line by a couple hundred meters at least.

When the first echelon scouts make contact, their supporting full platoons move up to the nearest cover and return fire. Single enemies are approached by a T-70, buttoned, to get within spotting range. The heavy weapons retaliate if any guns reveal themselves to mess with the T-70s, and if not, then all arms can suppress the first shooters. The first echelon closes only cautiously and does not attempt to press home - it is too thin to do so anyway. They just want to establish themselves in cover roughly 250 yards from the leading defenders, and determine the shape of their line.

As the first echelon slows, the second in column to their left will close up with them, and can extend the contact to the left. The third motor rifle platoon will look at first like a mere extension of the skirmish line formed by the other two. This platoon pushes hard to close with the leftmost enemy spotted so far. The FO targets the expected left end of the enemy position and counts down. The first T-34 platoon, initially holding back, picks a route expected to be free of heavy PAK observation and dashes for cover close to the leftmost enemy, dropping its tommy gunners behind the cover nearest them. Then the tanks show themselves and plaster that corner of the defense.

The third echelon goes to "fast" as soon as the first T-34 platoon attacks. It is directed straight ahead near the left edge, initially to the left rear of the second echelon. They should be passing the second echelon as the artillery falls, and the SMG riders of 2nd echelon should assault into the defense positions behind the barrage and tank fire, around the time they do so. The FO may even use one minute of smoke to aid this movement, blinding the left side of the defense.

The 2nd T-34 platoons drives fast for the left rear of the map and then angles right. The motorcycle infantry trails them initially, and drops its men to the left of and ahead of the foremost elements of the second echelon, extending the frontage around the enemy left. The second T-34 platoon drops its SMG riders farther forward still, and assaults tanks foremost along the back edge of the map. The SMG riders trail them on advance, occasionally even run, to keep up.

The idea is a cracking whip extending clean round the enemy on the left side of the board in the space of less than five minutes, counting from the time tanks and off board artillery begin plastering that end of their line. The forward screen from first echelon meanwhile cuts up lateral repositioning with ranged fire, and may push forward a tank to get the angle to do so, over this or that patch of open ground. All of the T-34s, all of the SMGs, the artillery, and 2 platoons with rifles, all impact the left end of the enemy line in a short time window. This is expected to crush that end of the enemy position. The T-34s and SMGs then advance left to right, rolling up the enemy line. The recon C trails the tanks and uses its ammo depth to finish off cowerers and holdouts the tanks have already plastered, once the SMGs run dry.

Notice that the first echelon is intended to "feint" a slow recon-pulled attack to be delivered somewhere along the wide front of the defender's position, and thereby freeze most of the defenders in place, awaiting the point of main effort revealing itself, and in the meantime make them feel good about their present "cover everything" dispositions. In reality the attack is fully committed to a heavy left from the start. The aggressiveness level is extremely high over most of the frontage, though the first echelon is initially careful, using a mix of advance and move to contact. The second is mostly using advance and the third is frequently using fast while mounted, or run, and hunt and advance only once actually in contact. Lots of time is not needed, though if it is available it may make the feint aspect of the first echelon more believable. The risk level is considerable, if the point of main effort has been chosen badly or the launch of the third echelon is mistimed. But no great tactical finesse is needed of any of the subelements.

Those are typical echelon tactics as they would be implemented by a Russian armored force.

Half the heavy HE firepower comes from dismounted weapons rather than tanks (82mm mortars or towed 76mm guns).  There are small amounts of light armor, but most of the armor is just T-34s and they provide the armor hitting power of the whole formation.  The trucked motor rifle is about half the infantry, the rest split between SMG riders, recon, and infantry heavy weapons parts of the formation.  There is enough infantry to lead with it when the enemy and terrain calls for that, but its normal battle role is to follow hard behind the tanks, dismount just out of sight of the enemy, and mop up whatever the tanks have blasted through.  if they need to deliver a "set piece" attack rather than fighting off the column of march, then the dismounted HE tubes (guns and mortars and FO) plus the tanks form the base of fire, and the infantry steps out first under their overwatch.  The tank riders wait while that is happening, and mount to move forward with the tanks as enemy positions to neutralize are IDed.  

When fighting off the column of march, instead, the recon leads and just scouts for open roads; the BA-64s can suppress infantry outposts to free the recon infantry if it is fired upon.  The tanks follow and go where no enemy is encountered until they run out of undefended road, then hastily attack the easiest looking target.  The motor rifle follows behind them and drops men if needed to dig out enemies that go deep to escape the attentions of the tanks, letting the SMG riders stay with the tanks.  If a strong enemy is encountered, the recon and tanks try to bypass it, a bit of motor rifle screens it, and if needed the support element can come up and plaster it.  Normally, though, the support element only deploys when a strong enemy position that needs to be carried is encountered.  When that happens, the column piles forward and deploys to either side of its approach road, the support element and tanks form a base of fire, and the deliberate attack method described above is apply as quickly as possible.

The point of the whole approach is to have some adaptability and flexibility, to be designed around reinforcing success and hitting weaker flanks not just frontal slogging - all of which exploit the speed and maneuver power of the tanks within the enemy's defensive zone.  But they are also dead simple, formulas that can be learned by rote and applied mechanically.  They are fast because there is no waiting for recon pull to bring back info on where to hit.  The substance that needs to be grasped by the leader of a 2nd or 3rd element is very limited, and either he can see it himself or the previous element manages to convey it to him, or gets it up to the commander of all three and he issues the appropriate order downward.  They are all mechanically applying the same doctrine and thinking on the same page, even if out of contact at times or having different amounts of information.  The whole idea is get the power of maneuver adaptation without the delays or the confusion that can set in when you try to ask 3 or more bullheaded linemen to solve advanced calculus problems.  There is just one "play" - "you hit him head on and stand him up, then I'll hit him low and shove him aside, and Joe can run through the hole".

The mechanized corps fought like the tank corps. It just had a tank regiment plus 3 motorized rifle brigades, plus a 4th brigade that was pure tank.  They had as many tanks as a tank corps, with 10 infantry battalions in the formation rather than 6, and a marginally more infantry heavy mix, as a result.

This did not change their basic tactics.  It just meant where one of the sub formations was barreling ahead, it would sometimes have a thinner cutting edge of tanks and a longer trailing "shield" column of trucked infantry.  Though the tank corps portion would often be "on point" with exactly the same techniques as in the tank corps.  In practice, the extra infantry gave the formation greater staying power after taking losses in extended action, and a superior ability to hold the ground it took.

For Russian mech force attacks, a few overwatch groups can be formed around company HQs from rifle company HMGs, ATRs, single on map 82s, and artillery FOs. They help deal with guns and HMGs in cases where the location makes it dangerous for tanks. Radio equipped T-70s scout behind a foot half squad "point". Pioneers in small groups clear AT mines the T-70s "discover".

Russian mech infantry were split between recon, tank rider, motor rifle, and pioneer. Recon meant motorcycles and a few trucks for modest supporting weapons, very lightly armed, working alone or with light tanks or armored cars. They did operational recon and screened long flanks. They were fully 20% of the infantry manpower of the mech formations, not an afterthought. Their basic mission is to put eyes everywhere to guide the tanks intelligently, because the tanks need to stay quite concentrated.

The next 20% were the riders, typically "tommy gunners", who rode on the tank decks. They did battlefield recon for the tanks and dug enemy infantry out of their holes, after the tanks drove them deep. The idea was to give the defender a dilemma about whether to open fire, and at what range. If the enemy fired while the force were still at long range, the riders dismounted and went to cover, and the tanks just stood off and plastered the place with HE. If they held their fire and so remained unspotted, the tanks would come reasonably close and then the riders would dismount and get into cover near the objective. A few would then investigate under overwatch from the tanks and the rest of the men. This system was hard on the infantrymen doing it, but quite effective and very useful for the tanks. The riders got to be tough as nails, those that stood it and lived, and they were individually the best in the force.

Half the mech infantry force were the standard motor rifle. They rode in trucks and had the full heavy weapons load of ordinary infantry - meaning heavier machineguns, 82mm mortars, ATRs. Their main mission was to hold ground. They would be called on to back up any of the other types in a pinch, or occasionally to deliver an infantry-force-type style echelon-wave attack. But usually they were spared that, being too valuable to throw away. They would also be pressed into supporting tank forces to bump the infantry to armor ratio back up - after losses or to accomodate terrain - and they got the missions only infantry could do - night recons, river crossings, woods interiors, block clearing, etc - that a mech force still needed done.

The last 10% were pioneers. In the rifle forces they had a larger role, but in the mech their main mission was to keep the routes serviceable. That meant bridging, mineclearing, road repair. Sometimes they would be included in assault groups, along with tommy gunners, as explained in the rifle version of things next.

Most of the fighting was done by the tankers and the tommy gunners, while most of the manpower was motor rifle that just held things and did the dozen dirty infantry jobs. The recon guys were near action a lot but did not press and were not hard hit, and the pioneers had it easy compared to the others.

In the rifle formations there was also an infantry division of labor. This time there was foot recon and "shock" groups of tommy gunners, line infantry, weapons, and pioneers.

Foot recon was a much more aggressive branch of service than the motorcycle guys, and included night infiltration as the standard mission. They spent days at a time in enemy rear areas. The mission was generally intel, sometimes raiding or getting PWs, rarely pitched battle. In major attacks, though, they also got "pathfinder" jobs - meaning they went first to KO enemy outposts and listening posts by stealth, marked paths as clear of mines or enemy observation. This was not "recon by death" but "sneaking into the movies goes to war". These were the elite of the rifle force.

Shock groups and pioneers were assault specialists, "SWAT". They used tommy guns, grenades, explosives, and flamethrowers, in roughly that order. They wanted to get within 50 meters from the enemy to kill him. How they got there was roughly a third sneaking, a third cover fire, and a third balls of brass. The focus was on special equipment and using it, and the groups were kept small. Numbers were not the point. Indeed, the idea was to risk a few (suicidally brave) men rather than a whole company in the open. They worm their way up to the enemy, using the distraction afforded by the rest of the war. In major assaults they followed the pathfinders in platoon sized groups. Individual enemy positions were targeted by a squad or two, not by massing. The skill level here was generally high - the men were picked and frequently volunteers - but so were loss rates, which kept them less uniformly good than foot recon.

Pioneers had other missions - mine clearing, wire clearing, minelaying, improving positions - and weren't always used for the assault roles above. Drafts would be made from the larger pioneer formations for the assault details. Plenty of other pioneers are doing more mundane things in relative safety.

Then there is the main body of the infantry, the line. This was around 2/3rds of the manpower, after all the above roles are taken out. Everything else made conditions for them to fight in that they could succeed within, or didn't. On defense they formed the close range part of the defense, within the ranged protection of the heavy weapons and artillery and AT networks. Typically in 2 up 1 back deployments, repeated at several echelons levels. The idea was to create a kind of honeycomb of modest sized positions, platoon to company scale, leaving the ground between them open, but overlapping their fields of fire at rifle ranges.

CAVALRY'S LAST HURRAH

The most effective cavalry arm in WW II was the Russian cavalry. There were only minor formations still in use in the other armies as actual horse cavalry. Both the Germans and the Russians made extensive use of horses for logistics, though, and for moving most of the artillery of their infantry armies.

The Russian cavalry was more than usually effective because of the lack of infrastructure in much of Russia and the interaction of that with the terrain, over large areas. And with climate, in the winter season especially but also in the muddy seasons. Basically, the whole northern half of European Russia is a huge continuous forest with lots of marshland and scattered lakes. Even the farmland is relatively limited compared to western Europe, and the road net is quite sparse, most roads unmetaled dirt that support maybe 15 to 20 mph speeds for motor vehicles at the best of times, and much, much slower in poor weather. With no gas stations, mind.

Then for a third of the calendar, the ground is either covered with snow or the ground is muddy, especially lower lying areas and the roads themselves. Note that seasonal marsh is also a very common terrain types in these regions. Which means land that is wet marsh for roughly half the calendar, with the ground frozen solid the other half of the year. It is hard to make any agricultural use of such land, and it is therefore commonly left as mostly forest, with very sparse settlement. Even in the half the year when the ground is passable on foot, there aren't any human improvements to speak of to aid movement by modern motor vehicles. Shallow boats (in places etc) and one horse carts are the locals' own preferred means of transport.

Off road maneuver in such conditions is much more feasible for a unit on horseback than either on foot or in trucks. On foot, the men would wear themselves ragged (or die of exposure) before they got far. In trucks, they would be confined to a narrow road net subject to blocks and ambush and bottlenecked by strongpoints in the settlements, etc. The Russians also made effective use of ski troops in such terrain in the winter, but horses also worked and extended their outperformance period by several months on either side of the snow season.

They were not fighting from the saddle tactically. Not the point. They maneuvered through the woods with scouts out, enveloped thin enemy positions and lapped around the cities and villages, bypassing them and cutting the roads and rail lines between them. When they located the enemy, the men dismounted and fought as infantry. The same woods that meant there were no roads meant that they had concealment up to near the point of contact, that the horses could be sheltered from enemy fire, etc.

The Russians supported those formations with modest portions of tanks that had quite good cross country mobility, certainly much better than trucks (the T-34 in particular). But fundamentally, the cavalry formations provided "fast infantry" that moved particularly well in woodland, marsh, mountain, and similar terrains, and in lousy weather and ground conditions.

Cavalry Corps main use was to give some added mobility to breakthrough forces in the often not particularly well-developed geography of the east.  In general they were not expected to get into heavy combat by frontally assaulting anyone. Konev's (increasingly upset) missives to Baranov and his Cavalry Corps during the L'vov-Sandomierz Operation make that very clear. They were supposed to move fast, block roads against movement, disrupt reinforcements, and exploit 'unpassable' terrain by moving through it. Swampy areas freeze and become passable, but don't have any roads, for example.

A Cavalry Corps was a relatively small formation, smaller than a German rifle division, and because of this it could survive with low supply requirements for a while (but not forever - even horses need fodder if you are always on the move).  They were mostly used on the flanks of breakthroughs because of their comparatively lower combat power, where through their actions they could serve to broaden the breakthrough into directions where no heavy opposition was present, and to prevent the Germans from massing forces on the flank. The real fighting against German counter-attacks and reinforcements would be up to the mechanised breakthrough formations.

Tactically cavalry usually fought on foot. There were a few exceptions (mostly raids), but set piece attacks by cavalry against anybody who knew they were coming were suicidal.

Ski troops were specialists in their own formations. The largest unit was the ski brigade, and that was the standard operational force used. It had a company of 9 82mm mortars for fire support, some AA machineguns, controlled an antitank rifle group as the unit's only real AT asset, plus command signals and supply etc. The maneuver units were 3 ski battalions.

The whole force was quite light, meant to be able to maneuver off any sort of road or main supply route, and to support itself in forest fighting. The heavier weapons were centralized up one echelon and pulled by sleds, and used indirect (the 82s) or to defend positions (for the MGs). Pioneers helped with route improvement as well as mine clearing and fording stuff.

Mostly they fought as light infantry, trying to outflank any enemy they encountered by moving through the middle of deep masses of forest or frozen swampland. Sometimes an ordinary rifle formation would form the front side on an encirclement attempt, while they went for the flank or rear. Thin screens warned where the enemy was, and the rest moved in narrow columns to avoid detection (by all passing along a narrow, scouted route) before deploying to fight.

This worked particularly well in the first winter, when the poorly prepared Germans were largely confined to inhabited locations to get shelter. They might man wider defenses - still close to such places - during the day, but at night only a few frostbitten sentries would be out, as most tried to stay warm near a fire inside. That created perfect conditions for these lightly equipped light infantry forces to move en masse into the German operational rear. Then they would show themselves the next day by cutting a road or conducting a raid etc.

THE SOVIET TACTICAL SYSTEM -- DEFENSE

On defense the Red Army placed enormous emphasis on digging in as deeply as possible, fortifying buildings, creating obstacles. A rifle soldier spent far more time and effort with his shovel than with his rifle. The operational effect sought was unkillable sprawling pockets of annoying ranged fire. They wanted to make the Germans come up and exchange off each position at grenade range, expecting to give as good as they got if the Germans obliged.

Rifle formations use "2 up + 1 back" and all around defensive zones. They rely on stealth and field fortifications for their protection, while their heavy weapons reach out far enough to cover the ground between each "blob", and their LMGs and rifles reach out far enough to protect each blob frontally from enemy infantry.  That plus deeper artillery fires provides a "soft defense" that is expected to strip enemy infantry from any tanks, or to stop infantry only attacks on its own.  Or, at least, to make it expensive to trade through each blob in layer after layer, in the same "laying his ship alongside of the enemy", exchange-attrition sense.  Then a heavier AT "network" has to cover the same frontage but starting a bit farther back, overlapped with the second and later infantry "blobs".  The heavy AT network is based on cross fire by 45mm and 76mm ATGs, plus obstacles (watrer, ditches, mines, etc) to channel enemy tanks to the locations where those are dense.  Any available armor stays off the line in reserve and slides in front of enemy penetration attempts, hitting strength not weakness in this case, just seeking to seal off penetrations and neutralize any "differential" in odds or armor concentration along the frontage.  On defense, the mech arm operates on its own principles only at tank corps and higher scale, and does so by counterpunching with its offensive tactics, already described above.

The prepared defenses at Kursk represent the most famous evolution, and test, of this system.  Each position contained bastions at the ends or corners, frequently laid out in a trapezoid (two narrower corners in front, 2 wider behind). In each there are 2 or 4 AT guns, facing diagonally (right-front or left-front)  e.g. All of them oriented outward from the overall position, spikes around the hub. They therefore get crossfire at the locations between the bastions themeselves. When there are 4 at a location they have 2 facing each way, not facing more ways.

The rear positions can be 400 yards from the front ones. The front guns are frequently 45mm caliber and the rear usually 76mm caliber, though the strongest positions might have all 76mm. The 45mm are thought of as having an effective range of about 400m and the 76mm are thought of as having about twice that. They want to overlap their ranges if possible.

Usually there are also antitank rifles (ATRs) associated with each of the subnests, facing at other points on the compass initially. There may also be strings of them between the subnests, or infantry positions there, or MG positions interleaved with them in checkerboard fashion. Frequently there is an infantry reserve position in the middle of the whole strongpoint, with up to a third of the available infantry force.

In the interior are 4 MG positions, which would be single Maxims in trenches or log bunkers. There are two infantry platoon positions, one forward and one right, in star-shaped trenches. A main infantry position in the center-rear would contain the bulk of a company in a regular trench position, perhaps 2 parallel rows, and would include dugouts to shelter from artillery fire and mortar pits.

Unmarked, all around the red perimeter line there could be strung pairs of ATR plus tankhunter teams, or listening posts from the last squad of the forward platoons, or a pioneer section of HQ and 2 DC equipped squads, a sniper on the back wall perhaps, the odd dummy MG position, etc. Alternately there might be a pioneer section or a section of 3 tankhunter teams with the central company initially.

The perimeter line and/or the central infantry position might also have wire, or not, depending on how long the position had to prepare. If available, it would be strung 100m or so out in a continuous belt, with an occasional gap. Two thirds or so of the gaps would be AP mined. (This allows sallies etc).

A typical location for the infantry would be in a balka (dry run-off gully) or behind a low rise, or in a scrap of denser vegetation. The MG positions might be on small stony rises or in rubbled buildings, giving somewhat better fields of fire and clearer long range views etc.

Indirect artillery would also be registered on the forward face of the strongpoint and its immediate flanks.

In action, the MGs, infantry heavy weapons, and indirect artillery all try to strip any German infantry from its tanks outside the "convex hull" of the ATG positions. Tanks that approach the whole position are left alone until they come within about 400 yards. Then the guns with flank angles engage first. If the tanks reorient on those, the other nests that get new flanks as a result open fire in succession.

If one or more of the nests is KOed and the enemy armor enters the strongpoint, all the guns reorient inward. Anything inside will definitely suffer multiple flanking angles, unless all the forward positions have already been silenced. Infantry teams also help if the armor gets inside the perimeter, and finish off bailed out crews (tommy gunners accompany them for this purpose, also to strip any protecting infantry etc).

The Germans readily overcame such positions when they massed sufficient armor on a narrow axis- a full panzer regiment put on a frontage of 1-2 km, tops. The AT guns wound up trading off for attacking tanks, though the latter were generally recovered (they end the day in a "repair" category, not TWO).  The Germans lost about 25 men per battalion-day attacking such defenses, though the first day at Kursk doubled that. The Russians often lost a third of the defending force each day, and front line divisions were fought out in two days, with only rear area forces and cadres of the combat elements remaining.

The net effect of having layers everywhere was that German penetrations behind their concentrated armor were narrow, as small side forces could not easily dislodge them. The Russian defense holds where it is not hit hard by concentrated stuff; where it is so hit it is destroyed, though at some attrition cost to the attackers.

The need to concentrate the tanks on a narrow axis tended to multiply the effects of Russian mine defenses, and to a lesser extend made their spoiling barrage artillery fire more effective (mostly it is true against the supporting arms, rather than the tanks themselves). The German tanks were regularly sent to the shops by hits in the course of this, and most of the tank fleet turned over in a week.  

The foremost German armor was occasionally checked by gun front positions like this, as those tanks were often strung out front to back and artillery coordination suffered in the depths of the Russian defenses etc. They would typically either shift direction or send infantry first with strong artillery support the following day.

The heavier SU and AT guns, which were viewed as heavy antitank weapons on defense ("animal killers"), tended to be spread over the frontage.  Higher ups and dedicated SU officers were always demanding that they be kept together, while the brigade commanders were always splitting them up to have some in each spot they wanted them. The Germans had similar fights over Tigers and Jadgpanthers.

The other Russian way of stopping armor, particularly concentrated armor, was to send an equal sized T-34 force directly opposite and invite a brawl. This was expensive in tanks lost but usually did check a German attack, at least for half a day or so.

More hasty defenses, say by mech forces to defend recently taken ground against German counterattacks, relied on a network of infantry strongpoints (foxholes) supported by towed AT guns.  The MGs were interspersed with two layers (4 front line, 2 back line) of staggered infantry platoon positions, arrayed as separate strongpoints rather than one continuous line. The mortars and other artillery dealt with broad covered routes.  

T-34s, with riding infantry, are held in reserve. They wait until the attackers are well mired in the infantry defense and the ATGs have already engaged and reduced enemy armor numbers. Then they pick a modest area and put in a small flanking counterattack, with the motor rifle troops in the area acting as the fixing force. If it succeeds the tanks then withdraw into reserve again. Killed ATGs that leave holes in the AT net are replaced by a single T-34 in a local "shoot and scoot" position.


RUSSIAN FATALISM, HUMAN WAVES AND OTHER MYTHS

Russia had only twice the population of Germany, and when the Axis minors are included the manpower edge of the alleged Bolshevik hordes falls to more like 3 to 2. When Russians did outnumber Germans tactically by 5 to 1 or more, it was because Red Army commanders had intelligently arranged for that local odds advantage, by holding other sectors with fewer men. Where Germans told tales of mowing down screaming hordes, it was generally due to Russian tactical leadership not matching the brilliance of the operational deployment.

Russia had the same steel capacity as Germany and they each produced the same number of tanks per month at their rate peaks - but Russia outproduced Germany 2 to 1 by hitting that peak rate sooner and staying at it longer, despite the Germans having the drop on them, instead of the other way around. They didn't have 10 tanks to every 1 German, but the German accounts sure try to make it sound that way - which is just another way of pointing out that the Russian tanks were where they needed to be and actually running, while the German ones were in the wrong place or the repair shop.

Penal unit stories are pretty much fantasies by German side historians. There were indeed penal units in the Russian army, but a penal detail typically consisted in digging ditches or removing mines - dirty and hazardous duty far away from where it could do immediate operational harm to the rest of the army, if the screwups screwed up again. There were also cases of penal units pressed into combat. But these were more in the nature of a "second chance" than a punishment. Combat was honorable. As in most armies, honor followed responsibility on the one hand and danger on the other. If a unit performed well in difficult and bloody combat, the men would be forgiven past errors.

Russian combat losses were indeed very large, but hardly translate to widespread despair, "fatalism" or desertion, except perhaps in cut off units in the early days of Barbarossa. The typical Russian soldier did not expect to get killed. He did expect to get wounded, perhaps repeatedly. He expected to bleed, but to survive. And most did so.

In a typical month long major operation, up to a third of participating personnel might become casualties. The other two thirds - three quarters if things went well - would remain unscathed but face continued hazardous duty. Of the 25 - 33% who became casualties, 3 out of 4 would be in the "medical" category - a stint in hospital - but not permanent military losses. This last group was largely a euphemism for KIA or died of wounds, but also included cripples invalided home after loss of a limb, PWs, missing, deserted, went partisan, etc. Each of them a slice of that quarter. Overall, maybe a sixth of Red Army casualties were actually killed in action. An additional number of PWs of course died later in brutal German captivity and add to total war dead.

Few could expect to survive continued exposure to the risks of front line combat unscathed for the duration of the war. But wounds also made that risk somewhat self-limiting, because months would be spent off the line recovering. A man worried about whether the wound he got would be mortal, or would maim him for life. He hoped it would be the kind that kept him out of action for a while but did not serious imperil him. But he expected to get one. When he "got his", he was off for the month.

A stint in hospital had various things to be said for it. It wasn't so dangerous as the front. It was cleaner. Creature comforts and society were better. Various opportunities for change of role in the war might present themselves as well. And one was honored, one had served and sacrificed, done one's part for the time being.

The most dangerous positions were in the infantry, and the most hazardous roles of all were tank riders.  Hence they were were lionized in propaganda for their prowess and bravery, as such roles usually are. Propaganda requires a grain of truth to work. Recon roles and rider roles were played up precisely because the rankers looked up to men who did such things, for their sheer balls.

But infantry also had quiet sectors, screening operations, static defense. A man who had served well enough might earn promotion to NCO and might see a spell spent training others. Major operations required build up periods logistically speaking. Deep layered reserves have portions in the safer rear areas, and they rotate the roles, so spells in the line are interrupted by periods of relative safety. Then there is the hospital.

Other combat roles were less dangerous. Tankers were much less likely to be frequently wounded than infantry. Heavy weapons crews and the average pioneer, likewise.

There were of course army jobs even less exposed. These included rear area service and logistic roles, HQ roles, most of the artillery, engineering not of the assault pioneer variety, etc. The Red Army was short on such "tail" jobs compared to the Germans, but it was still a quarter to a third of personnel. Such troops might go the whole war safely. He'd probably see a few people around him die -- shellfire, mostly -- and a number get wounded, but was unlikely to be harmed himself. And if he was, it would probably be a relatively minor wound from which he'd recover fully. 

So Russians did not view military service as a death sentence - nothing like it. They thought the war could not be avoided and had to be won, that it was hard, that it demanded sacrifice, that they would be expected to try and to risk and to bleed. Some might angle for safety immediately, most sought to give enough for honor and comradeship, and then to survive.

It is worth bearing in mind that by September 1943 Soviet losses per 100 frontline riflemen, per combat day, had fallen to the same level as those of US frontline riflemen. Life was tough in all frontline units, but Soviet units did not suffer the mass slaughters in 1943 that many German accounts report or assume.

The Russian troops' biggest morale problem early on was not fear of death in battle, it was doubts about their own command and more quietly, Soviet leadership. The higher ups seemed not to know what they were doing, and it seemed folly to follow their orders. This situation improved after the battle of Moscow: after that they knew the Germans could be beaten. By the finish of the Stalingrad campaign, those doubts were basically gone.

Russian propaganda rapidly saw that patriotic appeal would do more than party nonsense or cynicism. They appealed to the defenselessness of Russian civilians and the harshness of the Germans, played up to be sure, but with plenty of reality to start from. And the men were simply and directly called on to interpose themselves between German soldiers and defenseless Russian civilans, and to save their lives by fighting and bleeding for them. It was perfectly effective motivation.


AMERICAN COMBINED ARMS TACTICS

The later war Western Allies were both enthusiastic practitioners of both attrition warfare and combined arms tactics, and unlike the late war Germans, they had the resources to make them work.  

Combined arms does not consist of "total dose" thinking, just throw a bit of everything at the enemy and hope some of it sticks. The point is to generate lopsided match ups, the rocks that beat scissors. And sometimes the way you get that is to overload one arm, in favorable circumstances for it - e.g. full tanks in open steppe, or infantry at night in woods.

A bad commander is one who gives all his subordinates exactly equal force mixes each with exactly proportional "units slices", and parallel missions. A good commander is one who decides on a point of main effort and a combined arms means suited to his plan, tasks his sub-units accordingly, etc.

There is also an issue of absolute scale. For armor to have its real effects, you need a company of the stuff. Less than that just doesn't act like armor. It lacks the robustness, ability to overload single ATGs, ability to isolate positions by fire while others keep going, etc. Penny packets of AFVs may help stiffen a defense, but when attacking they are pretty useless. They do not change the form of the attack, which is the same as an infantry division would deliver without them present. It takes a company to produce a real "tank attack" effect.

Americans, with plenty of everything, could afford to attack on a broad front with multiple waves. Standard practice was to locate enemy infantry positions with scouts and then blow the hell out of them with artillery and HE-firing tanks.  The infantry followed methodically behind the firepower.  When enemy armor appeared, the tanks were pulled back behind a screen of bazooka-equipped infantry while tank destroyers hunted them back from overwatch.  When the attack slowed, yet more artillery was called in (final protective fire).

The American style of fighting would prefer heavy trees if farmland, or village or rural if moderate trees. Obviously, the more cover, the more the tanks depend on their accompanying infantry to clear bits of it and create infantry-AT free paths of advance for the tanks. Since the US style of defense depends on stripping the infantry off and still having an intact infantry defense themselves, they want cover not wide open ground.

Once the objective is taken, get the reserve companies up to secure and defend it supported by the battalion 6-pr. AT guns, along with any other stray elements. What were the lead companies can go back into reserve, and/or secure the flanks of the assault corridor.

This type of attack telegraphs your intentions to the German fairly early, but as long as you keep moving forward and stay in a fairly tight fist you ‘should’ be ok. A particular concern is that all your units are moving along a single corridor, and are therefore vulnerable to German off-board artillery. Also, units on the flanks are largely ignored, so you may get a lot of flanking fire. Smoke along the edges of the assault corridor may help alleviate both problems.

The following is an example of wedge probe tactics used by American infantry forces. A typical force used for this would have 2 companies of infantry with their supporting weapons, perhaps an additional MG platoon, and one platoon of Sherman tanks. In addition it would use 2 105mm FOs and rely on them heavily. The third company of the battalion would not be used, it would be left out of battle to take on the support role the following day. The whole approach is meant to be easily sustained through time, delivered again and again, day after day, with companies of the battalion rotating the lead, support, and rest roles.

The two companies are tasked as point and support. The support company acts as a base of ranged fire and does not close. It may "move" up to maintain LOS and occupy positions in no man's land, trailing the point company if it does so. If there is an extra supporting MG platoon, it is assigned to this support company. The support company may use a line of platoons with weapons between, or leave one platoon in reserve behind such a line. Its role is to hold the frontage by fire, whatever happens to the point platoon; to deny open areas to the enemy and so prevent counterattacks; and to support by ranged fire, especially with its MGs and mortars. One FO may also be with this company, and acts much as the other does, as will be described below.

The point company has the role of leading the attack, and is deployed in a wedge formation, with one rifle platoon on point, the rest in line behind it, weapons in the middle of the line and rifles to each side. The FO is with the weapons typically, but could be to one side or the other to be less predictable to enemy replies or to get better observation of some key target area. The tank platoon is positioned level with the main line of the company or slightly trailing. Their mission is fire support, not scouting or direct entry into the enemy position, themselves.

The lead platoon is in turn deployed in wedge formation again, with one squad out on absolute point, typically split into 2 half squads, both forward and scouting. The remainder of the point platoon trails these by 50 yards, and the main line of the company is another 100-150 yards back, at its leading edge. The company line platoons are in blob formation aka 2 rank line, and conforms to the available cover. Weapons platoon and company HQ split the weapons in the center - if desired, one squad of rifles can be put there too under company HQ direction, to lead the way into areas
of cover and check out routes, etc.

The FOs call in their aim points on turn 2 and continually walk them ahead of the point. The whole lead company advances on move to contact. If under ranged fire, the point platoon, only, may switch to advance and press through fire - the rest just worm forward to the limits of cover and enemy LOS, and wait to reply with fire of their own. If absolutely required to get a spot, a single Sherman may be risked forward, buttoned - with lots of mortars to reply to a gun, and keyholing if possible.

The idea is simply to double-dare anybody to shoot at the point. When they do, the kitchen sink is dropped on their heads in reply - tanks, 105s, mortars, MGs, etc. The point goes to ground and hugs cover for dear life, while everyone else gets the shooters "off" them. When those shooters have been silenced or have had enough, the point steps out again.

As the point gets ragged out, the role of point platoon is rotated through the rifle platoons of the lead company. This is done by pausing the point platoon and letting the main body draw level with it, then having one of its component platoons take over the lead. If a particular strong set of enemy is met all at once, all rifles add their fire to the heavy weapons for 2 minutes, and the tanks all make sure they have LOS. This produces "mad minutes" and should overwhelm the defenders. If for some reason it fails to do so, the tanks fire for several minutes more and the chain is yanked for more 105mm. Infantry is not risked closing with up and firing enemy.

This approach requires a fair amount of time and hideous amounts of ammo. It is relatively economical with your own losses and it is incredibly easy to execute. (Some combined arms skill is required, using the best shooter for a given target type, but that can be learned as professional formula and applied by rote). Indeed, it will trump virtually any "up" defense, when enough HE is available to implement it. Defenders facing it need to shift to reverse slope principles or it will chew through them, perhaps not rapidly but efficiently and relentlessly.

Those are typical wedge - overwatch tactics as used by US infantry forces.

Next I will give an example of V (inverted wedge) bounding overwatch tactics as implement by US armor division forces.

A typical force for this would be a company of armored infantry, taken as 1 platoon with halftracks and 2 without, plus 2 full platoons of Shermans and a single 105mm radio FO. As an attachment, also add an AAA section with several foot HMG teams with abundant ammo (use 5 man HMG 1917s e.g.) and 1-2 40mm Bofors, transported by M3A1 or M5A1 halftracks.

The tasking is as follows. The AAA section merely screens the majority of the frontage and supports by fire against targets visible from it. Its 'tracks initially stay in full defilade, and come out only at the end, and if needed.

The main body delivers a wing attack up one side of the board - again assume the left to stay consistent with the previous examples. The formation is a V with tank platoons in both up positions, and the halftracked armored infantry platoon trailing in reserve, between them. Each tank platoon has a dismounted armored infantry platoon working directly with it. Each tank platoon is in turn in a wedge formation, with HQ tank trailing and off center, not in the middle or leading position. The FO is with the rightmost or interior platoon, and walks his aim point across likely enemy positions, starting from just left of their expected center.

The tanks lead and the armored infantry follow. The idea is for the tanks to be within spotting distance of any HMG that can hit the infantry before the latter step into the open. But the tanks should be outside panzerfaust or tank hunter range of any cover. The tanks work over suspected enemy positions with their MGs, area fire, and buttoned to avoid using up their scarce 50 cal ammo.

The whole main body advances in steps as a four legged creature. Right tanks, left tanks and right infantry, left infantry and right tanks, right infantry and left tanks. Each infantry step brings them level with the tanks and then just beyond into the next cover the tanks stopped just shy of. Each tank step sees the next field that the infantry now border, and then closer to within HMG spotting range of the next set of cover (150m is ideal). Infantry is always the first to pass cover, tanks the first to pass open areas. Moreover, one side of the formation is always stationary and ready to fire whenever the other side is moving.

The 'track mounted platoon just trails in full defilade, as a reserve, for now. The company HQ should be with them. Each platoon has its own 60mm mortar, with a primary mission of gun work, ammo jealously saved for that. Let tank HE do everything else.

Any enemy encountered is shot to ribbons by the massed tanks.

Woods interiors that the tanks cannot reach are scouted by infantry, or if known to be occupied, hit with 105mm HE first and then rushed by the nearest infantry platoon.

At any time, one of the legs of tanks may accelerate, if it thinks the defense ahead of it has broken. That is the signal for the reserve to come forward and engage in its own right. The 'tracks supplement the tanks as the latter get low on ammo, once the defending AT network has been smashed. The reserve platoon engages whenever it can hurt the enemy the most, once his line has been broken. They can also run infantry up to a tank platoon that has run away from its own, and "resupply" it with close infantry escort, thereby.

The whole movement is slow and methodical. Speed is not an issue and the attack is thoroughly telegraphed. If the enemy wants to get out of the way they are invited to do so. If they want to stand in front of the attack they are reduced to mincemeat. Single parts of the attack can be traded off, but the whole won't be. Obviously this requires a truly lopsided armor superiority, but the whole point is how to "cash" that when it is present. Cheaply.

The only thing this attack method worries about is superior enemy AFVs in unflankable keyhole positions. A few TDs with tungsten can help in that case, but those issues are beyond the scope of this post anyway. The defense being hit doesn't have any, only a few on map guns and infantry AT weapons. 

Those are typical bounding overwatch tactics as used by US armor division forces.

A combat command was a brigade sized slice of a division, typically 1 battalion each of armor, armored infantry, and armored field artillery.  Its purpose was to provide flexibility in tasking, so the force mix could change to fit the terrain, enemy, and mission.

In action, a combat command would generally form 2 task forces around its maneuver battalion commanders, taking their names from the commander of that battalion. Then they cross attached one subelement from the other maneuver unit in the CC. Generally the artillery would fire in support of either task force, but if they were separated by more than its range, an individual battery (6 Priests) would be attached.

Task forces thus come in two main varieties, armor heavy and infantry heavy. An armor heavy task force would have 2 companies of medium tanks, and 1 company of armored infantry. An infantry heavy task force would have 1 company of medium tanks and 2 companies of armored infantry.  US armor divisions also used a 1 to 1 ratio, but then tended to task them 1:2 or 2:1. And sometimes would cross attach a regimental combat team from an ID to get extra infantry. A tank heavy task force might have 50 armored vehicles or more with only a single company of infantry.

Other elements of the division might be parcelled out to the TFs in platoon sized bits, or might be kept as the nucleus of additional task forces, off the standard pattern. Examples are TD battalions and armor cavalry squadrons.

It was not tanks that were scarce in the US army, it was trained tankers, and shipping to get all of it to Europe. Nothing like the 40,000 Shermans produced saw action in France. The fleet at any one time is more like 3000 or 4000.

US armor divisions arrived in several waves or "generations". 1, 2 and 3 were "old" pattern, 1942 era divisions, with a tank heavy structure. The second wave of ADs were the ones unleashed for the Cobra breakout itself, and a few that lagged them slightly but participated in the race across France. These include the 4th and 6th, Patton's spearheads, and the 5th and 7th. The third wave of ADs reached France in the fall, but entered actual combat quite late in the year, many of them only for the battle of the Bulge.

The armored infantry had quite a few vehicles. Not all of the support weapons on TOE were with them in practice, however. They were always hungry for more riflemen, since those took the highest losses of any part of the division, and were in the greatest demand. Marginal weapons like 57mm towed ATGs were frequently cannabilized for additional rifle replacements. When you have plenty of Shermans around and are attacking, the usefulness of a towed 57mm is miniscule.

The tank battalion also had a single company of light tanks - Stuarts mostly, only a few ETO units got M24s late in the war. They were considered marginal for combat and frequently left out of battle. They performed other duties - runners, ambulances, etc. Occasionally you might see a platoon of them on a screening operation.

TDs, cavalry, engineers, and AA might all be attached. These frequently bulked out a US force to something like 33-50% more than its bare major maneuver elements. 

Overall, they had tons of light armor with gobs and gobs of MGs aboard. This gave them immense firepower against infantry enemies. There were also lots of plain Shermans, enough to blow through anything but serious armor or elaborately prepared PAK fronts. But there wasn't a lot of infantry staying power if they had to dismount and fight their way through a forest or across the tops of steep or rocky hills.

They didn't send dismounted scouts first. The lead element was a platoon of Shermans. The idea was to substitute capital for blood, anyway, not to save Shermans, which were not scarce. Tankers yes, tanks no. (105mm HE shells were even less scarce).  Far fewer things can kill a Sherman than a man on foot, and they did not want to lose either. If they did lose the lead tank to an ambush, the rest of the lead platoon just blew up the ambushers in retaliation.

Nor did the armored infantry fight mounted from halftracks.  Hidden PAK, Panthers etc. would turn that into a big barbeque inside of two minutes.

Unlike modern practice, where practically everyone acts as armor, WW II era armored infantry was meant to perform leg infantry tasks for mechanized forces. They needed infantry to dig defeated men out of their holes and cellars with grenades, to check bridges, clear a wood, help spot, provide minimal close protection against fausts etc. Not to go first doing recon by death. 

To fight an enemy with Panthers and strong AT, the combined arms force, was led by a full platoon of dismounted infantry, typically  traveling in a wedge or blob formation behind an isolated, leading, half squad "point". And following that point platoon was the balance of at least a company, or tanks, or (the usual and paradigm case) both.  Leg infantry will spot Panthers without getting whole vehicles permanently killed, and walk over German AT teams and discover them, while vehicles are still out of range.

They were not trying to have one total dose force, but to send the right weapon to do the right job. Lots of tanks when the terrain was open and there were mostly infantry defenders, they believed was the right way to fight.

It only really got them into trouble after a couple of weeks to a month of heavy fighting. Then the armored infantry battalions could be so depleted from losses that they couldn't really hold the line. In those cases, they typically cross attached a regimental combat team from the nearest infantry division. Or they pulled the AD back to take replacements.

Force to space ratios, in terms of width, varied over the course of the war. They were high in Normandy, where the fighting was someone "claustrophobic" - and the terrain exceptionally tight in the US sector, as well. In those conditions a single US front-line company might have only 1 km to defend, not 2. That is part of what happened to Panzer Lehr's attack attempt in July, actually. The defenders were more like the size and composition of one of the US attacking forces given, meaning a full battalion on 2 km.

At the west-wall, force to space was less because the line length had expanded more than the forces had, compared to Normandy. And in the Bulge, the original attack sectors were thinner still, the thinnest on the whole front - at first. Dispersion of troops front to back ("meeting engagement" style confusions, 2-D rather than just linear maneuvering, etc) kept the force to space ratio relatively low in the Bulge fighting. But it climbed back to the "ordinary" levels, if not to Normandy ones.

US recon tactics were similar to German practice -- individual units did their battlefield recon (locating actual enemy positions) while the task of cavalry units was to establish "contact" and then extract itself, not to get pulled into a heavy firefight with heavier enemy forces.

A standard US cavalry platoon had 3 Greyhounds, 3 Jeeps with MG, and 3 Jeeps carrying 60mm mortars. Typical march order was MG, Greyhound, mortar.  If opposition was expected the Greyhound would lead. Dismounting for stealth was regularly used.  They also just relied on the lead jeep reversing direction as soon as they saw something.  They originally had M3 scout cars in North Africa, but the men preferred jeeps because they were much lower profile and far easy to do a 180 in, to get out of dodge when they saw something.  The troops liked the mortars because it allowed them to hit the enemy without being spotted.

The squadron (battalion) also had a company of Stuarts and a section of M8HMC which could be used (typically in pairs) for direct HE, as "assault guns", or fired in battery when the cavalry was in defensive positions.  The Stuarts were the fire brigade, to back up the lighter guys when they ran in to too much. Reasonably effective against infantry force type enemies, mostly from all their MGs.  If there was real enemy armor around, they frequently cross attached TD platoons (M-10s etc).

All formations included a small number of 105mm Shermans, 6 per battalion, which were meant to act as an organic form of artillery or as assault guns. They were quite well liked, and more always sought. While meant for anti-infantry bunker-busting type fighting, they were also effective against tanks, firing 105mm HEAT. And they were the earliest "upgunned" Sherman in service - probably one reason they were sought.

US armor outscored German in absolute loss terms (the US lost fewer than 4000 mediums in the whole western front campaign). TDs were particularly effective. In the west as a whole, the German may only have broken even or they may have reached something like 3:2, but they had no great kill disparity as they had in the east. Showing it wasn't tech but tactics, mostly.

Losses weren't actually all that high, though. What you see is periods of heavy combat when the Germans had armor to throw at the US - Normandy, Lorraine, Bulge - the tanks turned over (unit stays in the line and gets step reduced in a month or less). For the rest of the campaign, they lose like one Sherman a week from each battalion.  It was vastly safer to be in a tank than not.  Loss rates for tankers were one third what they were for the armored infantry and no higher than they were for combat engineers. The average US AB lost only about 1/3-1/2 of its initial strength in manpower terms, while infantry formations turned over 1-2 times.

In Normandy in the hedgerow period the US lost around 500 mediums, perhaps half of them to German tanks. These were quite low losses and bely the usual deathtrap nonsense spread about the period, and up to half of them were to non-AFV causes of loss. The Germans lost similar amounts on the same portion of the front in the same period.

It is an article of faith among historians that the US tank destroyer (TD) doctrine was a failure, as evidenced by the abolition of the force after the war. In fact, TD doctrine was far more successful than is generally acknowledged and the TDs worked as intended whenever the Germans actually attacked in force. If the US TD force had a failing, it was that it didn't have much to fight against, because the Germans so rarely had armor in numbers to oppose them. TD formations thus found themselves underemployed in their intended role, and were naturally pressed into others for which their open tops and thin armor made them less well suited. But just about every time the Germans did throw meaningful amounts of armor at the Americans, US TDs outscored the German tanks sent against them. Not just attrition trade off, but absolutely outscored them in AFV kill count.

People tend to overlook that the US fielded far more high velocity 76mm and 90mm tank destroyers than the Germans fielded heavy tanks and SP guns in the West. The US also fielded them sooner - the M10 was a year ahead of the Panther in its production and battlefield presence.

Theoretically inclined officers favored towed guns as likely to win against tanks, emplaced in Pakfront style. But front line types deemed they would become tank fodder because they would not be deployed aggressively enough, and would be penny packeted. This proved correct.  Halftrack TDs with short 75s were tried in Tunisia and universally considered a failure. They then switched some TD battalions to towed 3 inch guns after that, but in Normandy it became completely obvious that real turreted TDs were better, and units transitioned to them as more vehicles became available.

After Kasserine, where all the American forces, not just halftrack TDs performed poorly, the only German massed armor attack was in the Bulge.  In the first week of that fight, the outnumbered US TDs outscored the heavier German tanks, and were instrumental in halting the offensive.

There are scads of other German armor attempts - Gela, Salerno, Anzio, Carentan, Lehr's July counterattack in the hedgerow country, Mortain, panzer brigades in the Lorraine culminating in the Arracourt battles, Alsace, counterattacks against the Remagen bridgehead. All of them failed in an expensive manner. In each of them, US SP TD doctrine worked as designed, with TD units flocking to any break in site, sealing off of penetrations, and eliminating the penetrating German armor in the US backfield.


BRITISH (AND FRENCH) TACTICS

British armor doctrine and use in practice was inferior to US or German as late as mid 1944. All arms coordination with the tanks was particularly lacking.  Their "armour" (as opposed to "tank") force in particular, had a recklessly tank-centric approach that the whole war showed was fundamentally unsound, and which led to excessive armor loss rates every time it was tried, by any side. The US outscored the Germans in Normandy in tanks lost, despite being on the attack and largely equipped with inferior Shermans with short 75. The Brits had higher armor odds longer, used their armor more in multiple breakout attempts, had superior Fireflies the US lacked - and were dramatically outscored by the Germans throughout the Normandy fighting, including in Goodwood.

The British had a very poor armor doctrine at the start of the war. The Germans had the best doctrine, the Russians had one almost as good but had abandoned it in an internal power struggle (and hadn't trained the ranks to use it, purged the officers who came up with it, etc). The French wasn't far behind either, but they did have some material deficiencies in radios and the size of their tank crews that made tank coordination more difficult.

The idea that the important thing was to mass the armor and free it from subordination to other arms was the hobby horse of the British armor theorists, following in the tradition of JFC Fuller and the British tank corps experience of WWI. BHL Hart popularized this notion, and took it to great heights of absurdity. The idea was that massed armor acting on its own could be an arm of decision if it aimed at true strategic objectives and "shot to the brain" deep penetration, ignoring other arms and the slow moving infantry war, and similar nonsense. This was utter rot, all the way down.

The British got to try those armor theories in North Africa and got their heads handed to them by the Germans in DAK. It had worked well enough against brain dead Italians who sat still while armor drove around them and then surrendered because there was someone behind them. The Germans just met massed tanks with a gun front and destroyed British armor wholesale. The British didn't have the combined arms cooperation between tanks and artillery to handle that "counter" via artillery fire suppressing the gun front from beyond visual range, before the tanks engaged. Basically the British doctrine was hopeless in a combined arms sense, and failed everywhere it was tried.

But British writers (and officers during the war) still blamed the French loss in 1940 on this supposed doctrinal error in the handling of French armor. They pointed to the portion of French tanks used in separate battalions for infantry support to substantiate this - but those were the less modern French types with very light 37mm guns (short barrel ones at that), that had no real utility in a tank vs tank engagement anyway. Infantry support was all they were good for.

The French had some of the best tanks in the world in 1940. The Char-B vastly exceeded any German tank in gun and armor specs. The Somua exceeded the German tanks of 1940 in those terms and matched them in mobility - it was a solid tank by the standards of 1941, while the Char-B would have been a middling tank in 1942 - and the US Grant, which was quite similar, proved to be such in North Africa. 

Besides the equipment, the French at light mech divisions that were mostly equipped with the excellent Somuas, and heavy armored divisions that were equipped with Char-Bs (among lighter tanks). Meanwhile it must be understood that the median German tank in 1940 was the Panzer II - there were as many very light Panzer Is with mere MG main armament still in the force as there were heavier IIIs and IVs, and the IIIs still had 37mm guns while the IVs all had short 75s for HE work primarily (and there were very few of them). The rest of the German force consisted of Czech tanks with 37mm main armament, superior to the French lights but inferior to both the Somua and the Char-B (vastly so in the case of the latter).

If you examine the actual reported loss result of engagements with armor on both sides in the 1940 campaign, what you will find is that the Germans did much better the larger the scale of the fight. Platoon level fights are about evenly distributed in winners either way and in the losses each side tanks, but even at company level the Germans are ahead by a factor of 2 or 3. Once you get to battalion scale they are ahead in inflicted losses more like 4-5 to 1.

The reason is combat coordination and the "soft systems" of the tanks, along with the training that enabled full use of them. A German armor formation fought better than the sum of its parts, a French one fought worse than the sum of its parts. What enables that is all tanks having radios (vs only platoon or even company HQ tanks having them), 2 and 3 man turrets with a tank commander with nothing to do but direct his tank and coordinate its actions with those of others (vs 1 and 2 man turrets in which the tank commander was expected to act as gunner or loader or both), much better vision systems in the form of turret copulas and wider angle optics, etc. Add better coordination with the other arms, intel from the air and the best signals intercept intelligence in the world at the time (the Germans knew the location of every French HQ in hours or less from their radio emissions), and the Germans simple ran rings around them. 

It didn't help that the French were defeatist from the outset and their operational plan was poor, while the German operational plan and their up front leadership were outstanding, but the Germans were winning for those coordination reasons, not because they kept tanks concentrated of the French dispersed theirs or the Germans "freed" tanks from working for other arms. (What the German actually did was give full combined arms support to the tanks - but the French did that in their light mech divisions too, and in practice did OK with that in their armor divisions as well. They still lost when they fought German armor formations of equal size).

On a tactical level, French combined arms training was so poor that the infantry typically expected tanks to just lead for them whenever they were present. So you get things like a French tank division attacks a German infantry division holding the shoulder of a penetration, and the French attack fails in half a day with loss, running onto a gun front. When the other way a German panzer division hits a French infantry division they are through them in the same time period and the French division is destroyed. The French had guns, but the Germans had air and artillery coordination and infantry went first as eyes for the tanks and they all had radios - combined arms, guns overwhelmed, in the house. The French formations did not manage this at all - an armor battalion drove down the road, lost a few tanks, deployed, made a slight indent into the German front line and then hit a gun front, lost a tank company and broke off the attack.

I've literally read every tank loss report in the German daily logs of the campaign, and yes the Germans consistently won the larger the engagement scale. The fight with the DLMs was the nearest they came to evenly trading down, but that was in part because the fights developed on modest tactical scales, a company on a side. Then the Germans had traded through most of the French armor, but ran onto a successful French gun front that took out 30-40 tanks in a day. Yes the French did better there than elsewhere, but the pattern still appears in the actual tank vs tank fighting. Those French formations had the best combined arms mix and it showed. 

The other French formation that did pretty well was De Gaulle's armor division, a heavy pattern one not a DLM. It was better led and trained than most of the French formations. Its successful attacks came too late in the campaign to make any difference in the ultimate outcome, but helps to show the role of poor command in many of other engagements, by its contrast.

What one sees elsewhere, though, is entire battalions of superior French tanks lost in a day, in larger scale engagements or after them, through loss of their combat service and support elements, physical isolation, running out of gas after rings have been run around them - plus the previously mentioned general failures in attacks even on German infantry formations. All signs of poor tactical combined arms and abysmal tactical coordination within combat, from poor "soft systems", training, comms, command and control, etc.

The best formation mix in a pure combined arms sense was pretty clearly about 1 armor to 2 infantry type battalions, in WW II conditions. Everyone started with their armor formations more armor heavy than that, and everyone evolved to a lower armor to infantry ratio. Some made it all the way to the right figure pretty rapidly, some didn't. All powers had some mix of formation types that used different ratios each, and some straddled the best line that way. All sides also evolved combat tasking procedures that were more flexible and allowed the local commander (typically at the division level, or mechanized corps for the Russians as basically the same scale) to pick his armor to infantry ratio.

But in addition, all sides used some armor formation types outside of the armor heavy portion of their force, with lower armor to infantry ratios. There was less difference in all of these things than those focused on ratios supposed or pretend, as though that were a doctrinal key. It did have an optimum but it wasn't a doctrinal key - the doctrine issues arose independently of the force design at the division level in how the assets were actually used tactically. Bad doctrine showed up below the force mix level in bad tasking and bad tactical decisions, that lost combined arms. 

And the Brits through mid war were about the worst going on these topics. Their criticisms of others on the matter are obtuse - they didn't know what they were talking about and were screwing these things up royally themselves.

Examples - the early German panzer divison had 2 full tank regiments to just 2 schutzen battalions and a motorcycle battalion, which was an armor to infantry ratio of 2 to 1. This proved way too armor heavy. The midwar German panzer division had only 1 tank regiment of only 2 battalions, to 4 schutzen battalions, 1 recon and 1 pioneer battalion. Before the panzerjaeger battalion became an armor formation, this put the armor to infantry ratio between 1 to 2 and 1 to 3, which was between optimal and slightly armor light. When the panzerjaegers got fully armored AFVs the same formation became perfectly balanced at 1 to 2. The infantry heavier SS formations were 3 to 8 counting the pioneers and recon, perfect to slightly infantry heavy.

The Russians started with giant mech corps that each had 2 armor "division" and were very tank heavy. Then they went to small independent brigades that were the size of a single western tank battalion and incorporated a single battalion of infantry. This was tank heavy, but in practice they were so small they worked with local rifle formations. They still lacked the scale to put tanks in the operational drivers seat. The 1942 tank corps solved that problem, with an overall ratio of 3 tank battalion size formations (actually brigades) to 6 infantry battalions, plus recon and pioneers, thus at basically the same ratio as the German SS formations, just tasked differently, internally. When the rifle brigade within the corps was not split out among its tank brigades, each of those remained somewhat tank heavy. Meanwhile the mechanized corps had a similar number of tanks to more infantry, and was slightly infantry heavy.

The US early armor division was tank heavy with 2 tank regiments like the early Germans, while the "triangular" one went to 3-3, making it smaller than other people's armored divisions and moderately tank heavy. In practice, this became a problem once combat losses had depleted the armored infantry battalions. Americans solved it by "tasking" single infantry regiments to support ADs in prolonged combat, effectively doubling their infantry to the proper ratio. 
Meanwhile US infantry divisions usually had a separate tank battalion attached, or a TD battalion, and sometimes both, making them combined arms formations in their own right, but with an infantry heavy mix. If they detached a regiment to work with the nearest AD, however, they hit about the right armor to infantry ratio themselves.

Some people think the Germans kept their armor in panzer formations instead of farming a bunch of it out to support infantry divisions and that this was a superior practice, but they would be wrong on both counts. A third of German AFV output in the second half of the war were turretless StuGs and Panzerjaegers, and the StuGs were mostly farmed out to infantry support roles at one small battalion to a (small, 6 battalion) infantry division. This put their armor support portion going to infantry formations close to the US level and the AFV to infantry ratio in those so supported, likewise. The Russians got the same effect by having about a third of their armor in independent tank brigades, regiments, and SU regiments that were not part of tank or mechanized corps, and "tasking" those to support normal rifle divisions whenever the latter had an offensive role.

Then all concerned, by 1943, evolved battle group structures that "tasked" with flexibility based on the tactical role of a given formation. In the US armor forces that was based around combat commands and task forces within ADs, and regimental combat teams in the infantry formations. In the German army, it was based on kampfgruppen typically formed around a given regimental HQ, whether panzer or infantry, with suitable attachments of artillery and the other force type (that wasn't part of the "organic" regiment, I mean). In the Russian mech arm, this was done with the 4 component brigades within a tank or mech corps. Nobody had to just fight at the division level force ratios, therefore. They raised or lowered the tank to infantry mix of each component command or task force or KG or brigade, as its mission and the terrain dictated, with a reserve as "flywheel" for leftovers or extras.

But while all that adaptation and hunting for the right ratio and such were going on in all armies, the British (who later followed suit in all those respects) still managed as late as the middle of 1942 to deploy entire tank brigades as single formations virtually without supporting arms of any kind. Sure their tank divisions had "support groups" with modest amounts of infantry and artillery, but in practice these were often just left out of battle with a mission of defending the division's trains and supply elements, while the tanks massed into 1-3 fists and rode off to death or glory like so much horse cavalry (Death, mostly...)

The closest the Britis army got to reasonable combine arms was when a commonwealth infantry division with an attached battalion of infantry tanks led with a single infantry brigade working with all of those tanks - resulting in a somewhat infantry heavy group but with some actual combined arms. Those formations notably outperformed the much heavier and more concentrated tank divisions and brigades that ignored combined arms principles, hogged nearly all of the tanks, and wasted them fruitlessly.

No the problem with those wasn't that they were too dispersed, and only accidentally that they were too concentrated. The real error was that the tanks were expected to act independently of the other arms, which were viewed as mere impediments to their ability to move and fight as tanks. This was the ideal behind the criticism of others as too dispersed, and it was utter rot. The Brits were in no position to teach anyone else the slightest thing about the subject, because they got it all far more wrong - and for far longer - than any of the other powers.

The Brits in the western desert didn't use their heavy AA for AT work, but did make extensive dual use of their 25 pdr standard field piece in that role. They had lots more of them, they were adequate AT weapons against the relatively thin German armor actually in the field at that point in the war, and they had gun shields and such to work in forward areas. They were also a lot easier to move into action and so forth than the heavy AA pieces were.

But, it will be said, precisely in this period the German gun fronts outperformed British. And that is true, but the reason had nothing to do with gun superiority or the difference in gun front doctrine. It had to do with the inferiority of British *armor* doctrine in that era, which was too pure armor driven and did not use real combined arms. Specifically, the deficiency the Brits suffered from in the western desert period was poor armor-artillery cooperation on the attack. 

The right answer to a gun line, after all, is to call down artillery fire on it from over the horizon, not to charge it with tanks. This the Germans knew and did. This the Brits may have known, but in practice did not do. Their armor brigades had basically no artillery component, and the small "support group" attached to their very tank heavy armor divisions was usually relegated to defense of the division trains and supplies. British I tanks working with commonwealth infantry divisions - notably the New Zealanders - got a lot better support and cooperation from div arty, and did a lot better than the independent armor formations, against gun based defenses specifically.

The British deficiency in such armor artillery cooperation persisted as late as Goodwood in July of 1944, where Monty's idea of combined arms attack was each arm taking its own crack at the enemy in succession (first air, then prep barrage, then massed tanks charging unsupported, with infantry behind to hold ground only). This didn't work - the gun line to the extent of the prep fire might be affected, but everything deeper wasn't, and as soon as the unsupported tanks cleared the previous fire zone, they ran onto unsuppressed gun fronts and didn't get artillery support to defeat those.

The (1943-45) British, with more artillery than the Germans but less infantry than the Americans, also tended to attack on a narrow axis, but to advance closely behind a "beaten zone" of rolling barrages.  The standard configuration was two companies up, two in reserve or covering flanks.  Tanks fired in direct support of the infantry. Engineer support cleared obstacles and mines.  Smoke was also extensively used for flank cover.


ELITE FORCES IN WWII

Esprit de corps doesn't depend on training, or experience, or equipment or macro victory - nor on propaganda for that matter. It is about one man's loyalty to those right next to him and the risks and sacrifices he is willing to make for his immediate comrades.

Whereas the British tried to foster esprit de corps with regimental traditions - with some success - the Germans tried to foster it by recruiting units from definite localities. The men then trained together and served together. The downside, as the British learned in WW1 with their similar "Pal's battalions", was that one bad attack could devastate a community back home.

Neither the Americans nor the Russians had comparable attention to this factor in small unit cohesion, though some of the specialist types discussed above were able to substitute a sort of unit pride for it (Marines, Rangers, Airborne e.g., or Guards honors for the Russians).  The US airborne made a huge difference in the Normandy fight. The fact that the Germans could not defend the whole Cotentin penisula can be put down to how deep the penetration already was as soon as the normal infantry made it off the beaches. They also fought very well just as ordinary infantry in the Bulge. It didn't make use of their special training, but they were effective units. A similar comment can be made about the late war German FJ - it was uneven in quality but the best of them were quite capable infantry.

But neither the US airborne nor the Marines were "elite forces" in the commando sense. (The whole branches I mean - Rangers or Marine Raider battalions or Marine Sniper-Recon (pathfinder) platoons were a different story). They had a volunteer basis - though for the Marines, only up to a certain point in the war, receiving draftees assigned to the branch after a while.

There weren't that many "elite units" in the German army in WW2. The Brandenburgers were an elite force by late in their history (though initially they were just foreigner volunteers - many of them criminals - chosen for their infiltration ability and language skills), and a few of Skorzeny's commandos (which incidentally don't lack for coverage in wargames).  In the words of one Abwehr agent, a Brandenburger in Russia would have to know how to spit like a Russian.

Even the core of the FJ - the 1st division that fought through to Crete - was only volunteers and moderate additional training, not actually selected for ability. And by later in the war, it was a mass formation of conscripts. The same was true of the "German" SS formations - they only started with volunteers - no other real selection criteria - but by later in the war were filled out with draftees. And that "Aryan" part of the SS was matched in numbers by others recruited ad hoc from all over Europe, often with very poor human material and not much motivation. These units were not elite in any way, really.

There were a few other "elite" formations - a couple of ad hoc infantry units that fought in Metz against Patton were formed from the NCO schools located there, for example. Panzer Lehr was formed around the training cadre of the army panzer formation schools, so that when it first went into action (In Normandy) it had at least a cadre that was the result of a rigorous selection process for ability, out of the whole German army. It was also exceedingly well equipped. But its rank and file had been filled out from ordinary personnel.

That is really pretty much it. A few special operations commandos, one PD formed out of school cadres and a few desperation battalions late in the war created by cannibalizing other schools.

What the German army forces really had was a wide range of personal and political "fiefdoms" in which every political big wig in the country tried to create his own personal army. It had extremely varied unit quality in each of these little fiefdoms, as it also had in the Heer. The best formations in each had much better equipment than their poorer cousins, and tended to have veteran cadres. A very small number early in the war only also had volunteers, without other selection, which tended not to get extra ability but some political loyalty at best.

None of that is remotely like testing 100 men and letting only the best 10 into a military unit.

The Germans were if anything too fond of specialized unit types, and in the chaos of Capo empire building kept up a bewildering array right to the end of the war. What is true is that the old line Heer resented all these draws on their manpower pool and wanted to feed the best human material into the line units, especially the panzer divisions. But they just didn't get their way - they weren't where the regime saw political loyalty.

The Allies did much more of the commando sort of thing than the Germans did. From the UDT and SAS to the 1st Special Service Group to Marine Raiders to Rangers to Commandos, the western allies in particular clearly had a "thing" for select groups of light infantry "snake-eaters" going into harms way with a Tommy gun and balls of brass and little else. The Germans simply didn't - a handful of Skorenzy's special ops types and a few Brandenburger infiltrators pretending not to be German, excepted.

The German army of 1944 was not uniform and not uniformly veteran, in particular, still less was it an especially "elite" or "seasoned" force relative to its opponents. It was instead all over the map. Some green but fought well, others green and weak, some with expert cadre, some with lousy green cadre (static infantry divisions e.g.), some with only half a cadre - every level of actual experience you can think of was represented by one formation or another.  A high rate of loss and destruction creates not uniform experience, but churn and chaotic variety, depending on both the "vintage" and the recent battlefield "fate" of this or that unit.

Veteran means blooded, has seen the elephant, experienced, isn't going to suffer the initial panic of combat. It doesn't necessarily mean elite or effective.  Some veteran units get better with experience. Some get burnt out by losses and continual need for replacements. Sometimes the surviving cadre and its growing experience helps as much as the turnover hurts, but sometimes not. The evidence is that a typical soldier was only "good" for about 180 days of full combat experience, and after that his usefulness declined seriously. Plenty didn't live that long, most would get wounded in that period of time and rotate to the rear for a shorter or longer spell. Those still in the line unwounded after 180 days of real combat, were frequently just zombies from shell shock and fatalist indifference, and of no use to anyone.

By the same token, "Green" doesn't mean ineffective. It means hasn't seen the elephant, no matter how well trained or motivated. The first reaction of a green unit to real combat is not predictable, especially if that first action is seriously bloody. They can dissolve or underperform not only in that combat, but in most future combats. This is purely a matter of the collective response to mortal terror. They either gel into a unit in which the men rely on each other to survive, or they atomize to self preservation. The individuals do not trust each other to save them and won't stick their necks out to do so. This is a first shock kind of thing, and within a week the nature of the unit is set, and they get over it. That doesn't mean they become veterans, or that they become good - it means they settled into a basic level of unit cohesion that it will be very hard to change thereafter.

The best thing an army can do about the former is to rotate full units out of combat for periodic rest and replacements and replenishment, and to ease them back into combat after rebuilding by first having a few weeks to a month of less intense action (defense on a quieter part of the front e.g.). The best thing an army can do about the second is to try to have the first combat of a given formation occur in controlled and favorable conditions - tentative attack or well supported defense e.g., not "live or die".

There are plenty of instances of green infantry formations of conscripts getting through a period of a week or so of greenness and then fighting very well thereafter against superior foes. There are also plenty of instances of veteran and well equipped formations getting ground to powder by combat losses and becoming ineffective, until taken off the line for up to 6 months of rebuilding.

No one can just withstand literally years of intense combat and even maintain, let alone grow, in effectiveness. It doesn't happen. It rotated in and out regularly, a cadre can learn and stay strong. It stays strong in part by the officers promoting into safer positions in the time frame where they'd otherwise burn out, if left in the full level of danger of a front line infantryman for that long.


TANK EVOLUTION

The Panzer III production lines had the highest capacity of all the German tank production. They could not afford in output number terms to shut down any of the lines producing them. However, the 50L60 was proving insufficient to routinely defeat the main threats, which were the T-34 (the most important by miles) and to a lesser extent the US Sherman. While it could kill them, it needed close range and turret hits, or a flat flank shot. Even uparmored with bolted front plates, it was outranged by the T-34's 76L42 gun.

The Germans wanted to put a larger weapon in the III chassis that could kill T-34s. But the size of the turret ring put severe constraints on the size of weapon that could be mounted on the III chassis in a turreted form. The excellent PAK 40 and its KwK variants mounted in the Panzer IV would not fit.

In the end, the solution was to replace the Panzer III with the turretless long 75 StuG, and shift that vehicle from a modest infantry support supplement type to a major portion of overall German AFV production. Sacrificing a turret hurt the offensive doctrinal role of the vehicle, but gave in return a low silhouette, and allowed an 80mm thick armored front without too much weight for the chassis.

The 75L24 armed IIIs were a stop gap experiment while that shift was going on. They were based on the hope that using HEAT ammunition, the shorter 75 could kill T-34s. They also expected to pair them with Tigers or long 75 Panzer IVs to make limited numbers of those types "go further" in action.

It was not a successful experiment. The low velocity gun proved insufficient in the accuracy department to fight T-34s on even terms, even with HEAT ammunition. As soon as the production lines could be fed sufficient StuG superstructures to make use of the available III chassis output, the types were therefore discontinued. III production did not fall, but it shifted to StuGs.

Long 75 Panzer IVs were very scarce in southern Russia at the end of 1942. A typical count of them in a Panzer division might be 24. The only exception was recent arrivals from the rear or the western front. 

By far the most common German tank in the period was a Panzer III long, with 50L60 main gun and front armor reinforced to 60 or 70mm thickness. And a solid third were older types, Panzer IVs with 75L24 short howitzers (infantry support tanks) or Panzer IIIs with 50L42 main guns, or even lighter. 

The 22nd Panzer division that was the only other mobile division in the 48th Panzer Corps at the time (11th Panzer's parent unit in the Chir fighting), was both badly depleted and mostly equipped with Czech built Pz 38s, with 37mm main armament, the tanks themselves being 3 years old and in poor condition.

11th was better off as a recent arrival. The only other such division in the whole theater was 6th Panzer, leading the Winter Storm relief attempt, with a significant number of Panzer IV longs and some long 75 StuGs. That Panzer Corps, 57th, also had like 24 Tigers attached at the start of the operation.

The light division was basically an early panzer division with only one panzer regiment. The 21st Panzer division in North Africa was the successor of the 5th Light division, e.g. Before the invasion of Russia, all of those original light divisions had been upgraded to panzer divisions - or depending on how you look at it, all the panzer divisions had been downgraded to light divisions, since they all had only one panzer regiment at that point. In any event the two types had merged.

The Germans used 5 tank platoons for all types in the early war, but went down to 4 tank platoons later on. Heavy tanks always used 4 tank platoons. In addition, the standard German tank company had 4 platoons not 3, plus a few command tanks. But the heavies used 3 platoons and 2 command tanks to the company.

There was a period, however, when Tiger Is were scarce enough that they instead mixed them with Panzer IIIs with short 75mm guns in mixed platoons, basically to try to make the Tigers go farther.

German SP guns used 4 gun batteries initially but the fully armored types soon went down to 3 gun batteries with a 10th command vehicle in each company. The lightly armored Marders and Nashorns continued to use 4 gun batteries. SP artillery - Hummels and Wespes - used 6 gun batteries. So did SPW-251/9s - 75mm equipped halftracks used as mobile light artillery - with 2 gun platoons within that set up.

The Russian tank mix at this time was around 60-40% T-34s and T-70s respectively, virtually all of them new. There were tiny numbers of KV-1s and a few lend lease tanks (mostly US Stuarts and UK Valentines, actually from Canada) particularly in the far south (Caucasus front), where they had received them via the Iran LL route. Slightly later, one of the first Russian tank brigades equipped with Shermans fought the 57th Panzer corps stuff, after Winter Storm failed. 

Along the Chir, though, it was mostly T-34s and T-70s. A typical tank corps in 5th Tank Army was by that point down to about 50 tanks - step reduced to the TOE size of one tank brigade, in other words. Recall that 5th Tank had already conducted the northern breakthrough that created the Stalingrad pocket, and fought 6th Army's own Panzer divisions trying to reopen a route out and defeated them, then attacked the Chir sector and drove back its weak infantry, Luftwaffe Field, and "alarm" unit defenders, creating the crisis that attracted 11th Panzer to that part of the front.

Russians were still using T-70s with 45mm main armament. But the *main* German type in 1942 was a Panzer III with 50mm main armament. Yes the Russians used T-60s from late 1941 to about the end of 1942. But the Germans used Panzer IIs through the same period. They were also using lots of Pz 38s in 1941, and still had units using them at the end of 1942 as already noted - a type with capability between the two Russian lights.

The Germans eventually realized that the Panzer III with 50mm main armament was not sufficient and transition those production lines to turretless StuGs instead, to mount a full length 75mm gun. The Russians transitioned their T-70 production lines to make SU-76s, giving their late war infantry divisions tracked mobile fire support with the same doctrinal role as the original German short barrel (75L24) StuG.

The Germans never reduced output of their lightest, Panzer II and Panzer 38 production lines. They transitioned those lines to making Marders (the II and III types respectivel) in 1942, continued making the latter in 1943 while the Panzer II lines made hulls for Wespe SPA, and late war transitions the 38 lines again to making Hetzers. In short, the lighter end of the German AFV fleet mix was still being made, just shifting to tactically more relevant SPA and SPAT form. The equivalent Russian lines were making SU-76s by then (in huge numbers, I might add).

Meanwhile at the upper end of the weight mix, the Russians had far heavier KVs the day the Germans attacked, and were well ahead in the heavy tank department then. They were also ahead in the best medium, their T-34 compared to a Panzer III long as the latest German type in the year of the invasion. They kept that lead throughout 1942, with the Germans scrambling to uparmor and field SPAT that could handle them (Marders, long barreled StuGs at the end of the year), while going through their own development cycles to match the Russian "high end".

The Russians found that the KV was no longer sufficient once the Germans had long 75 IVs and StuGs. So they used those chassis for SU-152s at first, and tried KV-85s, and when neither was quite what the doctor ordered, fielded IS chassis tanks instead. They had an upper tier of heavies as large as the German upper end. It was technologically ahead early and equal or better late (by weight and type mix), and behind only in the second half of 1943, pretty much.

The Russians made about 1000 of those heavy types in 1943 (including e.g. 700 SU-152s), and 4750 more in 1944, all the latter IS-2 chassis either turreted or as SP guns (about evenly split). The Germans made 2600 heavy types in 1943 and 5000 in 1944 - 4/5ths of them Panthers, not Tigers. 1943 was thus the only year in which the top end of the German "weight mix" was larger than the Russian's top end. And oops, they lost the decisive battles of the war that year...

British tanks generally used 4 tank platoons throughout the war, with the exception of the "infantry" tanks - Matildas and Valentines - through mid war, which used 3 tank platoons. Later when they had Sherman Fireflies - long 76mm gun variety - they tried to have 1 tank per platoon so equipped. The companies were "square", 4 platoon affairs plus command tanks, like the Germans. British artillery batteries were large affairs of 8 guns, including their self propelled varieties, with a 4x2 internal structure.

The US used 5 tank platoons, with 3 platoons to a company plus 2 command tanks. They used 4 gun platoons in the self propelled tank destroyers (and without additional TDs at company level, only recon vehicles), and 6 self propelled howitzers per battery in the armored field artillery. Some "assault gun" types used 3 AFVs to a platoon or 6 to a battery - the Sherman 105 and M8 75mm gun motor carriage in the armor and cavalry "fire support" roles, respectively. The US also used 3 armored cars per cavalry platoon, along with half a dozen jeeps (each car worked with 2 jeeps, one MG armed and the other hauling a 60mm morat for light indirect fire). 

All of those are TOE figures. In practice, most formations were usually below strength, and the Germans often very much so. The Russians too late in any large operation. The US and late war British were able to keep closer to TOE, with 65% to 90% common strength levels in action. Both were more constrained by the trained crews than by the vehicles, while the Germans were always tank constrained, and the Russians were only at full TOE at the start of an operation, but had enough production to readily "top off" formations to that level again, between them.


ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY

The US produced 46,000 Sherman tanks. US Sherman losses in the ETO from Normandy to VE day came in under 4000. They had Shermans coming out of their ears, more than they could crew. Yes they sent 10% or so to Russia, and the UK got a bunch of them, and a trickle went to the Pacific later in the war. But there were flocks of the things in depots, in the states, in England, in reserves and shops in the field, etc. A US independent tank battalion averaged around 80% of TOE even in action, one from an armor division up to 90%, unless they'd just had large combat losses. The Germans and Russians saw such strength figures for maybe the first 3 days in action. In Goodwood, the Brits managed to lose 400 tanks in a day, and that defeated that particular breakthrough attempt. Within two weeks they were string again as the front moved after the US breakthrough.

Were the British "poor cousins" in such matters later in the war? No doubt. But the western Allied ground forces were equipped and supplied on a level the other major powers could only dream about.

They still had shortages because of logistic limits after the race across France - they barely had working ports and were still landing stuff over open beaches, etc. The shell shortage was above all a planning and allocation issue - greedy units grabbed it all and fired it off rapidly because they could, starving their neighbors, until rationing was introduced. There was no great difficulty ordering a plant to make a million more 105mm shells - they are basically made out of money. But you had to know you'd want them, and order them soon enough, and allocate them shipping space, then truck space and so forth. In early September gas couldn't be moved across France fast enough, got absolute priority, then caught up when the front went stable at the west wall. Artillery ammo then went into shortage within the month, and was tight clear to the bulge fight. The stocks were unleashed for that, but final relief didn't happen until February of 1945 when the front moved again and usage dropped off because of it.

The point is these were rich man's problems, of foresight, planning, correct or incorrect evaluation of what would make the most impact, and the subject was riddled with large errors of such pure judgment and information aspects. The absolute availability of inputs was never the problem. The only bottleneck that was imposed by total wealth and the enemy was shipping space, and that reflected the big German success sinking ships with u-boats in 1941 and 42. By mid 1943 that was solved, but a ship that only gets going then doesn't make as many trips as one "alive" the whole war.

BEST ALL-ROUND TANK OF WWII -- THE SHERMAN

Any time you do engineering, you compromise.  In a weight budget of about 30 tons, the Sherman pretty much represented the state of the art in WW2 tank design. No tank in that weight class was very much better. The T-34, Panzer IV and Cromwell all have much the same level of theoretical operational effectiveness as the Sherman, as each nation's engineers came to the best compromise they could. Yes, the Panther and Tiger are better, but if you can't beat a 30-ton design with a 45-ton or a 60-ton design, you aren't much of a designer. And for most of the war the US preferred, rightly, to ship two medium tanks overseas instead of the one heavy tank that would have taken the same shipping space.

The Sherman was a very good infantry support vehicle, better than any tank the Germans fielded. Its speed, high rate of fire, fast turret, large HE ammo load and .50 cals made it a dominant platform on the battlefield against infantry. The Sherman chassis was used not only for gun tanks, but for tank destroyers, howitzer tanks, assault tanks, self-propelled artillery, mine-rollers, mine-ploughs and flails, APCs, gun tractors, ARVs, BARVs, dozer tanks, flame tanks, rocket tanks, OP tanks, fascine carriers, ARKs, AVLBs, and the most successful amphibious tank ever built. It could do everything the T-34 could do and lots more besides, even walk on water in the DD variant.  

The Sherman was used by 1942 in one serious fight, El Alamein, where it was entirely successful and easily the most powerful all around tank on the field. The best thing on the German side was a mere handful of Mark IVF2 specials, still sporting thin armor. Most of the German fleet still had 50mm guns and many of them short ones.  The first time Shermans faced superior enemy armor was Kasserine in February 1943, in the form of a mere handful of Tigers. Those were very rare in the German mix, and nowhere decisive. The US lost the initial fights for reasons of poor training and unsound tactics. They then won when they used sound tactics - which meant gun lines and massed artillery, etc.

Nonetheless, the Allies decided on the need to upgun the Sherman and designed the 76mm Sherman in May of 1943. That is pretty fast adaptation. Because of prior exploratory work, they had the turret required for it already laid out, though initially intended for an entirely new tank. They still had to go from blueprints to changes to mate with the Sherman hull (ammo layout etc), then to physical prototypes and into production, etc.

So why did men land at Normandy a year later in "obsolete" plain 75 Shermans?  Mostly because the US mobilized its economic for war very rapidly. The US planned to invade France in the summer of 1943. They were not remotely planning on having until mid 1944 to engage. They were maximizing output numerically at least as much as the Russians and vastly more than the Germans, who did not even fully mobilize for war production until after Stalingrad.  US production of Shermans in calendar 1942 hit 12,000 vehicles. Continue that through the first half of 1943, and any way you cut it there were going to be a huge number of plain 75 Shermans running around. Further, the US hadn't lost many tanks to speak of up by 1944, while other powers' older AFVs dwindled due to losses and breakdowns and were replaced with newer models. These tanks were already in Europe and weren't going to be thrown away.

Eisenhower was not out of touch on the matter, as asserted by some writers. On the contrary, he listened to the men and heard the complaints about US equipment in Normandy, and was bothered enough he ordered a full blown investigation, soliciting comments from the line and compiling them.

It may be argued that the 76mm gun selected was still inadequate to the task. It was theoretically adequate to defeat the Tiger or Panther turret front at 1000 yards, but failed to do so in practice with plain AP due to ammo quality problems and shatter gap. However, this was not widely appreciated by anyone during the war, only in hindsight. Plain AP worked at under 400 yards.

Like many equipment upgrades, the appearance of 76mm Shermans in the independent tank battalions varied tremendously. Shipping space was scarce, and to save it, the rear echelon types wanted to send tank upgrades with whole units rather than separately, if possible. First in / first out was the way to optimize that problem. That took fewer ships, they looked at it as a twofer. That also meant the longest suffering units in Normandy had to wait for a trickle of upgrade tanks while the late arriving divisions showed up all tricked out with the latest gear.  And the brass wasn't really listening to complaints about inadequate 75mm guns until after Normandy. By then the crisis appeared to have passed, as German armor evaporated.

The Allies overall fielded a large number of upgunned vehicles to deal with the German cats, but that counts tank destroyers. Upgunned allied types included UK 17 pounder Firefly, Achilles, Jackson, Hellcat and M10, plus US 76mm and 105mm Sherman. And in fact the portion of the western output that had some form of gun superior to the short 75mm was larger than the portion of the German fleet that had armor sufficient to stop a 75L38 round from the front.  German types with good armor were Tigers and Panthers, and the Jagdpanzers.  But Pz IVs and StuGs, the most numerous types by output on the German side, were defeatable by the 75L38s. And there was a full quarter of the German AFV mix that was lighter still, in the form of all their legacy Pz 38 and Pz II chassis vehicles, SPA and SPAT, etc.

The US still used Sherman "Easy Eights" (et al.) very effectively against T34s in the Korean war. The Israelis had 180 in 1956, 515 "Super Shermans" (et al.) in 1967, and 340 still rolling in the 1973 war. All worked fine against postwar Soviet designs. Pakistanis and Indians also used them in 1970, on each other.


ARTILLERY -- THE HEART OF THE ATTRITION MACHINE

The artillery arm is unique in its ability to project enormous firepower without exposing itself. This makes it suitable for destroying strong anti-tank defenses in particular, since the armored equivalent in firepower is often vulnerable to such things. There is also of course an attrition aspect to artillery, it helps put the odds further in your favour before a fight if you can get an accurate fix on enemy positions. During the fight it can contribute to fire ascendancy and suppression – if you are lucky to have responsive artillery.

The big difference between WW I and II was not that tanks won by driving around the other guy (though that did of course happen, especially early against inexperienced enemies etc). It was just that fronts that move at all - even just a few miles a day - never really get artillery proof. And as a result, whoever has the logistics bleeds the other guy to death - pretty rapidly, operationally speaking.

In successful offensive actions, the way in which artillery mattered most is almost never visible. It is always shown as subservient to the maneuver elements and their missions.

The reality is that sustained shelling at good targets - meaning spotted enemy, in contact and forced to be out of their shelters to fight - by divisional artillery, could trade 5 or 10 shells for each man on the other side of the field and run the enemy out of men before running out of shells. They didn't annihilate them, they bled them. And bled them some more. On a time scale of a few weeks to 1 month, the enemy formations in contact could not take this and evaporated.

The key is that artillery could not get this effect on its own, shelling enemy positions from across the battlefield, with no tactical recon to direct it and the enemy not threatened and forced to leave his shelters to defend himself. But if such threats were created, and artillery ammo wasn't wasted on huge useless overkill shoots or prep fires while the enemy was safe in a dugout 20 feet below ground - then the maneuver elements honestly didn't need to win their own fights. They didn't need to take the objective, outflank the enemy, out think him or out fight him with tanks and rifles and machineguns.

Those things only needed to create the threat that brought him out of his dugouts and into contact, revealed his positions, and let the infantry and armor call down fire upon him. And accurately adjust that fire. Whether this achieved some daily local mission of the maneuver arms was basically beside the point, if they achieved those "good shoots". The enemy could not stand in front of the artillery parks involved, applied relentlessly and in such "good shoots". They'd just evaporate.

The worst things that could happen on either side of the ball were the artillery being called upon to do what it could not do, and inflict annihilation or decision in one day. Or, the maneuver arms seeking decision by their own massed action, bunching up to present a thick attacking target, out of cover and under un-silenced enemy guns. The former wasted the shells to no purpose. The second wasted men to no purpose. The right thing was just enough pressure to make the enemy deploy, as much battlefield intel as possible to fire accurately. Then time and throw weight could do the rest, and run the enemy of out men.

Mortars are the precision munitions" of WWII. Mortars are best used against point targets. They have the advantage of being able to fire on the enemy without return fire hitting them, and they are relatively accurate and lethal enough to knock out enemy support weapons. 

The 81mm mortar is about as heavy as a weapon can get and still be regularly man packable (broken down), thus able to reach any terrain. It has enough range to hit MGs without reply, and the mobility to move after firing to avoid counterbattery (which was rudimentary at finding them in that era). The casualty radius of an 81mm mortar round is not much below that of a 105mm round. However, it is much less effective against men with cover, because it is getting that effect from smaller fragments.

The effect of the shell is quite high, when a target is caught moving.  Infantry mortared in the open will be stuck there like cement as long as your ammo holds. You watch them, when more than two get up you drop another several rounds on them. The German combination was MG42s if you leave cover and 81mm mortars if you stay in it but try to move around at all. The typical result is simply paralysis - the targeted formation will not move.  Net result is, a targeted platoon is lucky if half of it can continue the mission half an hour later. If they are under immediate attack, maybe they can fire back with 2/3 to 3/4 strength in five minutes. 

Mortars have a minimum range, but it is very short. They lose accuracy at longer ranges because each minute of arc the aiming direction is off translates into a larger error on the ground, when the round hits. All the firing arcs are high at all ranges. The flight time doesn't fall as much with range as with a rifle or any other flat trajectory weapon, but being 10 mils of arc off still translates into 10 meters miss at 1000 meters when it is only 2 meters of miss at 200.

The casualty zone of an 81mm mortar round is not much lower than that of a 105mm howitzer round. (More of the round weight is HE, less is shell wall because they don't need to withstand the same firing stresses, etc). They suppress very effectively, in a wide area, forcing infantry to ground and paralyzing all infantry movement in any area they observe. They were normally teamed with MG fire zones to cover the areas of cover the MGs could not handle - defilade, woods for example.

The main weakness of medium mortars isn't firepower or range. It is ammunition supply. They were typically reliant on man packed ammo at 7 lbs per round. They can be fired very rapidly, and can therefore throw away all of their ammunition in a few minutes, tops, if operating from the areas they reach only by being disassembled and man handled there.

If they are in a safe rear area with trucks to bring up shells, they can be as effective as light or medium artillery and can be used as such. But if a road doesn't run within 2 miles of the target location to allow shells to be brought up, medium mortars are going to be less useful than longer ranged guns.

Many people apparently have the impression that the lower the echelon level, the more numerous and busier its artillery:  e.g. battalion mortars firing all the time, divisional guns rarely, and corps and higher stuff only on special occasions. This is not remotely true. The higher echelon guns were less reactive when they fired because their use was centralized. But they were not rare. Most of the Russian heavy artillery was in higher formations assigned to an army, and by it down to particular divisions in accordance with their tactical mission and where the targets were best or the situation most critical.

And divisional arty fired the most of all, in all armies. In practice, divisional artillery batteries of tube artillery have better ammo supply services, dedicated transport, fire direction centers, maps and plotting, and so forth. It is those infrastructure assets that allowed them to fire more fire missions and more ammo per tube, compared to the mortars.

Corps level fires were somewhat rare in the German army, which mostly let divisions fire in support of their subunits. Indeed, to the Germans the division was the natural integrated combat formation because it was the size all the guns could work together to support. But that was not the US practice, nor the Russian. US practice put most of the 155s at corps level, and had as many of them as 105s are division level. The Russian practice was to spread different weapons over regiment, division, and army, depending on their range and the importance of centralizing their use.

For the western allies, the heavier role of div arty was even more pronounced. The US had a severe shortage of 81mm in Normandy from one week after the invasion to the breakout, because the demand was infinite, there being far more tubes in near contact, capable of being fired so rapidly, that any rounds that made it up to the units was gone in half a day. Less could get to them, because they were so far forward the rounds had to be man carried the last couple of miles, in the German's own artillery beaten range where unarmored transport movement was unsafe, etc. The tube arty was easier to keep supplied.

Mortars were not the leading cause of artillery casualties, though they are included of course. Div arty on all sides did more because it had more ammo fed to it, better fire control, greater range etc.

For the Germans specifically, 81mm mortars were about a quarter of shells fired by round count, and much less by weight and lethality. 105mm outshot then by about 3 to 2 and the much bigger 150mm shot about half their shell count, of 100 lb shells not 7 lb ones. The remainder was rarer other calibers, rockets, and the like.

German div arty was certainly a bit less effective in Normandy than most if the war, simply because the density of western air over the battlefield was so high, and counterbattery was one of its main missions. Little L-5s were spotting for a huge gun park of 155s as well. A mobile and stealthier mortar wasn't as good a counterbattery target.

It doesn't destroy the whole enemy force - it bleeds him some. And on the be fight, tactical scale it seem "indecisive" to "only" inflict 10% losses on a defending formation, say. So the temporary morale and cohesion hit can seem like the main thing, advancing the local plan more.

That perspective is exactly the wrong one to understand how decisive artillery was. Because the thing is, if you do that 10% to a defending formation *every day for a week*, you cut them in half, and they may not fight effectively at all afterward. If they still can, do it again every day for a second week, and they are a quarter of their original number, in shellshock, unable to protect themselves from the maneuver forces in front of them. Unless relieved or another formation about the same size reinforces them.

And you can just keep doing that, as fast as shells can be trucked to the front. An attacking division's artillery can "eat" the trench rifle strength of the whole formation opposite twice over in a month, if they stand in front of you to fight and take it, and you are supplied, and they can't just hide in their dugouts because they are under maneuver force pressure. It is the relentlessness of this battle to campaign scale *attrition* effect that is decisive artillery power. 

Maneuver arms thinking doesn't think of it as decisive because the front doesn't move rapidly while it is going on. Then the enemy can't hold anymore, here or there, where his trench strength is a quarter what it was two weeks ago, and the front collapses, and armor exploits, and thinks it did it all.

Artillery needs combined arms, maneuver pressure to give it a vulnerable enemy target; if it just fires on its own without that, the enemy goes deep in his holes and losses per round fired drop 90 to 99% compared to "good shoots" on exposed enemies. 

But whenever the arty gets that pressure, it is nearly deterministic (in a law of large numbers, insurance like sense) that firing off N heavy shells will "drop" N/2 to N/10 enemies - and the rest is just logistics. The armies field millions of men, but the factories turn out hundreds of millions of shells. The arty tubes are just hoses to spray those onto the enemy the last 5 miles; making and moving them to those points is enough to kill the entire enemy force stone dead, just given enough time.

Formations of tens of thousands of men get tens to hundreds of thousands of shells tossed at them in single battles (operations, whatever you want to call them - engagements between divisions to armies on a time scale of weeks to months). The shells are readily replaced before the next one. The men aren't.

A tactician may think the only point of arty is to suppress, because he doesn't expect a modest barrage to annihilate whole companies at a go. But a logistician knows better. You don't have to win the war this afternoon. The enemy is right over there, he isn't going anyplace. As fast as you can truck up the shells, he bleeds.

The relevant measure of artillery support is neither the number of tubes (which as the WWII armies calculated such things included all the mortars etc as well), nor the hypothetical rate of fire (ROF) of the guns, but the total number of rounds fired per day.  And ammo supply is the key constraint. 

A few battalions can fire hundreds of tons per day if they have the supply. All the tubes in the world don't throw additional rounds at the enemy if the shells aren't available.

One battalion of divisional artillery can throw about a ton a minute. For 3-4 battalions that comes to 4000 to 6000 tons per day if they fired continually (which would burn out the tubes, of course).  At non-continual but sustained rates of fire, a division can throw 1000 tons of ammo in one day.  Individual US artillery battalions sometimes threw 50-100 tons per day in intense combat. However, artillery batteries basically never fire max ROF for hours, because the ammo simply can't be brought to the guns that fast and it runs out if they do.  

WWII levels of divisional supply typically ranged from 100 to 600 tons per day -- all supplies (e.g. POL, rations, etc.) for all arms, not just the artillery.  The Germans considered 250 tons of daily resupply generous for attacks and as little as 100 adequate for defensive operations by infantry divisions.

It is also untrue that max ROF is a real limiting factor for artillery batteries. Max ROF hasn't mattered for sustained, long term firepower from any missile weapon from the longbow to the MLRS. In a few cases in Vietnam, with massive helo resupply to a few tubes as the only ones in range of a given battlefield, you will find sustained ROF over periods as long as 50 hours in which they average 1 round every 2 minutes from 105s. That does not reflect continual firing at 1 per 2, but periods at 6 per minute and others quiet, or only half the guns firing, etc.  Ammo is always scarcer than firing time.

Attrition warfare is not primarily about artillery tubes, that is just the final delivery system. It is mostly about logistics, transport links, and applying overall economic capacity. The tubes are the hoses. The water is ammo and for practical purposes is made out of - and moved by - money, or overall wealth.

Artillery attrites on a massive scale, when the time scale is extended to anything from a few weeks to a few months. The cold fact is armies that can field millions of men can field hundreds of millions of large caliber shells (in major wars).

Of course it is possible to waste artillery ammo. Attempting annihilation by overconcentrating rounds fired in space and time, especially on the hardest dug in targets, is extremely wasteful from a "men hit per round fired" attritionist perspective. The efficiency per shell is going to vary up and down by factors of 2 from operation to operation, due to variations in terrain, enemy readiness, observation, etc. And if you work at it mindlessly, you can blow up a lot of empty trench. 

When you try to destroy divisions in one shot with a prep bombardment, you get squat.  To try this is to try to employ one arm in separation, without regard for its own inherent logic, just subordinating it to a problem another arm is having.  That is not the way to use arty. Yes the Brits did that on a massive scale on numerous occasions, in WWI and II, and got squat to show for it. 

Artillery attrition is a strategy, not a method of letting Tommy go over the top with impunity.

Artillery simply doesn't completely eliminate forces in full cover. It causes loss, demoralizes, reduces effectiveness temporarily through loss of visibility and stun effects and by driving everyone as deep as possible. But there is no way a 100 shells fired at an area 400m wide or so and equally deep can hit every one of the defenders. More likely it bleeds them 10-20% at best, and if only a short barrage by field caliber stuff, only a few percent. In modest action, the front line forces are relieved every week or so by the parallel units (battalion for battalion e.g.) cycling into local reserve.

When the point is to remove a position completely, to get rid of it, sending serious maneuver forces for direct fire action is the only realistic way to do so. Annihilation fire on a dug in defense is possible, but requires literally hundreds of 210mm howitzers firing for days, as was occasionally managed in WW I - not a few divisional batteries firing for 15 to 30 minutes.

Modern doctrine is also flawed. Stand off firepower is great if you create a ground threat that forces the enemy to thickly man his front, and conduct actual attacks or probes to bring his men to the surface, force them to maneuver above ground etc. That gives artillery and other firepower arms the conditions it needs to kill. If you try to use it solo the enemy just goes deep and can shrug it all off - witness the indecisiveness of the IDFs recent outings

At the Somme, the Allies were trying to achieve "breakthrough", to win the war with one big push, after one of those typical set piece seven day "everyone in their shelters" shell wastes. And lost disastrously. Then they settled down to much more sensible fighting for six months. Which also cost them, but cost the Germans about as much (not the first day, though, that cost them next to nothing and the Brits an arm and two legs).

The later five months of the Somme, on the other hand, did see systematic artillery attrition. It just wasn't well planned. It still scared the bejeesus out of the Germans (read Falkenhayn on it. The first day didn't scare them, but they could hardly believe it when the Brits didn't stop after that. They couldn't see how to stop the bleeding).

The only way to stop that is to dig in so deep, with such an enormous investment in materials and labor, that every unit really has that double log bunker with 3 feet of packed earth, or (when the 150s and 155s come up) even more. Which only happens at lines prepared six months in advance by huge engineering operations, or static for ages.

Digging in for the night does not typically give everyone overhead cover. And even some time to improve the position and get a little overhead cover, usually does not mean everyone has a foot of wood plus three of earth or sandbags over their head. Which is what it takes to really be 105 proof.

Sure, just being prone is better than upright, and a slit trench or better a real foxhole, is a big improvement over milling around in the open. Just lying down, flat, can reduce the exposure by 80-90%. Very close hits get you whether you are or are not taking cover. Even hits quite far away can be dangerous if you try to walk around in the stuff, upright. But arty can bleed you dry if any hit gets people, because there are a lot of rounds fired. That was the point.

If infantry can sit at the bottom of cellars or in bomb proof dugouts all day, they can sit there for years.  But if they man a front, fight infantry probes every day, have to counterattack occasionally, lose ground - then they will be vulnerable to operational scale attrition by artillery fire. Arty teeth grab you and logistics takes over from tactics. His shell throughput directly couples to your trench strength and infantry replacement rate, as something like big shells / 30 per unit time vs. new men per unit time. If his rate is higher, you lose.

Bernard Fall, "The Siege of Dien Bien Phu", p.88 and following - "On December 26th. Col. de Castries issued an order to all units in the valley that their positions were to be fortified to resist artillery shells of 105mm caliber. The engineering manuals of every modern army have a standard answer to this problem: two layers of wood beams at least six inches in diameter, separated by three feet of closely packed earth topped off with sand bags to absorb splinters. No such protecting roof was to cover an unsupported area more than six feet in width. Time tested in two world wars in which the 105mm had been the standard field artillery weapon, the average tonnage of engineering materials needed to protect a unit of a given size was known to the last ton.

"To protect one squad against enemy artillery, 30 tons of engineering materials were required. Building a combat bunker for one automatic weapon required 12 tons... Sudrat (the engineering officer) thus calculated that in order to satisfactorily fortify Dien Bien Phu (and its garrison, this many units, etc) he needed 36,000 tons of materials."

He got 2200 tons of local wood by dismantling every structure in the valley and sending logging parties into the jungle. He got 120 tons of building materials and 3000 tons of barbed wire squeezed in to the airlift. He thus found enough to 105-proof the main headquarters, the signal station, and the underground X-ray room of the field hospital, and nothing else.

The Viet Minh brought a dozen Russian MRLs, 20 120mm mortars, and 24 105mm howitzers to the hills ringing the valley. They had about 3000 rounds for the 120s and 15000 rounds for the 105s (supplimented by occasional misdrops of French ammo -an estimated 3500 more that way). (They also had 5000 rounds of 75mm for 15 tubes, and 21000 rounds of 82mm for 40 tubes. Those were effective against uncovered positions).

They proceeded to pound the holy crap out of the insufficiently sheltered French. 40-50 pieces of sufficient caliber. Took less than two months. It does not take a large number of tubes to throw the ammo. If you don't have lots, it just takes a little longer.

There were 10 battalions of infantry and 2 of artillery in the garrison. Large caliber rounds fired at the garrison probably came to 20000 to 25000, plus 25000 to 30000 smaller caliber (which were probably an order of magnitude less effective, on average). The French lost about 7500 men before the final collapse. We don't have an exact breakdown of causes, many were to small arms during the various infantry assaults.

Losses from artillery might have been half or might have been three quarters of the total, on the order of 4000. The averages from earlier wars generally work out to something like 10 serious shells per casualty, counting small stuff as a tenth. Maybe it is a quarter here, or maybe the average effectiveness per shell fired was something like twice typical WW II averages, because the target was well IDed in a confined space and inadequately protected by serious overhead cover.

Lying in a foxhole is not remotely adequate protection from a 105mm barrage. Because the barrage will kill you even if only one shell in five, or one shell in ten, gets a single man. To survive the volume of shells armies can readily throw, you need to be shell proof, not hoping maybe it'll miss.

It is also noteworthy that DBP held out as long as its own arty (4 155s and 24 105s) was able to intervene against serious assaults. A bit beyond that, actually, using counterattacks by its best infantry units and a few light tanks (M-24s) - but the cost of that to their infantry was prohibitive, more than a few times. Meanwile the gun crews operated them from open pits to have 360 traverse. This made them vulnerable to even the light stuff, 75mm and 82mm. They were cut to ribbons.

The pre-breakout Normandy campaign is another textbook example of attrition warfare. Half a dozen German infantry divisions assigned to the area were devoured by two US corps in nasty attrition fighting, within 2 weeks.

In June the US is just going after Cherbourg. July they turn south, some prelims earlier but the big attack starts on the 11th. Between July 11 and July 25, they chew through the whole German defense. They lose 300 men per division per day doing it, and they fire off a million and a half rounds of heavy arty (plus mortars, tanks, etc). But the Germans are the ones that run out of infantrymen. When the front is so thin the battalions are the size of platoons, several US divisions attacking at once still take two days to pick their way across the carpet bombed moonscape. But there is nothing adequate left to stop them.

How did this happen? Did the US infantry sit on their backsides and tell the arty to shoot off a lot of ammo at heads down enemies in podunk, with no targeting intel, no simultaneous threat to get the Germans to man their positions? No. It happens by battalion after battalion on day after day following this drill: One company in reserve. One company probes. One company support by fire from the start line. Reserve relieves probe company and defends anything taken, if anything is taken. Nibble. Nibble.

No serious threat in that at all, except it takes place under the barrage. 6 US IDs on on-line, with 2 corps artillery groups. That is roughly 300 105s and 200 155s firing every day, on observed targets, on manned, forward defenses.  The Germans have to be there, and be bled.

The Germans have a defensive doctrine of defense in depth, dug in MGs and registered arty, and instant counterattack. They are tigers at it. It is meant to defeat immediate breakthrough, to screen the front with modest forces (not thick arty targets) when things are quiet, and to intimidate the heck out of attackers. You are supposed to stick your fingers in there once or twice, get burned, get intimidated, and back off. The Germans have to pay a bit for each of those intimidations. But they pay, and if you back off then they stop paying any more. They hold the front securely and cheaply (blood cheap, not forces used cheap - the forces used remain intact).

When the GIs would climb through a hedgerow into a field, they would come under fire from German MGs hidden in the opposite hedgerow and hit the ground. Once the MGs had fixed them, mortar rounds would begin dropping on them. The longer they stayed down, the more casualties they took. Even though standing up made them more vulnerable to both mortars and MGs, it was found to be better to either withdraw back to cover or advance and capture the enemy position. The worst option of all was simply to lie there and die.

Well the US in Normandy just refused to be intimidated by all this. Didn't know any better, I am sure was the view of some. But they didn't try to run a breakthrough proof defense scheme off its legs in one go, either. Constant probes with massive on call arty are well adapted to defeating the German scheme of defense. When the line is thinned, held by OPs, company sized probes drive in the OPs. They take ground, sometimes hurt the OPs as well. That triggers doctrinal instant counterattacks. Which may well succeed - like as not. But even when they do, they put the counterattackers on a known bit of ground out of their deep shelters and in contact. The place they take back blows up.

If the Germans try to hold everything thickly up front, the arty would grind them to powder in days. If they try to just screen, the ground ebbs away. They can mix it up, giving here and being stubborn there, and thus try to spread a bit of misdirection. They can try larger scale counterattacks - but they aren't likely to go anywhere against a superior force. They can thin selected bits of the front, as bluff - but they will get called on it here or there over time, and the most they get is some delay.

An active, aggressively counterattacking defense in depth makes very high demands on the defenders, if it is actually expected to operate daily. If it only has to work 2-3 times and the other guy gets the message and backs off, that is one thing. But if the defenders expect to operate it every day against a superior force for weeks, they take losses. If they are very good at it, maybe they inflict even higher losses on the attackers. But they will bleed, rapidly. That is what happened to the Germans opposite the US sector in July. And they flat ran out of blood.

The Germans go into crisis management mode within days of the start of the US July offensive. They send division after division into the front - some from the Brit sector, most off the march from Brittany etc as they arrive. They arrive and get thrown in and a few days later only cadres are left. Panzer Lehr has 10 infantry battalions subordinate by then, and still can't man a line they are all so weak. Divisions report trench strengths of 700 men.

This did not happen in 5 hours, and it did not happen because everybody else sat still while gunners pulled lanyards. It happened because the whole attack caused massive attrition to the defending German infantry. Because they had to fight off probe after probe, and each time they did so they got another helping of directed artillery.

What does make a difference in cases like hedgerow fighting - where arty efficiency in terms of casualties caused per round fired ran about half the overall average - is target density variation from poor intel. The German defenses in Normandy did not need to defend every field, and in practice did not. You put a strong point in this field, and mines in that one, register arty on a third. You make a checkerboard of such positions several kilometers deep, and sortie to counterattack as isolated bits of the attacking infantry get into the defense. As a result, artillery shot into the whole area will hit empty fields a lot of the time.

In more open terrain, the same defense scheme would be readily penetrated. The enemy would rapidly detect the gaps. In the hedgerows, your dispositions are a complete mystery, everything beyond 200m is a complete guess. The defense gets away with an uneven concentration across its front. Some shells hit the thick parts and hurt as usual. Others don't and do not hurt. Result, a lower average, but still a basically linear relation between shells fired and losses caused.

You only really depart from that relationship with massive oversaturation in time and place. That gives diminishing returns, and is wasteful from an arty efficiency perspective. It happens when commanders ask more of arty tactically than it can readily deliver. Trying to get annihilation fires on the hardest targets, for example. That is a waste. Arty should be fired at the most vulnerable targets, not the hardest ones. In moderate doses, gradually applied.

In spite of this, the Germans could readily have held in Normandy indefinitely, if they remained on the tactical defensive and if they had a replacement stream of at least 500 tanks and 100,000 trained infantry per month.  The infantry replacement rate was readily within German capabilities, not actually achieved because of institutional and decisional hold ups not any absolute scarcity. The armor replacement rate required was harder. The Germans could achieve it but only by starving the eastern front, which they could not afford. AFV production was not really high enough to send the majority against the Russians and still send adequate numbers of new vehicles to the west.

When a US source in 1944 said "German 88s" all he meant was "some shells came at us". They called everything fired at them "88s". The more learned might restrict it to supersonic shells in direct fire as opposed to subsonic over the horizon howitzer fire. But they certainly were not measuring them.  (If it isn't obvious, 88s and similar 75mm anti tank guns fire their shells at twice the speed of sound. Divisional howitzer shells are going slower than the speed of sound, certainly by the time they impact miles downrange).  With supersonic, the explosion is the first thing that happens, no approaching sound. Sub and you get some "whistle" warning and thus time to hit the deck. Veterans of Italy and North Africa would warn replacements when the kind of guns firing at them were not going to give them any warning by saying "those are 88s", intending to mean "not howitzers". This spread to calling everything "88s" and the intention of the warning was lost.

Even when referring directly to AT rounds hitting American tanks, an "88" would really mean 75mm PAK or hidden StuGs, more than any actual 88mm FLAK used in a ground role. There were very few real 88s on the US part of the Normandy front. A few were behind Caen in the British sector, which actually mattered during Operation Goodwood, but in the US sector, practically none.

The German prep fire was actually quite ineffectual in the Bulge. It was extensive in scope, but poorly directed and hit remarkably little, by US side accounts. There were three things the Germans had going for them early on - surprise and numbers, some good infiltration tactics by infantry through wooded areas in several places, where the German units showed the initiative for it and exploited the thinness of the US defense, and third, lots and lots of armor that was far superior in quality and tonnage to anything the US had. Artillery wasn't one of those long suits, even early.

The US, on the other hand, rapidly got the upper hand in the artillery fight in the places where the front line was sufficiently stable to let gun parks set up and stay in position. Initially this was especially the case behind the Elsenborn ridge position along the northern shoulder of the German drive. Several infantry divisions worth of artillery formed up there, supplemented by several corps level artillery brigades. In all, that formed a collection of something like 200 105s and 100 155mm howitzers, and the 155s in particular proved to be absolute terrors against the attacking German infantry. And even proved somewhat dangerous to their armor, the shellfire density and caliber mix was so high.

Farther south, individual artillery positions put up solid shows, especially some of the SP units from the several US armor divisions in the area, but they had to displace so frequently they couldn't impact the fighting for all that long. Some still created momentary "checks" - one reads reports of a single SP 105mm battalion (18 Priests) firing 5000 shells in a single day and halting a German drive, for example. But these are exceptions, outside the north, for the first 10 days or so of the campaign. Mostly, the US artillery couldn't remain in position long enough to get off significant firepower, before the maneuver arms defeats ahead of them forced them to displace again. 

Understand, a rapidly moving artillery force fails to get significant supply thruput of shells to its position, fails to build up a good picture of targets, with registrations everywhere and enemy batteries detected and so forth, and this drastically limits its operationally impact. The same was true on the German side once the line went fluid, with the added difficulty that most of their gun park was from the infantry, VG, and Luftwaffe FJ divisions and horse drawn. The mobile divisions did have their guns, of course, and some of them SP, but they were numerically limited, and supply to their firing positions wasn't great. The Germans had a hellish traffic problem, supply difficulties from the word "go", and fuel was a priority. They did bring up a significant gun park for the seige of Bastogne, but otherwise their artillery did not play a major operational role in the offensive. Not compared to the importance of their armor edge, for example.

As for the effect of the US artillery where it could gather and make a stand, it was an asymmetric "counter" to German armor dominance. It worked by stripping the German tanks of combined arms, with the infantry accompanying the tank attacks cut down by huge barrages. These weren't single batteries firing on call a la Squad Leader tactical depictions. More like 10,000 shells fired over a 8 hour period into one box barrage area. The total number of fire missions the Elsenborn group fired in the critical 72 hours at the height of the German attack was 300 separate missions, some as large as 7 battalions firing at once. (If you are used to Squad Leader, you have to imagine 20 fire missions at once, continued for 30 game turns at a time). The accompanying German infantry simply could not advance into this; those that tried were shredded and they soon stopped trying.

The German armor could press ahead of its infantry, but the result was that the US SP TDs fought an uneven battle in which they had superior situational awareness, getting info and spots from their leg supports, and stalked buttoned and blinded German tanks. The US infantry also scored with bazookas and, at night in particular, even close assault, once the German infantry was stripped. With limited routes available in terrain terms, the German armor simply could not make progress without combined arms, and nuclear levels of godlike artillery support made it impossible for dismounts to get forward. In practice, the Germans simply had to shift the weight of their attack elsewhere and try to bypass the large artillery groupings; they were nearly invulnerable to frontal attack, when sufficiently supplied with ammo.

This isn't the only fight in which those relationships appeared. Much the same asymmetric situation happened at Anzio in February of 1944, when the Germans tried to destroy the bridgehead there with armored attack. Their tanks were superior, and their night attack tactics were superior to the Allies. But the Allies responded with a deluge of HE firepower, from land artillery, off shore naval gunfire, and air support from medium and heavy bombers. These rapidly reduced the low lying countryside to a muddy lunar landscape of endless craters half filled with water, in which tanks simply could not maneuver at all. Restricted to a few surfaced roads, they were "stoppered" by cross fire from allied tanks and TDs, and the same infantry stripping applied to them. The Germans gave up and settled for keeping the bridgehead bottled up; no amount of maneuver arm superiority could trump such HE firepower at scale. They not only took ruinous infantry losses if they tried, but the physical mobility of armor went to zero. Now, some of that is just Italy in February, and a low lying coastal plane that had been a swamp before large scale canal work and drainage - it reverted to a swamp under the HE deluge.

But at bottom what is going on in these cases is that a sufficiently superior logistic tonnage trucked or shipped up to 5-10 miles away from the enemy, in a static position that holds vs immediate maneuver pressure, can enforce such bleeding and inability of infantry to advance, that nothing in maneuver arms quality or numbers can make the slightest impression against it. It was as pointless to try attacking into the teeth of that much HE firepower as it was to try going over the top at the Somme against dug in machineguns in your shirtsleeves.

(Incidentally, the late Korean war stabilized for much the same reasons - Chinese numbers were simply trumped by US artillery and air power on the limited space of the Korean penisula. The Chinese lost a million men after the line stabilized, but never had any prayer of moving the US force, after mid 1951).

Proximity fuses had been available for some time bit were not used in a ground role for secrecy reasons. They were used in quantity first in the Pacific by the navy for AA use, during 1944. They were first used in the ETO by US AA artillery units defending London from V-1 attacks, where they were extremely effective, raising the killed percentage of V-1s targeted by flak from the mid 20% range to as high as 80%.

The Germans shifted their V-1 offensive to Antwerp in the fall of 1944 after the Allies took it. AA was deployed to protect the city, and proximity fuses were authorized for use there in the AA role. That was in October of 1944. Fuzes made it to artillery units in the field around the same time, but were still not authorized for use in ground missions, for fear the Germans would recover a dud shell and learn how the fuse worked.

The first ground use of them was on the first day of the offensive, on the north end of the line, at Monschau. The local artillery brigade commander decided on his own authority that the emergency created by the offensive justified their use, and 155mm missions with proximity fuses for air bursts were used to break the German infantry attack on that town, very early in the offensive. 

Requests for authorizations went up through channels at the same time. 3 days into the offensive, Eisenhower personally authorized use of the proximity fuse in a ground role, and all restrictions were lifted. This was in time for them to play an important part in the fighting on the north shoulder that cut off Peiper's spearhead. Specifically, after the 30th Infantry Division cut the main roads up to Peiper behind them, their positions were defended against German attacks trying to reopen the route to Peiper, using proximity fuse air burst missions.

Artillery is described as the "first line of anti-tank defense", but the primary HE effect is described as immobilizations from broken tracks and damaged sprocket wheels.  Actual KOs, while not unknown, were comparatively rare.  Stripping off accompanying infantry from the attacking armor is the primary effect of HE.  100s of rounds expended can take out a tank, and as a side effect those 100s of rounds will make any attack it is taking part in hopeless.

Shells had to land quite close to have an appreciable effect on a fully armored AFV. Light armor was considerably easier because the larger fragments would still penetrate them. But e.g. a 105mm direct hit would KO a Panzer IV, or readily immobilize. 155mm direct hits brewed up Panthers, and near misses (talking quite close, as in crater touches the vehicle) broke tracks and the like.

Using divisional 105mm in direct fire gun fronts was standard German practice in the early war. Rommel did it at Arras - far more of them than of 88s - and it was the standard counter to T-34s and KVs in Russia in 1941-2.

In the Bulge there is at least one US position that held largely due to operational effects of arty vs armor - the Elsenborn position on the north edge of the bulge. Artillery definitely got kills - some are reported eyewitness etc - and probably accounted for 20-30 of them alone. That was the tally over 3-4 days from a corps worth of guns. The number of pieces working from on and behind the Elsenborn ridge grew over time, finishing at ~350 pieces. The maximum rate of ammo expenditure hit 10,000 rounds in one 8 hour period, at the end of the fight. Battalion shoots were standard and they made regular use of divisional TOTs of 60 guns at a time etc.  

Nebelwerfer means smoke projector in German. But they were never designed, intended, or used as smoke weapons. The term is instead deliberately misleading, stemming from the interwar period, when the German army had to operate under the Treaty of Versailles.

One of the provisions of that treaty completely outlawed possession of any form of chemical warfare capability by Germany. The Germans sought to evade that provision, and rocket weapons were conceived as a means of delivery for poison gas munitions. Rockets have a much higher ratio of payload volume to overall shell size than tube artillery, because the rocket does not need to be so strong. Tube artillery rounds must withstand the stress of being fired from a rifled barrel at high initial velocity, and that requires a thick metal casing around the shell payload. Rockets start at lower velocities, continuing their acceleration far beyond the tube muzzle (with also makes them less accurate). If the payload is light - lighter than metal - they can also carry it to a longer range, for the same amount of rocket propellent. The combination of wide dispersal, low initial velocity, thin shell walls, and room for a large liquid payload, made rockets an ideal delivery method for poison gas.

Since gas was forbidden, Germany called the rocket units smoke units, and pretended the same characteristics were meant to help smoke missions. But the actual shells developed and used were high explosive. If and when gas warfare was used, they intended to use them as gas delivery systems. During WW2, however, Germany was deterred fron using gas warfare, believing the Allies might outfight it in that area, and from midwar on, being particularly concerned about the potential for a strategic bombing campaign using gas weapons against German cities. They decided not to go there, largely for that reason.

The Nebelwerfer term is thus a legacy of an interwar fiction, to cover an intended use that never happened, but was never about smoke in the first place.


AT GUN FRONTS

Armor doctrine on all sides knows how to overload penny packeted organic ATGs spread along the front: by putting a hundred tanks on a single attacking kilometer of front and running over them. It takes a density of guns at least half as high per unit of front as the attacking armor density (in AFVs per km of frontage) to have any chance of actually stopping a tank attack. German doctrine was that enemy armor should be met by a gun front, not by German armor. The British believed tanks should also be met by specialty (cruiser) tanks, while the Americans assigned that linebacker role to their tank destroyer arm.

All sides also used both AA guns and artillery pieces to augment specialized AT guns, both doctrinally and on an ad hoc basis.  Going even further, the Russians had the doctrine that *all* artillery weapons are the main line of AT defense, including guns attached down from army level and normally firing ranged missions from miles behind the line.  These guns were not spread out, the gun fronts concentrated on expected main avenues for enemy armor, integrated with natural terrain and artificial obstacles.

The German 88s in the ETO have the same mythology built up around them as Tigers, much of it a British hangover from the Western Desert and the rest German press copy now enshrined as fact. Death star 88s were allegedly as lethal as sniper rifles, with supersonic rounds that could kill pretty much anything they saw out to 2km with their first shot.  Moreover, only the Germans had figured out how to use heavy FlAK in ground roles. And, it is claimed, only the Germans could build lethal gun fronts of ATGs and AA able to defeat enemy armored attacks at standoff ranges, except in special cases like Kursk where the Russians had plenty of time to dig in.

First, the weapons. All the powers had heavy AA guns, from early on, and used them freely in AT roles. There are only minor differences in gun capability between a German 88 FlAK, a Russian 85mm AA, and a US 90mm AA. Such minor edge as the German weapon has is in its mount and mobility options (able to move and fire while partially limbered), but this rarely mattered in the field, since fully emplaced use was practically the only one actually encountered.  Furthermore, all these guns were overkill vs pretty much the entire contemporary AFV fleet. Only the British Churchill merited an 88 as a counter. In Normandy the Germans appear to have fielded a total of 147 PaK 43. Only 2 of the units equipped with them have notable battlefield successes in the AT role.

The 88 PaK 43 AT guns were also very heavy, while their parent units frequently had only half as many prime movers as they had guns, having been formed as fortress units. Only a limited number of German tractor types were adequate for them, which was also true of the 88 Flak. Like other unarmored gun units, they were also vulnerable to enemy artillery and air, but with less concealability than lighter guns, which could be manhandled into cover more easily.

As to doctine, as with other powers, German use of FlaK as a field weapon was ad hoc and not initially doctrinal, though it proved useful enough to be formalized. The Russians had much the same doctrine though, and assigned battalions of 12 x 85mm AA guns to every mechanized and armored corps from early 1943 onward. They recognized their usefulness against heavy German tanks in particular and this formed the basis of their decision to field the SU-85 and then the T-34/85.

In general, all armies understood the usefulness of antitank gun fronts. The French had some notable successes with them against the Germans in 1940 along the northern part of the front. Likewise, the Russians used them extensively from the start, and viewed the entire artillery park as their first line of defense against tanks. This included dual use of their most common divisional field gun, the long barreled 76mm ZIS-3. It also took in heavier corps- and army-level guns, long 122s and 152mm gun-howitzers, which once proven were later mounted onto the "animal killers": SU-152s, ISU-122s and ISU-152s, and finally the IS-2 tanks. In the same way, the Germans repurposed the long range 10 cm FeK, originally meant for counterbattery work, as a KV and T-34 killer in 1941-1942.

The British in the Western Desert didn't use their relatively static heavy AA pieces for AT work. But they did make extensive use of their 25 pdr standard field guns. These were numerous, making them more likely to be on hand in the fluid combat conditions of the desert war. They were designed to be mobile and deployed well forward, with gunshields.  And they were adequate against the German and Italian armor in the field at that point in the war.

But, it must be said, German gun fronts outperformed British in this period. This had nothing to do with gun superiority or a difference in doctrine. It had to do with the inferiority of British armor doctrine in that era, which was pure armor driven and suffered particularly from poor armor-artillery cooperation on the attack.

The correct counter to an enemy gun line, after all, is to call down artillery fire on it from over the horizon, not to obligingly charge it with tanks. This the British might have known, but in practice did not do. Their armor brigades had basically no artillery component, and the small "support group" attached to their very tank heavy armor divisions was usually relegated to defense of the division trains and supplies. British infantry tanks working with Commonwealth infantry divisions - notably the New Zealanders - got a lot better support and cooperation from div arty, and therefore fared a lot better against gun based defenses than did the independent armor formations.

This British deficiency in armor-artillery cooperation persisted as late as Goodwood in July of 1944. Monty's idea of combined arms attack was each arm taking its own crack at the enemy in succession (first air, then prep barrage, then massed tanks charging unsupported, with infantry lagging behind to hold ground only). This didn't work.  The gun line to the extent of the prep fire might be affected, but everything deeper wasn't, and as soon as the unsupported tanks cleared the previous fire zone, they ran onto unsuppressed gun fronts and didn't get artillery support to defeat those.

The Russians had similar combined arms deficiencies in 1941 and 1942, overcoming them somewhat by mid 1943. But their armor force also tended to rely too much on just tanks and riders, with artillery used in set piece prep fires. If those had located the German gun positions in advance of the general offensive they were effective, but what they weren't was reactive and responsive to new spots and so forth.

These were not superiorities of German AT doctrine, but weaknesses in the combined arms of their opponents, at specific times and on specific fronts. Once they were corrected, the Germans found like others that they had to rely on SP ATGs under armor, not towed guns in massed fronts, to defeat allied armor attack.


ENTRENCHMENT

All the HQ and service guys dig in, because artillery fire doesn't care what your military job description is. If you are within miles of a front line - including anything in an infantry battalion - you dig in. The time you didn't, you saw one of your buddies get killed by enemy shells, so you do it.

Where are you going to put the foxholes when you dig in? A few are for the convenience of the commander, though he probably took a cellar so no earth had to be moved. But everybody else is digging. OK, where? A sergeant walks the area and chooses. He checks out the lines of sight, he figures where enemy could come from, and he puts some eyes on each of the important routes. "Dig here", "You, over here". Routine.

Next he will have the MG crews - once they are done with their regular service duties and had chow etc - whenever they can grab an hour or two - sight their MG. Might fill out a range card for it, even ("That hedgerow at 1 o'clock is 200 yards away. That barn..."). Your primary line of fire is toward X. Your secondary lines of fire are to Y and Z, and you will have to shift the gun over to here to cover Z. Your final protective fire line - to stop enemies from getting into the company position - is to fire this way, right along our outer perimeter. A carefully chosen line that doesn't put any friendlies "outside" of it, and that interlocks with the same assignments for the other MGs in the other holes.

Is this the first thing they are going to do when they arrive at a new position? No. But the digging in part will be done before sleeping - or at the very latest, before sleeping a second night if they arrived late and exhausted. And the basic siting of positions happens then. The rest will happen in a few hours snatched the next day, if the unit isn't moving again that quickly.


USE OF MACHINE GUNS

Machine guns on the attack have two major uses, the most important being the ability to deny the enemy areas of open ground, and the secondary use being to suppress the fortified enemy. I chose this order of importance because there are other things, such as artillery, which do better to suppress. Even HMG fire will not adequately suppress a well-dug in enemy enough to assault, unless it is in unusually vast volumes. 

Getting a bullets per burst figure necessarily involves some assumptions or averaging over multiple possible ranges. Because the firing profile differs more at point blank (long bursts, with the MG42 way ahead of the M1919) than at long (MG42 firing a shorter burst to keep the ammo use livable, while the M1919 can afford to fire a somewhat longer one, relatively - though still shorter than it would use at point blank).

A 5 man M1919 team carries 1625 rounds, while a 7 man team carries 2625. 2 men are carrying the gun and tripod, with only a couple of belts of ammo, maximum. The remaining men are carrying boxed ammo.

The men in the German team need to carry about 750 rounds apiece, while the men in the US team need to carry about 500. Both used 250 round boxes of belted ammo. In the US teams the ammo men need to carry 2 of those. In the German team they need to carry 3, or to carry 2 plus several bandoliers worn over the chest.

In the case of the US M1917 HMG or the British Vickers, they need to carry a much heavier gun - which is normally a 3 man load - plus 3125 rounds of ammo, which is 12 boxes. If 6 men carry 200 rounds belted apiece as bandoliers you can get that down to 8 boxes - but any way you cut it the Vickers team is the most heavily loaded, even with 275 fewer rounds than the HMG-42 (because the gun itself is much heavier).

Note that the German MGs in squads or used as LMGs don't get the fp of the HMG teams largely because there is no way to supply them with enough ammo to fire as many long bursts. The most a 2 man LMG team could realistically carry is 900 rounds, and that would be very heavily loads (gunner has gun and 200 rounds in bandoliers, AG has 2 boxes, bandoliers, and the spare barrel kit). Moving tactically they would realistically sometimes go as light as 400 rounds (one belt in the gun for the gunner, 2 belts bandoliered for the AG, plus one box for him and the barrel-tool bag).

To see how tightly ammo carried restricts fire, consider firing continuously with an 450 rpm M1919. In half an hour, the gun could run through 13500 rounds, which is 54 heavy boxes of ammo. 50 boxes beyond what the team could carry in bandolier form, at the most generous. There is no way a man can carry more than 2 of them at a time and move about tactically. 3-5 men doing nothing but run ammo up to the gun would need to each make 5-8 trips, about one round trip every 5 minutes. Where from? And that is the slowest ROF type of MG.

The moral is, MGs fire off the ammo the men can carry up to them more rapidly than tactical combats allow, even with the lowest rates of fire used. Higher cyclic rate of fire does not, therefore, allow more bullets to actually be fired, because firing time is not scarce. It may allow the firing to the concentrated more heavily in the short periods of time in which enemies are visible or more exposed, and thus make each bullet more effective on average. But it does not simply multiply through to greater fire effect by firing more.

It also shows why the US tended to leave .50 cals on vehicles. With a weight of 4 times as much per bullet, and ammo carried the real limit on fire delivered, there was little point in humping heavier rounds. US lessons learned from Italy urge bringing a few M1919 watercooled MGs - the lightest and most maneuverable up Italian hills - and as many ammo belts as you could hand carry. The rest (M1917s and 50s both) were left for static defense in places where vehicles could haul and provision the guns.

German infantry battalions did not have ten times as many automatic weapons as their allied counterparts. The Russians fielded formations full of SMGs years before the Germans even dreamed of it, and more of them. They outproduced the Germans in SMG type weapons by about a factor of 5. The US and Britain each also outproduced them in automatics - the cheap little Sten was available in twice the numbers of German SMGs and MP44s combined, just for the commonwealth. They didn't have more full MGs either, though all the allies uses magazine fed lightsand belt fed mediums and heavys, instead of the German uniform GP belt fed weapon mix.


THE MYTH OF WWII TACTICAL AIR POWER

A lot of emphasis has been put on air-ground coordination as supposedly integral to "blitzkrieg" doctrine. (Blitzkrieg was not in fact an official doctrine.  The term was used in German military writing from the early-mid 1930s). However, its alleged potency as an on demand close support arm of the Panzer forces, or for any forces during WWII, is pretty much all myth. The Germans certainly started the war with a better air force than any of the other major powers because they were preparing for war while the others weren't, or weren't as serious about it. But this edge rapidly evaporated, and by 1942 it had been reduced to parity. By 1943 it was gone and the Allies had the edge.

Western journalists in France in May of 1940 invented the term "blitzkrieg". The Germans wouldn't have known what they were talking about. They were thinking of combined arms doctrine and armor in the driver's seat. The journalists thought it was all about air ground coordination, simply because the French clearly didn't have control of the air and tank forces were destroying them.

The primary benefit of air power to WWII ground forces was reconnaisance: aircraft brought home valuable operational intel from behind enemy lines. However, it was rarely good, or current, enough to give ground commanders more than a fragmentary picture of actual enemy dispositions.

At times, generally when one side dominated the skies, tactical air also played an interdiction role, opportunistically shooting up convoys and facilities, and generally spreading confusion and alarm. On occasion, bombers would augment artillery in softening up enemy defenses or spoiling attacks, most spectacularly in the Normandy carpet bombing raids.  However the physical effect of aircraft on front line enemy ground formations was trivial. The bomb weight and accuracy just weren't there.

WWII tactical air support was in no way real time or on-call.  Requested air strikes on clearly identifiable point targets -- preferably landmarks -- could be delivered the next day, at best. That was the planning cycle. Medium bombers at altitude went after enemy towns, cities and rail junctions and were the lion's share of actual bomb tonnage dropped.

On 1-2 days notice only, the army could arrange for the air force to hit a specific locality. We expect to reach Wheresville tomorrow, please bomb Wheresville before noon on Tuesday. None of this is called in over the radio. Staffs teletype an order; it is passed through liason officers; then processed into a command center and reviewed by a colonel; units are delegated to it that could be spared from the plan; orders drafted by the air staff then teletyped out to the airfield in question, read by a clerk, handed to a major, drafted into tomorrow's order of the day for a specific squadron, read out to the pilots at their morning briefing.

But when the army broke through rapidly, very often a friendly fire incident took place as a direct result, because the attackers were already through Wheresville by 11 AM, and nobody in the air force had a clue. So if the pilots didn't see an air identification panel on the deck of a tank and abort the attack on their own initiative, they bombed the crap out of Wheresville and all the friendlies still there, in punctual obedience to their stale orders.  German operational histories are simply full of this. Guderian talks about being strafed by his own planes on every 3rd page of Panzer Leader.

Luftwaffe officers did indeed accompany forward Heer units as forward air officers. But forward air officers did not call Luftwaffe aircraft overhead in real time and direct them to strike specific, visually IDed targets on the ground. The Luftwaffe and the Heer used different radio systems, different code systems, and could not communicate with each other in real time (voice vs Morse code based, different codes, etc.). A few Heer spotter planes controlled by the artillery had ground frequencies and codes, but those were the exception, and had no air to ground munitions of any kind. When general officers flying in light liaison aircraft wanted to pass messages to ground commanders, they hand wrote notes on paper tied to heavy objects and dropped them out of the window, WWI style.

Even in the early war heyday of the Stuka, when countermeasures and AA were relatively ineffective, very few examples exist of close air-armor cooperation. There was certainly no system of the tankers calling for air support, as later developed by the Allies.  Part of it was relatively primitive radios. Part was early and relatively naive doctrine. But much of it was simply institutional - the Luftwaffe and army simply did not work very closely together, as many outsiders seem to imagine they did.

The one standout where it was done right and seriously made a difference was the Meuse crossing at Sedan in 1940, where the Luftwaffe's mission was indeed to suppress artillery fire. They accomplished that by continuous, extended attacks by small formations (to keep it up). Which intimidated batteries into not fire "until it was over" (the air raids to them, in reality the crossing). That intimidation "multiplier" was critical to it making a difference, because the actual bomb-load the small air forces of the time could deliver in a day or two was very limited.

The Luftwaffe spent at least half its time in the early war period on other missions. Bombing of cities (Warsaw, Rotterdam), forward airfields to gain air superiority, attacks on communications. There was remarkably little early theorizing of the role of air power. The Meuse crossing use, for instance, was due to Guderian's personal role in the planning, and his close coordination with the air unit involved. Guderian's superiors in the army tried to get the Luftwaffe to do it differently, more in line with the "big raid" attacks the Luftwaffe normally used. It only went off as originally planned because later orders did not come in time. (See page 104 of Panzer Leader, paragraph begining "During the night I telephoned Lorzer...") Considerable advanced planning was absolutely required. It was not something they could do on the fly.

The Allies certainly got the impression that use of air was tightly coordinated with the tanks. That was largely an illusion created by overall success and by a few such cases. Guderian wargamed the Meuse crossing with Stutterheim (chief of close support planes, the Stuka guy) and with Lorzer, who commanded the air group used to support the operation. It was the wargame that convinced them suppression of artillery was the right mission. Nobody but them knew that bit of doctrine prior to the event itself. Guderian taught many of the leading armor guys, notably Hoth and Model. That spread the ideas somewhat.

But the leading German armor was still bombed by its own planes, lacked air cover once it got deep into enemy territory, getting strafed because of it. German HQs were hit by Allied air in 1940 until they learned to stay out of the nice looking big houses. It was hardly the picture the Allies drew of tankers talking to dive bomber pilots on radios and calling them in where needed. In reality, the weak radio sets in the tanks often couldn't raise division.

The Luftwaffe was going for "battlefield interdiction" targets because they were operating largely independently. They were told in general, such and such force support the army along this axis or support this higher HQ. The air units so tasked went out and flew recon over that area and reported that to their army counterparts. They shot up targets of opportunity on the ground behind that area of the front - moving columns on roads, prominent buildings that might be HQs, whatever looked like a supply dump - all by the seat of their pants and according to their own intel gathered from their own flights.

That this had an impact on the enemy in that sector is obvious. That is was any essential doctrinal, closely coordinated thing worked out intellectually in advance is often assumed, especially by foreign observors, but is simply false. A journalist level understanding of the early war saw air attacks and tank breakthroughs as new and revolutionary things, compared to wars past. Occasional important fights showed marked coordination - like the Meuse crossing. People put 2 and 2 together and imagined it was all some master plan for air-land battle. It simply wasn't.

As for the real cause of the occasional FF incidents in the early war, it wasn't from blown sightings in failed attempts at true close air support. It was much simpler than that. The Luftwaffe was doing "battlefield interdiction" sweeps behind the enemy front lines - or so they thought. They just had no idea what positions their ground counterparts had yet reached.

Whenever the front line was moving fast enough, they were in danger of attacking friendlies on their sweeps, because long friendly columns of vehicles were traveling along roads in what the Luftwaffe guys still thought was the enemy rear. So were retreating enemy columns. They couldn't tell which was which. That was all. Nobody managed to tell them in real time (as opposed to 24-48 hours later - that much they knew) how far the ground units had advanced.

The other way the Luftwaffe is getting targets is general intelligence service reports, especially the results of radio direction finding. Intelligence and radio direction finders locate a new 10,000 watt transmitter broadcasting from 5 miles southwest of Whosengrad since 4 AM on Tuesday. A reconnaissance overflight reports a small village in that vicinity with numerous motor transport there or nearby. An intel staff officer plots "unknown HQ" on his situation map. The details make it onto a Luftwaffe staff planner's own situation map. Consulting with his commander, he gets authorization for a staffel of 12 Ju-88s to bomb the otherwise insignificant little hamlet at 8 AM on Wednesday.  That is the sort of air ground coordination that was state of the art and best in the world in 1941. It is all they had.

So what was tactical air doing otherwise? Mostly armed recce. The command puts out planes on missions over a specific area of the front, to a specific depth or landmark chosen overnight or at dawn. They go looking for enemy and attack what they can see. Urban areas, roads, railroads are the main landmarks and the main targets. Anything moving there is presumed to be enemy because of the previously reported location of the front line.

The Luftwaffe would have a liason officer up with an armored column in this or that exploitation. That is true, they did, and they even called them forward air officers. But their job wasn't calling in air strikes on visual targets. It was telling the operational commander's staff the Luftwaffe point of view on the questions of importance to the former, like where is a good HQ location that won't get bombed within 48 hours, and what's a good bomb line to distinguish enemies from friendlies, and so forth. Meanwhile, coordination with the Luftwaffe had a turn around time of about a day. 

Medium bombers would instead plan raids to their own priorities - airfields first, for example - and worked best on targets at a medium depth from the (very indistinctly known, and moving) front line, that were also sizable. The British report that around midwar about one bomb in 5 dropped on a target the size of a city landed within its confines. They were not picking out enemy occupied houses across the street from friendlies.

The close air support and attack aircraft could sometimes hit targets close to being in contact. But closer means more like within half a mile of contact.

Meanwhile, let's compare the reality of Guderian's drive on Orel at the start of Operation Typhoon. My source is Zetterling and Frankson, "the Drive on Moscow", which is turn is citing the actual operations diary of Panzer group 2, on the relevant sections.  Guderian's attack jumps off ahead of the rest of the offensive on 30 September. It rained on the 29th, and the weather on the jump off day was low cloud. "Low cloud prevent the aircraft from attacking enemy combat units. Instead, Luftflotte 2 directed attacks against Soviet road movements far behind the front." "Planned air support did not materialize". The actual prep consisted of just 30 minutes of artillery fire, meant to disorganize but destroy. 4th Panzer division spearhead by KG Eberbach - formed around the entire Panzer regiment, mostly Panzer IIIs, with lots of attachments - broke through the front in hours on a single road, Gluchov to Sevsk.  The other PD (3rd) in the corps made its own breakthrough slightly south. Another Panzer corps attacking to the north didn't make as much progress, only bent the Russian line, half the advance. The corps to the right - south received local counterattacks. But 4th Panzer made 25 kilometers, the deepest penetration, behind KG Eberbach, with 3rd. Resistence was weak. By late in the day, the Luftwaffe provided a bit of recon ahead of the column, but no close air support all day.

"The fact that bad flying weather had prevented air support for most of the day did not matter much, as the ground units completed their tasks anyway."

Reporting on Soviet reaction, the narrative does related that days later, when a Russian reserve army was shifted by rail in part in reaction to this drive, its units were attacked by the Luftwaffe in their trains. But Guderian already held Orel by then.

October 1, better weather, Stukas do appear and bomb Sevsk. Eberbach is practically in the clear before then, however. He detaches infantry that works with elements of 3rd Panzer to pocket and contain wooded areas south of the main road he is operating along - notice multiple local penetrations, encirclement, securing a primary road route - then the main column drives into space. It seizes the bridges at Sevsk, and presses beyond them into the night. However, the column is also bombed at Sevsk by the Luftwaffe, in a "friendly fire" incident. By 10 PM the lead elements have advanced 95 km for the day.

Direct air support to the combat units was not prominent and the Stuka attack at Sevsk was more of an exception than the norm. German aircraft did, however, attack many targets well ahead of the advancing ground units, in particular troop concentrations and vehicles moving on roads... Also several attacks were directed at the Soviet rail network. These did not have an immediate impact on the battle..."

Notice how with a day long coordination time and rapid advance, the result is that Luftwaffe just thinks Sevsk is a legitimate target, which is why it bombs the place after its capture and hits Germans, as well as before.

By 2 October when Eberbach reaches Orel, they have tactical surprise simply because the Russians haven't received any alarm that German force are that deep yet. They half to pause for half a day at a time waiting for fuel. The Russians hit the column with no less than 37 separate air attacks on the road to Orel, but it doesn't stop them or even slow them down appreciably.

On October 3, "German fighters did not appear until evening, but despite the fact that the enemy had local air superiority, KG Eberbach advanced swifly.

Total, over 30 September to 3 October, the KG lost 6 tanks, 34 KIA, 121 WIA. The only recorded close air support was one Stuka attack at Sevsk, which extended into bombing the guys they were supposed to be supporting. The Russians hit the column more often with their own air than the reverse, and German fighters were late and rare supporting it, probably because they simply didn't know how far it had progressed and weren't flying far enough east to cover it.

A panzer regiment on one road was simply more than a 1941 era Russian rifle defense could readily stop. A Russian rifle regiment of that era had only 6 45mm ATGs as organic AT weapons, and its "division slice" might add only 4 more of those and maybe 4 76mm guns. That wasn't enough to stop 80 tanks plus supporting light armor on a frontage of a few hundred yards. Once through the primary defensive zone - which took only hours on the first day - they motored ahead at 60 mile a day rates until they hit reserve formations, and fought through them on the ground. 

Disrupting everything ahead of time with air strikes simply had nothing to do with any of it.

On the Eastern Front, the popular picture of swarms of IL-2 Sturmoviks conducting wave after wave of devastating strikes that destroyed German AA, then depleted entire panzer divisions, also simply did not happen.  While the Russians fielded as many IL-2s as the Germans fielded AFVs, air power never accounted for a small fraction of German armored losses.

At Kursk, the Russians had 900 IL-2s in 3 air armies, and 2668 aircraft in total. Their surge attempt to knock out the Luftwaffe on its airfields on 5 July failed completely.  On the 6th and 7th they managed one sortie per aircraft. By the 8th, the sortie rate fell to 3/4 of that, well below German levels.  So Russian IL-2 sorties may have totaled around 6000 during the defensive phase, spread over 2 weeks and 5 attacking panzer corps. Therefore, considering that not all missions were targeted on combat units, a German PD in the battle might have been hit on average by a single squadron per day -- some more, some less.  Their most singular success was a direct hit on the divisional command post of Grossdeutschland while that division was bunched up at the Beresowyj ravine.  But it was the men hit, not tank kills, that made that strike effective.

The Russians admit 1000 aircraft lost in the defensive phase of the Kursk battle. 16th air army lost 346 by July 10, which is 33% of strength in just 6 days. 2nd air army lost 153 in the fighter category alone, 39% of strength. For comparison, the Germans lost only 200 aircraft in the offensive phase, while conducting 27,000 sorties.

The famed German tankbusters didn't fare much better.  According to the staff reports of the Soviet 1st Tank Army of the Voronezh Front, against which flew the squadrons from Rudel's FuPz, irreversible combat losses of T-34s from enemy aviation for the period of 5 to 20 July 1943, was a total 7 vehicles.  This was 1.6 per cent of all T-34 losses for the period. Moreover, Luftwaffe bombs or aerial cannon destroyed around 30 light T-60 or T-70 tanks. Combat losses of units and formations of the entire central front from bomb attacks by German aviation from July to August 1943 was 187 tanks and assault guns of all types, or 6.3 per cent of all losses. Of these, given Soviet repair averages, roughly 70 tanks were irreversibly lost and written off as a result of these attacks.

German air units suffered significant losses to achieve this result, for instance 30 per cent casualties in FuPz in 11 days of combat, and 89 per cent losses over 8 months of combat by StG2 (Ju-87). Kursk was especially dangerous for the best fliers in Ju-87 units on AT duty. StG2 lost 2 squadron commanders, six wing commanders, and two group adjutants during the battle - ten pilots with a total 600 combat flights under their belts.

Large scale air power in WW II was completely unable to affect large bodies of full armor. Before precision guided munitions, air to ground weapons simply failed to hit point targets with anything like reliability. Rockets were more effective than strafing, by far, but still rarely effective. A miss is as good as a mile for most munitions.  The first effective air to ground AT weapon was napalm, with a radius of effect in excess of 20 yards. In Korea, detailed operations research established that napalm accounted for 70% of all actual air to ground kills, against only 20% of claims.

Air to ground kill claims are notoriously the most unreliable reports regularly generated in warfare. Even for the scrupulous, where propaganda is not a priority, claims exceed kills by a factor of 50 (!), wherever claims can be checked by enemy side loss reports.

Tank busting, in particular, didn't deliver good returns. The Germans lost only about 50 tanks (TWO) to tac air attack in Normandy, out of 2200 AFVs sent. Yet 2nd TAF and 9th AF between them claimed just under 400 "armored kills" in Normandy, from 13,800 sorties. Allied pilots claimed air to ground kills at Mortain equal to the entire German force involved, for example, when only a third or so were actually lost directly to enemy fire.

Meanwhile, the Allies lost 625 planes between the invasion and the end of June alone. Some figures for losses over Normandy go as high as 2600 planes (it was normal for plane losses to run 1000 per month). 70% to 90% of aircraft losses were to ground fire. Ergo, around 50 aircraft were lost to ground fire for every tank they managed to take out. Not that they were firing at tanks very much - trucks and railway cars were their primary targets.  

The average Russian Sturmovik, considered by most accounts to be one of the best ground attack aircraft of the war, lasted about 15 missions before being lost. We know they didn't average even one dead German AFV apiece over their entire operational life, because there are way more dead Sturmoviks than there were dead German tanks, all causes.

Pilot claims if believed imply an effectiveness with unguided air to ground munitions and primitive cannons approximately twice that known to have been actually achieved during the first Gulf war by A-10s firing Maverick TV guided missiles. OR research in Korea showed that the first actually effective air to ground munition for anti armor work was napalm, because it could be effective on a near miss. Pilots in Korea thought that their guns and their rockets were their most effective weapons and ascribed 90% of their kills to those weapons. On the ground, the dead tanks showed that 85% of the actual kills were made by napalm. The weapons the pilots thought were working were not doing a damn thing.

The actual typical military exchange achieved by a western allied heavy bomber over its entire service life was that it inflicted about 2 KIA and 5 WIA to civilians on the ground. In terms of rival military effect, it cost the enemy a fair amount for flak shells fired at them that missed - that was a larger cause of total economic cost to the German side than bomb damage was. See above re 4 out of 5 bombs missing entire cities.

Meanwhile the average fighter bomber might have taken out one enemy truck or railroad car over its service life, before being taken out by enemy light flak or so damaged that it was written off or cannibalized for parts. The economic exchange of a light flak gun shooting at fighter bombers compared to that of the fighter bomber shooting at vehicles etc was at least 10 to 1 in favor of the flak gun. It lived a long time and got a lot of shots, even if each had only modest effectiveness. When it hit something it destroyed an asset that cost many times what the flak gun cost. The fighter bomber had the reverse problem - it would only last something like 25 mission and most of the things it was targeting - quite ineffectively - cost way less than the fighter bomber did. Their most economic use, in fact, was shooting down enemy planes.

On all fronts, air power's greatest destructive effect was general interdiction of routes against soft vehicles. Trucks, railway boxcars, and wagons come in big road/railbound and highly visible target sets of a hundred vehicles at a time, and they are  hit with full squadrons at a time. The kills per sortie of even such soft vehicles are still around unity, or less. Over their service lives, fighter bombers accounted for dozens of them, which made them operationally effective against soft targets. Those dozens of soft vehicles were racked up over scores of sorties, with the numerical average per sortie generally between 0.5 and 1. Just as important as outright losses inflicted is the disruptive effect of airpower on transport activity, restricting movement times to darkness and bad weather, and forcing formations to move in penny packets, and cutting roads, rails and bridges.  This cut movement rates of mechanized formations and reduced rail throughput.

The closest approximation to on-call air support within the confines of WW 2 was the "cab rank" system developed by the US and UK in 1944, and used in the last year of the war, only, in the western ETO, only. This kept a very small number of fighter bombers on "orbit" above a specific armored column, "on call" to a FAC with the column. Strike waves were 4 x P-47s or Typhoons, with 1 bomb or 6-8 rockets each. They still didn't strike specific targets under the direction of the ground FAC. Instead, the FAC in consultation with the ground armor commander could tell them the direction of a ground contact relative to the column and order them to dive. The planes would then try to acquire their own chosen targets visually. It was extremely expensive in planes and sorties and loiter time used up, to keep even that number "on call", and it wasn't used all that frequently as a result. However, it was a way of keeping some air cover on tap during an exploitation, for example, with reasonably good awareness of where the ground unit was. And in those respects, it was a great advance on previous practice in all armies.

P-47s regularly dive bombed from above 10,000 feet, and they were going twice as fast as the old Stukas did. They did not have serious difficulties IDing targets, and often achieved quite close cooperation with armor columns, attacking in squadron to group strength (12-36 planes). Yes, there were occasional FF incidents. But tiny compared to those caused by medium and heavy bombers dropping from altitude, with miles-wide bomb scatter patterns - those were the main cause of Allied air FF incidents when they occurred. Tac air generally did not have such problems.

The first time modern forward air control of direct strikes in contact occurred anywhere, any army or service, was in the Korean war, US and USN systems.

Individual officers showing high personal initiative sometimes worked out detailed, pre-planned coordination with particular air groups, for specific operations or series of operations. It was quite ad hoc. Such men either made such things happen by working closely with and visiting each other at their respective working HQs before an operation, or they did not.

The record of aerial recon in providing advance warning of enemy movements is also lackluster.  When Rommel counterattacked as Kasserine, there was total operational and tactical surprise. They overran the forward regiment. When HG Panzer counterattacked in Sicily, there was tactical surprise. They overran a battalion. When the Salerno beachhead was counterattacked, there was tactical surprise. They overran one battalion and rolled up another on its flank. When Lehr counterattacked in Normandy in July, there was tactical surprise. They broke through the first line battalions in three different places. Mortain was known about beforehand, but not because of air. That one was compromised by Ultra intercepts. The force involved was still large enough to overrun most of the front line regiment, cutting off one battalion for days. The Lorraine counterattacks east of Nancy achieved tactical surprise. But still lost a number of the armor duels, in fog. The Ardennes Offensive achieved operational and tactical surprise. They destroyed the bulk of two US infantry divisions (106, 28) and tore multiple holes. The Nordwind attacks, delivered piecemeal in sequence and after the Ardennes, still were a surprise initially.

There is thus essentially no evidence that air superiority enabled the Allies to notice German offensive moves before they happened and be waiting for them. The only major armor attack they were truly waiting for was Mortain, and that was because of Ultra, not air power. "Waiting for" in that case meant 2 extra TD battalions ordered to the scene, an infantry division coming in on the northern flank of the attempt, and an armor division coming in on the southern flank. There was also a corps artillery grouping behind the point of attack, in part because of warning time. But none of those things stopped the initial break-in. The American line held at the "reserve combat team" line (penetrating all reserves prior to that). The amount of warning was a matter of days, because the whole attack was put together in a matter of days from conception to jump-off.


BASICS OF THE STRATEGIC BOMBING OFFENSIVE

The strategic bombing campaign was quite inefficient, both absolutely and compared to other military means of applying economic power against Germany.

Submarine strategic warfare routinely inflicted 3-5 times the resources spent on it, and up to 10 times in favorable conditions.

Strategic bombing, on the other hand, routinely cost 3 times the damage it inlicted, both direct and indirect, and in poor conditions cost 5 times what it inflicted.

There was no balance between them. The western Allies persisted in their bombing campaign despite the above because they denied the facts, and just leaned on their larger overall economies. But their ground forces had a far more favorable exchange efficiency, once in action on the continent.

The western Allies were spending $3000-4000 to inflict each $1000 of damage, to important *military* systems in Germany and its controlled areas. The campaign did also inflict serious hardship of the German *civilian* sector, especially in the last year of the war, and especially through destruction of civilian buildings, but it was spending military inputs and manpower to kill and dehouse civilians, pretty much. Even that level of effectiveness was heavily "late weighted" - meaning, concentrated in the last part of the war after the outcome was no longer in any doubt.

In comparison, the German U-boat campaign was about that ratio of effectiveness in favor of Germany, inflicting many times what it cost Germany to run. Though after Allied ASW improved by mid 1943 those rates were no longer available and Germany effectively had to give up the campaign.

Notice, this was only even bearable attrition - both of them - because the Allies outweighed the German economy by so much, and that only because of the wealth of the US. Without direct US involvement, they never would have profited by the bombing campaign or have been readily able to "eat" the exchange costs of the U-boat campaign.

For those not familiar with the economic figures, between 25 and 30% of the western allied war effort - the US and the UK - was devoted to the strategic air campaign. The amount spent on that effort exceeded by large amounts the total economic value available to the entire Axis for the entire war. Not for its air force or that plus its air defense - for *everything*, soup to nuts, build up to the ruins of Berlin and Nagasaki.

The economic output of Russia and the British Empire each about matched the full economic output of the Axis. That of the US exceeded it by between 3 and 4 times, alone. And over a quarter of that combined economic input was spent on just the strategic air campaign. If that effort had achieved an economic exchange efficiency of "even", 1 for 1 trading, it would have sufficed to destroy the Axis powers on its own. It very clearly did nothing of the kind, because the efficiency of economic exchange it did achieve did not get anywhere near "even". The bombing side was spending many times what the bombed side was losing.

The actual figures are from portions of GDP dedicated to air and air defense for Germany, and strategic bombers and bombs and so forth for the allies. The western allies spent roughly 30% of their war program on their strategic bombing campaign, and the Germans roughly 20% of their smaller economy on air defense. The UK program was about as big as Germany's while the US was at least 3 times the size in pure economic input value terms. Therefore, the ratio between them was more like 6 to 1. Of course the western allies also got something additional out of it - a fleet of still intact heavy bombers at the end of the war, that didn't have any targets left, what with the war being over. And the Germans had some losses beyond their war effort cost - dead civilians and wrecked civilian buildings. But neither had much impact on the exchange efficiency within the war. The remaining bomber fleet could have continued to inflict loss, but with an average bomber life of 25 missions, not all that much longer. It took a flow of bombers and bombs and continual spend on the manpower to get whatever damage result they inflicted.

The largest direct costs fell on German civilians (to a lesser extent, also the civilians of occupied Europe), not on the German war effort. Dead and wounded civilians and especially damaged residential real estate resulted and contributed to hardship during and immediately after the war. But the German government simply didn't replace all the damaged buildings, only the important war plants. Overall, the entire air war cost the Germans around 20% of their war effort - a smaller portion of a much smaller GDP input.

The western allies had more resources to apply, and figured just throwing everything at the enemy would get him eventually. Bombing advocates weren't remotely rational about it - they believed all sorts of self deluding boasts and hopeful theories and backed theorists who promised the moon, with remarkably little attention to whether they were delivering results, played smashmouth games against those who correctly noticed they were not delivering, shifting theories to support unvarying tactics, vindictive spite, and the whole train of human irrationality in wartime. They weren't getting 3-1 with 5-1 to work with, more like the reverse, and the huge resources devoted to the approach could have done much more in other, better uses that didn't have the same empire building push behind them. Obviously, much of this was only clear in hindsight, though air power apostles treated pretty shabbily those who noticed bits of it at the time and said so.

The bombers were very inefficient weapons. Hitting a target set very peripheral to the actual war, spending gobs of money to do it, and taking heavy losses in the process and thus not lasting very long, each.  Planes cost a quarter million dollars apiece for the heavy bombers (some $300K, the cost fell over time, etc). There is also a million men working on the bombing campaign for years, and 2.7 million tons of bombs, and so forth. The US and UK spent up to 30% of their whole war budgets on the strategic air campaign.

Most of the time in Europe, half as many bomber crewmen were getting killed by flak as civilians on the ground by their bombs. A German medium flak gun traded for a heavy bomber over its operational life - and didn't cost a quarter of a million dollars, or lose 10 men in the process.  The allies were trading one airman for 2 civilians on the ground killed and another 5 wounded. They weren't even breaking even in military manpower exchange, given the portion of the civilian population the Germans actually drafted.  The image that the airmen were safe and invincible and raining death and destruction on defenseless civilians below is a postwar propaganda caricature. It is only approximately true for the case of Japan from March of 1945 on, after Curtis LeMay shifted the B-29 fleet to night fire bombing.

Also of note is the shipping cost associated with maintaining 1 million men in England dedicated to the bombing effort, and shipping there literally millions of tons of bombs. The US artillery gun park was starved for 105mm artillery ammunition from the fall of 1944 until the turn of the year, with many formations reduced to 10 rounds per gun per day. Meanwhile the air force was dropping thousands of tons of high explosive per month over Germany, from bombers that cost a quarter of a million dollars apiece, that lasted about 25 missions on average. The same tonnage at the front lines fired through artillery tubes would have hit German soldiers not civilians, through weapon systems that lasted for multiple thousands of rounds and were quite inexpensive. Etc.

The trade off between an incremental 100,000 tons of bombs dropped by the "heavies" over Germany, where their marginal impact was 1/27th of the strategic air campaign's impact, vs what the same might have done as additional artillery ammunition, instead. The Allies had more than enough gun tubes in France to throw that extra weight. That would have been enough to raise the shell ration of all the 25 pdr and 105 tubes at the Westwall during the "shell shortage" from 10-15 rounds per gun per day to more like 60, for 4 months. Trim roughly 5% off the bomb tonnage for artillery ammo instead, and there would have been no shell shortage at all. That weight would have been thrown at front line military targets within about 5 miles with FOs directing it and accuracy to within 100 yards or less - not rained down on whole cities, sometimes at night or through cloud cover or both.

Then there is ASW. Fewer than 5% of allied heavy bombers were given the ASW mission and the air forces hated this as a diversion of effort from what they imagined was the decisive front: their strategic bombing of Germany. But they made a huge difference in the battle of the Atlantic in 1943. There is very little doubt that ASW was the most cost effective use of 4 engine heavies in the whole war.

Why? Because the German U-boat campaign was achieving exchange efficiencies in its favor about as large as the strategy bombing campaign was against Germany. U-boats sunk far more than a merchant ship apiece - about 3 each over their operational lives. A 10,000 ton liberty ship cost several times what a U-boat cost. A type VII cost 2 million RM; a liberty ship cost $2 million. At the official exchange rate, a RM was worth 40 cents, but that rate overvalued the RM. The Allies lost 3300 ships to u boats, the Germans lost 1100 U-boats sinking them. Of course, not every ship sunk was that big; most were half that tonnage, perhaps. But we still get a direct exchange of nearly 4 to 1, and the Allies also spent on escorts, lost cargos, etc. It is thus enitrely plausible that u boats *averaged* a 4 or 5 to 1 loss efficiency over the entire war.

And they greatly exceeded that average in the periods when they were doing better than the whole war average e.g. the 1942 "happy time" before the US formed sufficient escorted convoys. The number of boats out doing it was still ramping up, of course.  Shutting down that efficient economic campaign by raising the U Boat loss rate was a huge marginal impact. The tiny number of heavy bombers dedicated to ASW work were having an outsized impact on that other economic war, and they were indirectly saving the allies way, way more than one just dropping bombs on German cities was managing. The navies and joint staffs knew the importance of this; the air forces didn't and hated the "diversion" of resources from their hamfisted, ineffective bombing campaign. I cite this just to show how non-aimed and non-economic the actual in-war reasoning was about these matters. Economic calculation didn't control it - doctrine did.

Finally, few are aware of how "late dated" the bomb tonnage dropped on Germany is. Over 2/3rds of the tonnage that hit Germany was dropped after the landing in France, when the Luftwaffe was already defeated and air opposition over Germany was falling off to nothing. In the same time frame, western military power could also be applied on the ground in France.

Economic and attrition rationality is a large force multiplier in war when it is applied objectively. Ignoring it to believe your own propaganda is expensive, and that is pretty much what the western allies did in the strategic airpower field in WW2.

The US air offensive over Germany did have 2 major successes: 

1.  The biggest thing the west actually got out of the bombing effort was a direct fight with the German air force in early 1944, which they won not by the bombers but by the fighters escorting them shooting the Germans out of the sky. That's very expensive bait, but it did suffice - with over 5 times the economic inputs spent - to get air superiority over the continent in the spring of 1944, and that was a necessary precondition for the invasion of France. This wasn't brought about by bomb damage. The threat of the bombers forced the Luftwaffe to give battle and US fighters then shot them down, faster than the Germans could replace, especially the trained pilots. (Which were harder for Germany to replace than the fighter aircraft themselves).  They were actually able to keep up with their loss rate in fighter output, but could not put experienced men in the seats of all the new fighters they were still producing. Falling pilot quality snowballed into continued high losses in air to air combat. New units had to be rotated to the east to train before being risked in the west, and the effective sortie rate of fighters over Germany and France fell off as a result.

2.  The second success followed on that. In the late summer of 1944, with the skies practically cleared, the US and UK by day and night respectively were able to hit the oil target set hard enough and frequently enough to cut off the German supply of aviation gasoline. That made that air victory permanent by grounding what was left of the Luftwaffe for lack of av-gas, but that was "win more" against a force their fighters had already beaten. It also restricted German mobile operations in the last year of the war, but by less than it often assumed.

The western air forces never ran Germany out of all fuel. They did halt production of almost all aviation gasoline for more than a month, and reduced its output by 85% after that absolute halt. The difference is that aviation gasoline requires very high octanes and those octanes can only be achieved in synthetic oil production by the hydrogenation process, which was limited to a few large synthetic oil plants. (Obviously natural crude also works fine, and was a major source for av gas before the loss of Polesti in Romania). Diesel, on the other hand, can be made from coal feedstock using the Fischer Tropsch process, which only requires plant about the size of a brewery. The Germans were readily able to disperse synthetic production of diesel fuel, which ultimately accounted for 25% of total fuel production. The German ground forces, other than the panzers, ran on diesel, while the civilian economy and its train based transport system ran on coal. Which Germany had coming out of its ears, until the loss of both Silesia and the Ruhr, very late in the war. The western air forces never stopped the panzers. Ardennes, Nordwind, the Hungary counterattack in the spring of 1945 - the panzers were still running. The western air forces *did* stop the Luftwaffe, because you can't run a high performance fighter plane on diesel.

Those are both certainly victories and mattered to the eventual outcome of the war. The allies just spent huge portions of their wartime GDP to get them. Devoting literally millions of men and something like 30% of the entire war effort of the western allies (by value) was bound to do something, and did. But there was less bang for the buck in that whole expenditure than in e.g. an armor division or a brigade of heavy artillery. Bombing was very inaccurate and its targets were huge and mostly civilians; that was bound to have less direct military impact that dropping the same weight of shells directly on enemy soldiers with much more accurate weapons.

Does the fact that the Western Allies had more to spend mean it was efficient anyway? No, because the opportunity cost is better means the Allies could have bought instead with the investment spent on the strategic bombing effort, or whatever marginal portion of it could have been withdrawn from that effort to get a higher exchange return. Whatever damage *wasn't* inflicted on the Germans because those alternative means *were not* funded, is the true opportunity cost of the strategic bombing program.

If alternate means existed that had 3 to 1 exchange ratios against instead of 6 to 1 against, then half the effort pushed in to the strategic bombing campaign was wasted outright. If alternate means existed that had 2 to 1 exchange ratios against, most of it was.

That isn't far fetched, because the ground forces of the western allies inflicted higher losses than they sustained themselves. In the worst periods of attrition fighting against a German line that was holding, they exchanged off at 3 to 2 favor the Germans. In periods when the Germans counterattacked, they exchanged off at 1 to 1 or better. In periods when the Allies broke through and the Germans had to run and lost large numbers of prisoners, the exchange ratio exceeded 1 to 1. Overall, for the whole war in the west, there were enough of the latter periods that the Allied ground force as a whole took out more than its own numbers.

That force might still have cost more per unit, but not by gobs. It is entirely likely that a full accounting would put the exchange efficiency of the western allied ground armies at 2 to 1 against, or better.

If instead of all the heavies, the west had half as many of those but more fighters and more artillery ammo in place of bombs, they would have been better off in pretty much every respect, and would have ground down the Germans sooner and with less lost of allied lives. They would also have killed more German soldiers and fewer civilians.

There just isn't any way of supporting the idea that the strategic bombing campaign in the full scale it was done was a rational or best use of the input resources. It very clearly wasn't, it was wasteful, there were better uses of the same inputs. But doctrine promised more than the bombers were actually delivering, and the doctrine was believed. Bureaucratic empires were built on the faith that the effort would pay off in the end, if only persisted in long enough with enough weight behind it and so forth. The end result was something akin to driving in a nail with a solid gold hammer. Yes the nail did get driven in - eventually. No it wasn't the most cost effective way to do it.

At the next layer down, it also took the Allies some time to figure out how to truly hurt Germany. The 1943 ball bearings target was a complete mistake. US analysis thought it was critical for German fighter production, but it simply wasn't, and was also easily dispersed, and a very difficult target. Machine tools are quite resistent to bombing with high explosive and recovery times from raids on such targets were a couple of weeks, tops.  The oil target set was the correct one, and it is an analysis stuff-up that this wasn't figured out earlier. The US specifically hit robust portions of the aircraft production supply chain for all of 1943 and the first half of 1944 with little effect - German fighter output continued to soar throughout that entire period. Both the US and the UK also diverted huge resources from their heavy bombing campaign to low return, defensive targets, in the form of the U boat pens all along the French coast and V-1 launch sites (and later, V-2 sites, a bit less wastefully since those were a better target).  By the end of the spring, the skies over France were clear and Germany was falling. The Allies then went after the transport target set in France, and finally went after the oil target set in earnest, over Germany. Both were effective - the former helped D-Day succeed by slowing the German response, but it was the latter that grounded what remained of the Luftwaffe.

Once the Germans couldn't fly all their fighters for lack of aviation fuel, the airfields themselves became vulnerable to fighter bombers. Aircraft factories remained poor targets even at that point. The Allies were, however, able to go after transportation targets clear over Germany, once the skies were clear of German fighters. This dislocated what was left of the German war economy.

It should not be overstated - the German war economy did not peak until the late summer of 1944. Its decline thereafter was partly due to scraping the bottom of the manpower barrel to replace the losses in the east in Bagration, and in the west in France. The Wehrmacht lost a million men in those campaigns in the summer of 1944, and to replace them they had to dig deep into the remaining male workforce in Germany.  This manpower call up coincided with oil output plummetting far below usage - although the army was still able to run on stocks until the winter of 1944 (the air force took the hit before that). The transport network, energy sector, and manpower all contributed to the absolute decline in German output in the last third of 1944.

Notably, the night time bombing throughout by the Brits did not prevent German output from increasing. It did divert resources to air defense and reconstruction, certainly, and prompted dispersal efforts that probably reduced overall industrial efficiency somewhat. But armaments output went right on climbing anyway, until the breakdown of fuel, transport and labor inputs described above. Which required the prior defeat of the German fighter force in direct air to air combat - it was not first brought about by bombing preventing enough fighters from being made or gotten into the air.

Lancasters didn't actually carry 22,000 pounds of bombs. Their max load was more like 12 to 14K - only a few specially modified planes carried single "grand slams' of the tonnage you quoted, very rarely. Their average real load per sortie was under 4 tons (608 kilotons in 156,000 sorties, specifically), largely because of range on typical missions. 

The Mosquito could carry 4K pounds of bombs. They also completed their mission in half the flying time, and had a loss rate per sortie only 1/3rd that of heavy bombers. They did average only 2500 lbs per sortie, though, since they frequently flew with just 2000 lbs, incendiaries for pathfinding, and similar. So both the max bomb load and the typical bomb load were more like 3 to 1 favor the Lancaster. If both were flown until lost, however, the tonnage delivered in the operational life would have been about the same. The lighter plane is making it up by living longer.

In practice, most of the Mosquito force was given every mission but area bombing - pathfinding, night fighter, fighter bomber, point targets, etc. And they only delivered about 35 kilotons, or 6% of what Lancasters dropped. That wasn't because they couldn't have done more, it was doctrine. 

Meanwhile, the heavies were sometimes losing 8 and 10% per raid on deep targets like Berlin. You won't get a lot of missions per bomber doing that, and each cost over a quarter of a million dollars. The loss rate per sortie for the Mosquitos was 0.7% average, and they cost a lot less.


DOGFIGHTING

Basic mechanics of pursuit. Lead and lag positions, what overshooting means, when one can reverse a turn. All first considered horizontally, and one vs one. The fundamental thing here is that motion is not voluntary - planes fly fast and in the direction they were previously heading with only gradual deflection from where they were headed a second ago. Also, if they stop moving forward fast enough, they stall out and spin or crash.

Next notice that there are 3 basic things to track in such a chase situation. One, how far apart the two planes are - straight line separation. Two, the angle difference in their headings. Three the lead or lag defined as where the chasing plane's path crosses the leading plane's path, just considered as though each was to cease turning this instant and fly straight. Next, double all those things to ask there rates of change as well as their present values. E.g., the rate of change of the separation is the overtake speed or closing speed.

A lag pursuit is the idea of just going along the same path as the leading plane, doing what he did and where he did it. On its own it minimizes his chances of breaking free of the pursuer, but does little to improve the tracking variables. But if already in firing position it is sufficient, and it can be adopted to keep that enemy defensive and force his moves, or to counter shake-free attempts that might otherwise succeed. It is also a fine opening to establish, proceeding to other forms when conditions are favorable.

A lead pursuit, on the other hand, cuts inside the lead plane's turn to reduce separation. It increases the overtake and gets you closer to a firing position. But it necessarily involves some divergence in the second measure, the difference in the headings. The bigger this difference, the more aggressive the lead, because the closing rate will be driven higher, but so is the deflection angle where the pursuit plane will cross the lead plane's path.

Overshooting happens when the pursuit can't keep inside the lead plane's turn. The lead's defensive turn will be toward the pursuer. Especially with an aggressive lead and fast overtake, the pursuer will get only a brief period in which his facing exactly matches the lead's direction away from him, then he loses his lead and is pointed beyond the enemy's turn.

At some point in any given overshoot, the lead can reverse his turn. He trades heading difference away to get lateral separation and to progress toward the rear of the whole pair's overall direction. He wants to force the pursuer out in front of him, which reverses the initiative and may just kill the chaser outright. The defensive turner is typically describing wider arcs and may be at lower speeds; a fast pursuer cutting across each turn has less distance to travel and covers it faster. The separation in the original chase direction can thus fall rapidly, to zero then below it - and the pursued gets behind his pursuer. He only needs the original pursuer to not have a good shot lined up in the few seconds in which the range fall from just above zero to below it.

All that is horizontal dogfighting, or the turning fight.

The next idea is using vertical maneuvers to influence the turning fight. The basic moves are low and high yo yos - others are extreme instances that use similar principles.

The idea of a low yo yo is to be going faster for a limited "pulse" of time to change separation. A plane that goes from A to B along a straight path between them gets there slower than one that dives a bit first and pulls up at the end. This is because more of its total energy is kinetic - raw speed - and less is potential energy - altitude - along the lower part of its path. They both arrive at the same speed - the pull up gives it back getting back the height it "borrowed" - but it was going faster for longer so it covers the same distance sooner. 

In a chase, the plane that noses down more than the other gets extra speed, and either closes the range (the pursuer) or opens it (if the lead does it more than the chaser).

High yo yos use climbs in a parallel fashion to manipulate overshoot and turning rate instead of separation. By climbing first, the plane gives away speed for altitude. At the lower speed, it turns faster and has more time to do it, in less space, controlling overshoot. The higher it goes, the more extreme this effect. At the limit, it can reverse direction without use of (much) horizontal space by pulling through a complete loop, or close to it through an Immelman turn. Once overshoot or angle stuff is under control, the nose is dropped back down, and the energy temporally "stored" as altitude is traded back into speed to re-establish pursuit and get back to working on separation.

Some planes are better at the turning war, others at the vertical war. The more engine power a plane has and the better its top speed, the better it tends to be at the vertical war. The lower its wing loading and the faster it can change its direction at lower speeds, the better it will be in the pure turning war.

So far, that has all been about single planes. But teamwork is the essence of real air combat tactics. Planes are vulnerable when enemies are behind them - but a friend can cover that area and threaten to shoot down anyone who trails immediately behind the plane he is covering. Basic wingman tactics start from this. The first job of a wingman is thus to trail -chase his leader to keep his leader's tail clear of enemies, thus freeinh him to attack without worrying about defense (for the time being).

Second, it is much harder to shake off a pursuer using lead pursuit, cutting inside a defensive turn, if his wingman is 2-3 seconds behind him. Because the defender can't reverse when the leader overshoots, or he just presents his six to the wingman right behind. The defender needs to force both to overshoot, and they can pick different leads or lags to make one choice of turn inappropriate against both. Overlapping threats are far stronger than single zones of threat, in other words, because the "counter" good vs one may be quite bad against the other. The pair can also split and double back to cover each other, or "drag" a fixated pursuer into the danger zone of a friend.

By WW2, people developed pair of pair tactics to use these basic forms of cooperation. Each of the pairs stayed tight for tail clearing defense, then the separate pairs could move in coordinated fashion - these two drive a defensive turner to where those two can get him, or this pair drags a pursuer in front of that pair.


*****
PACIFIC THEATER

The US had definite interests in Asia and pursued them consistently and systematically, from the mid 19th century on. The US wanted open trade with China. This was commercially very important, from the age of the "clipper ships" on. The US also had a tradition of opposing European imperialism and played that in relations with China, until around the time of the Boxer rebellion. The US did not want any foreign nation to dominate China, especially not one that would close China to US trade. It didn't mind an internationalist imperialism that was focused on keeping treaty ports open, but military occupation of the Chinese coastline was never going to be OK with the US, no matter who did it.

From the time the US started building a serious, modern blue water navy, the Open Door policy had equal billing with defense of the Americas and the Monroe doctrine. Even the Spanish-American war that founded overseas US possessions was pursued in furtherance of that goal. Guerrilla fighting in the Philippines did not change that, and in the nature of the case, it wasn't going to. It was not a matter of how long the fight went on or its cost or anything of the sort. The US was not going to just pretend the Pacific theater didn't exist and go home. And there was no way for Japan to ally with it, and pillage a helpless China at the same time. US opposition to Japan's expansion was not accidental, in other words. Far sighted US statesmen knew that commerce with China was a vital long term strategic interest of the US, and they were not going to let it go gentle into that good night without fighting.

Henry Stimson saw the threat as early as the 1931 invasion of Manchuria, but could not get serious action due to the Depression-era weakness of the US and the whole western core, economically. In that regard, Japan's opportunistic timing worked. It was pushing its luck with the invasion of the mainland in the late 1930s. That touched off US naval rearmament, because the line had already been crossed. From that point on, the US was always going to apply serious economic and diplomatic pressure on Japan to give up its conquests in mainland China. And those would have  massive military forces backing them up as soon as the US was ready, and the threat board livable. Japan was doubling its bet when it took Indochina in 1940, trusting the heat of the war in Europe to make that as opportune a moment as the Depression had made its Manchuria seizure. But it was already deep into reckless territory with that move, and it already needed to German victory in Russia to have a prayer of keeping those gains, at that point.

THE JAPANESE WOULD HAVE BEEN BEST OFF AVOIDING WAR ALTOGETHER

It is pretty clear where the actual strategic interests of Japan lay. It should at all costs have avoided open rupture with the US. As a friend of the US, it had nothing to fear from Russia, China, or the European overseas empires. As an enemy of the US, it had everything to fear from everything in existence.

If Japan had been rational about what it could keep and about what it had to fear from war with the US, it would have reacted to the late 1930s US naval build up with negotiations rather than escalation. Agreed to give up most of the mainland China conquests, and to a renewed naval treaty with the US, and to a declaration of neutrality for any trouble originating in Europe. It could have patched up Manchurian issues with Russia at the same time. Then it could have consolidated its gains earlier in the decade in Manchuria, kept trading with the US, and ridden out the WWII period without loss.

Clearly all that required a humility and realism the Japanese political system was not capable of at the time, above all because of hotheads in the Army endlessly pushing continental expansion as a matter of "honor". But it would not have had a poor position had it taken that route. It would have kept Korea and Manchuria. As at the end of WWI, it might have traded some late war co-belligerence status or economic cooperation with the Allies for a few more Pacific bases. It could then have diplomatically spoken for nationalist decolonization pushes across Asia in the aftermath of the war. Japan had better objective prospects for dominance in southeast Asia by never invading them, and instead waiting a generation and befriending new countries when western empires could not longer afford to hold or defend distant overseas possessions.

All it needed to do was forego its China mainland operation. Or failing that for domestic and Army politics reasons, pull out as part of a peace deal with Chiang Kai-shek brokered by the Americans, sufficient to placate the latter and ensure continued trade with the US. Postwar, Japan could pursue diplomatic expansion in Asia as European powers pull back, while staying allied with the US to keep Russia out of the region. The course of Asian history would likely have been quite different, with no Communist revolutions in China or Southeast Asia.

It is also unlikely, because the Japanese militarists, like their Axis allies, had a terminal case of the evil-and-stupid disease. 

DID ROOSEVELT NEED TO CON THE US INTO WAR?

The US absolutely should have entered WW II against the Axis. It was in both the interests of the US, and of the world, that it do so. Not because of FDR, and in complete contempt of  silly isolationists domestically. It was simply the actual, objective, geo-strategic interests of the US, to ensure an Allied victory in the war and to have a major hand in that victory - especially in Europe. Regardless of who was president, or what political fantasies anyone entertained then, or entertains now.

The USA already had all of the legitimate reasons anyone could ever desire to enter WWII against the Axis powers. The invasion and annexation of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, the low countries, and France were all the causus belli the US could possibly require in Europe. The invasion and annexation of Manchuria and mainland China in the far east, then of Indochina, and in the hypothetical under discussion, an attack on ABDA and the UK, did and would constitute all the legitimate reasons for declaring war on the aggressors in that theater, as well. To say nothing of the rape of Nanking, terror bombing Warsaw, Holland, Belgrade, etc, unrestricted submarine warfare in the North Atlantic, and the like.

What did FDR need to "justify"?  He was president and commander in chief.

FDR is not in any way a hero of mine. It is simply realism about the phoniness of American "democracy" in an era of party command of all of politics, and presidential Caesarism. 

Difficulties FDR supposedly might have had getting the USA to belligerent status are basically imaginary. Revisionist claims are a serious misread of actual US commitment to get involved in WW II on the side of the British, which was in place from the fall of France onward, and in high gear from early 1941. All the US moves in the Atlantic (Iceland, escorting UK shipping, DDs fighting U-boats etc) were designed to give the US the option of joining the war against Germany, and gave FDR freedom to do so at any time. Similar, the US could have chosen any time after the opening of war between the UK and Japan to take the UK's side. 

FDR got his naval bills and his embargoes and his lend lease and escorting merchant ships in the North Atlantic and getting them shot up by German submarines, despite isolationist sentiment, which he despised and outmaneuvered at every turn. He was not remotely cowed by isolationist sentiment in Congress. He spent most of his foreign policy time navigating around it and getting what he wanted anyway. He was quite willing to court military altercations and willing to use "incidents" to move the country closer to his own preferred policy, which was active alliance with the UK and involvement in the war, as soon as the US was ready.

FDR could and did maneuver the USA into war. He had all the means and political skill and active political support he needed to do so, and there was no way in a warm place a few isolationist senators were going to stop him. He had on his side the cabinet, the armed forces, the British government, the largest political party, and a massive PR machine. He didn't need to just call a vote on the subject, he could create new facts on the ground and those facts would evoke predictable reactions from both foreign states and domestic politicians, both those opposed to his goals and those in favor of them. And as a matter of political reality, those powers trump disorganized fantasy public opinion wishing for puppy dogs and ice cream, as thoroughly and completely as the US air force in 1945 trumped the planes Japan could put in the air.

People thinking the delay in US entry was a political constraint on FDR just aren't reading the internal staff and army planning advice to him. The US was simply playing for time to get its rearmament going. It was military readiness, not political constraints, that was delaying US entry during 1941.

The US simply wasn't sitting quietly by and letting fascists run rampant. Up to the fall of France that might be accurate, but then the US was sitting quietly then because they figured that the UK and France would defeat Germany, or at least stalemate them.

As soon as France falls, the US opens joint military planning cooperation with the British, turns over all the war output the British can afford to them, accelerates its own rearming, then gives the UK even more when it can't afford to pay for what it needs, starts escorting convoys to the UK, does things like embargo Japan, etc. The US is *not* sitting quietly any more. It is moving toward war on the side of the UK, it just *isn't quite ready* yet, in a purely *military* sense. It wants some time to get out of peacetime cobwebs and such, and in the meantime it switches on industry for domestic and foreign allied war production.

FDR already knew the US would be involved in the war before it was over, at the time of the battle of Britain. So did the US general staff. Their main fear, in fact, was that Britain might not hold out long enough for them to get ready and intervene, and they might have to fight from the Americas.

What the public newspapers are saying, and what congressmen are pontificating about, is *not* where America was. FDR, Stimson, Marshall are where America was. And they knew they were going to enter, they just would prefer it be a bit later when the country was significantly more ready than it was in June of 1940 - because that was "abysmally unready".

The US was committed to involvement in the war from a much earlier date, but was in an involved internal debate as to the best timing, directly related to the choice of means and immediate moves available, on the one hand, and the urgent need to "stand up" the army and army air force, on the other. 

Up until the fall of France in the summer of 1940, the army still had some hopes that active belligerence on the part of the US might be avoided, even though it was already more than justified. They thought that just furnishing supplies and economic assistance might enable the UK and France to contain Germany. They considered it possible, in that event, that economic and diplomatic pressure and the threat of war against superior force - including the ongoing naval buildup - might suffice to deter Japan.

But after the fall of France, that hope was dismissed as a fantasy, way too optimistic. The US knew that it would have to actively fight. The joint planning with the British at that point takes on a much more concrete character - they are discussing how many US divisions can be shipped to the British isles for active war against the Germans, by when. Along with a planned major bomber offensive by the US from Britain. Since they wouldn't yet actually be engaging with those forces, though, they have flexibility as to the timing. And delay serves the US, in their own opinion. The item pushing for immediate belligerence is just the fear of a British defeat before the US can make its strength felt. That fear lasted until the German attack on Russia.

The fall of France created a readiness "scare" and the army staffs concluded from it that the US would not be able to stay out of the war. But the army wasn't remotely ready to do anything about it, yet. So they resorted to lend lease, joint planning, naval support, and advancing joint planning. At the same time they began urgently "standing up" army readiness including the air force etc. 

By early 1941, they still weren't ready, but their bottom line was that intervention might be needed at any time to avoid the UK losing. That the US could not possibly accept a UK defeat and being left alone in the matter, etc.

That urgency backed off some when Germany attacked Russia. Army staffs concluded that that action meant no conceivable invasion of Britain until mid 1942 at the earliest as a result, so they expected there would be time to stand up army readiness further, before engaging. They still saw a need to engage. They also saw possible benefits in engaging earlier rather than later, before the army was ready, just to use the navy to assist the British. Some in the army did think that had dangers of piecemeal commitment of the army before it was ready (fears that were furthered by the priorities of Torch and the Med, British priorities in Europe leading, etc).  The US focused on having the flexibility to meet likely contingency operations in the meantime. By which they meant things like occupying Iceland or the Azores, taking over ASW responsibilities from Britain, and having an expeditionary force ready to go to meet any other contingency. That is what they were focused on preparing in the last quarter of 1941.

The Army had been a restraining force on FDR through that whole period. State was comparatively more belligerent, but the army staffs had to explain the home truths of low US readiness for war, especially compared to contemporary Germany. It was all very well to want to intervene and to foresee that it would happen in the end; it was another to send a couple dozen divisions of barely trained national guardsmen up against the Wehrmacht at the height of its prowess. Marshall was able to convey those realism constraints to FDR, and had his full trust. FDR was constantly pushing in such matters, as Iceland and Torch showed, before and after actual war, respectively.

The point being, as soon as the army said the US was ready, FDR was going to release the hounds. He wasn't being restrained by blowhards in congress. He was being slowed as to timing by realism from the army.

The US staff and British staff worked out all the essentials of the German first strategy after the fall of France, long before US entry. The delay after that wasn't politics, it was readiness - The US army specifically wanted more time to rearm and train up a larger force, before direct belligerence. The navy was already far along in its rearmament, laying down Essex carrier hulls and the like.

The answer to the timing question was: at the US army's convenience during 1942. The navy might be ready by that summer, the army preferred to wait until fall, like around the time frame of Torch (invading French North Africa). If Japan was already a belligerent against the UK in the far east, that would move it up to the spring or early summer of 1942, after shifting major additional forces to the Philippines, especially land based air.

The US Army was asking FDR to go slow because they weren't ready for war yet. FDR had all the provocations and interim actions he could possibly need lined up, from full joint staff plans with the British to acts of war in the North Atlantic, destroyer deals and lend lease and a draft and naval rearmament and diplomatic demands at the Japanese etc. He wasn't going to be stopped by Congress, where he had a large majority. He was just listening to Marshall who was telling him the army was in no shape to go to war yet.

The only issue with all those previous legitimate reasons to go to war is that their timing came at the attacker's convenience, and the US army and army air force were not ready to do anything concrete about them, just yet. They were already enough to start serious rearmament in the US, and the navy expansion programs from 1937 (following Japan's withdrawal from the London naval agreements) and later were already a response to them. The army and air force were growing and training, too. Diplomatically and politically, the US already had more than excuses, it had reasons, and the most legitimate that real reasons actually get in real geopolitics. But not *wanting* to pull the trigger just yet for pure readiness reasons, it let those occasions pass with only changes to its internal development and some staff planning with the British.

The US likely would have entered the war on its own timetable in the second half of 1942, without other action by the Axis directly against the US. Torch would likely still have happened and around the same time. If diplomatically they could deter the Japanese into inaction in the meantime, great. All the discussion of provocations and manufactured excuses in my previous are merely to show that the US was never going to be trapped into staying out of the war by decisions by the Axis powers. The Axis powers had burned the bridges against claiming innocence and inoffensiveness, geopolitically speaking, five exits back. The reason for delay in actively going to war was not that there weren't already sufficient reasons for it, objectively or in a domestic public opinion sense (the latter being easily manipulated). It was pure readiness, choice of timing.

The Japanese accelerated this timetable and ignited the Pacific theater, when FDR would have been perfectly happy to fight only Germany and Italy, if he had his druthers, and Japan stayed home and kept its head down. That was the only way Japan had to avoid war with the US - the diplomatic option of withdrawing from mainland China (and not even going into Indochina in the first place), and making peace with Chiang Kai-shek. Which, domestically, they weren't going to do (army least of all). The US staying out of the whole war was simply never going to happen. FDR was not constrained to stay out of it, and was committed to UK survival and defeat of Germany. If he could get that with only economic assistance and lend lease he might have been willing to stick to that, but in fact that was not practical, and he knew it, even if Congress did not.

Japan and Germany saw that situation perfectly clearly. The fantasy isolation some of the US congress favored was nothing for any foreign state to rely on, and wasn't ever going to actually determine US diplomatic or military action, or lack thereof. It was too obviously  wishful thinking with no basis in reality, to last as a political force. FDR was very conscious of the relative lack of preparedness of the US military; he initiated the massive naval expansion programs of the late 1930s to ease that lack of preparedness, and would have been happy to have another six months or so to build up. But before the end of 1942, he's in vs Germany, regardless - IMO.

CHINA

China alone was not sufficient to defeat Japan. The Chinese mainland army basically never laid a glove on the Japanese army. Without logistics, airpower, artillery (see logistics), and with very indifferent command and lousy morale, the Chinese had an illusory potential for a long time, but never really did anything with it. They fought marginally better in the Burma theater under western allied command and (especially) supply, but still could not match up to Japanese forces. China was unable to expel the Japanese invasion force without outside assistance, and that wasn't going to change. "But they faced an endless war". So what, so did the Chinese, who were losing it, to boot. Japan could run the war in China indefinitely without breaking a sweat. It just couldn't also handle the diplomatic and military fallout of that, with the US specifically.

The Japanese simply did not need the Chinese to give up. They occupied the entire coastline and most of the major cities. Yes there was a huge rural Chinese population outside of their control - but they were about as relevant to the war as the inhabitants of sub saharan Africa were to the campaign in Libya and Egypt. They were mostly dirt poor with no military potential whatever.

The Chinese could barely defend the deep inland cities of the south. The Japanese could not supply operations that deep into a basically endless interior that wouldn't really accomplish anything, any political targets they aimed at just displacing deeper yet again. They could not end the trickle of foreign supply reaching China from India by air, once the war included the US and UK. But equally, the underequipped Chinese "armies" had no chance whatever of driving the Japanese away, liberating any of the coast cities, or even defending themselves if or when the Japanese ever decided to destroy this or that Chinese formation.

A typical result on an engagement between a mainland Chinese "army" and a Japanese division was that the Japanese division laid on a moderate artillery barrage and called for a few airstrikes, and half the Chinese "army" ran for the hills as fast as their feet could carry them. The rest retreated and tried to rally, at most leaving a few rear guards to snipe at approaching Japanese infantry for a bit, before giving up and retreating. 

The Japanese could not afford to do this often enough to run the Chinese out of men, but they could do it at will. They were in no military danger whatever from the Chinese army - no more so that say General Kitchener's force fighting the Sudanese had been 40 years earlier. The technical, equipment, and military discipline differences between the two sides were a chasm; no amount of numbers sufficed to let the Chinese attack anything. They didn't just lack equipment, they lacked bravery and any political willingness to fight or die for the "cause". They just tried to keep themselves and their family out of the way of the war, and waited for someone else to end it for them.

Which was more sensible than you might think, because that was also the attitude of Chiang once the US entered, and is effectively what happened when the US beat the Japanese for them. It was pretty senseless to go get killed trying to do that, when someone else was going to come along and do it anyway, without Chinese help.


JAPAN'S DECISION FOR WAR

We know what men thought at the time. The US understood Japanese intentions well enough, just as the Japanese understood US intentions well enough.  Japanese naval commanders, specifically, had few illusions about US industrial and military power. There were some thickheaded Emperor-supremacists in the army, but those alone would not have sufficed to make a decision for war.

It is a childish notion that war is caused not by understanding and cold calculation, but by misunderstanding plus testosterone, and that if all people were only pious and understood one another the lion would lay down with the lamb and there would never be war any more. Clausewitz, in contrast, does express a timeless truth when he defines war as "an act of violence intended to compel the opponent to fulfil our will".

Japan doesn't decide to attack the US in a vacuum. In December 1941, General Hoth's panzers are less than 50 miles from Moscow. The Japanese grand strategy is an opportunistic one, predicated on German success in Europe. They are in a lousy position when Germany loses the war in Russia, but that was by no means clear at the time, nor did it seem like a likely future course of events. If Germany wins in Russia, the UK and US are facing a much more daunting proposition in that theater than they faced in the actual history. They are much more likely to be interested in closing down a second front diplomatically, if they can, at an acceptable cost.

If Japan goes to war with the US and UK and occupies SE Asia along historical lines, but Germany wins the war in Russia, and is strongly placed on the European mainland because of that victory. Japan avoids own goals like Midway and fights the US carrier force to traded down strength in the course of 1942, in defensive not exposed offensive operations. This forces the US to wait for the Essex class carrier fleet before making any real headway. Japan handles the sub war better both offensively and defensively, using stolen or transferred German tech to help, along with more of a focus on ASW and anti Allied shipping (guerre de course), rather than a main fleet battle, Mahan naval strategy. Then in mid 1943 Japan offers generous separate peace terms to the US, to free the US to pursue the European war without the weight and distraction of the Pacific war.

If Japan goes for war and Germany loses, it loses. But it is not fated that Germany can't beat Russia before US weight can make itself felt in Europe. There were plenty of "own goals" - unforced errors in the conduct of that campaign, as well, that were avoidable. (First and foremost, planning on a sustained 2-3 year campaign from the start, also seeking to mobilize Soviet captive nation support rather than exploiting and exterminating, etc).

Second, Japan had some historical success taking on superior powers with only a peripheral presence in Asia, whose main power lay half a world away. I refer to the Russo Japanese war. They managed to win despite a much weaker navy and army than they possessed in 1941, thanks to success in a single decisive naval battle. It would be fair to say they put too much trust in a possible repeat of that event, but it clearly did color what they expected as the future course of the Pacific war. 

The Japanese already had concrete information about US resolve and willingness to risk war from the US reaction to the Indochina operation. For years already the US "China lobby" had lionized the Chinese, Chiang and his American 'advisers' in the press, beating the drums for an even harder line. 

FDR was already well known to be itching to fight alongside the British against the Germans.  Thus, the Japanese had few doubts that open war with the UK in the Southeast area would draw an even more forceful American reaction. And as of November 1941 for them to do so would have let the US tear their new empire in half pretty much at will.  After the navy and air power in the Philippines were all set and ready, FDR would have issued an ultimatum to Japan to cease its unprovoked aggression and return its conquests or face war with the US. And if they ignored that ultimatum, he would have gone through with it. The Japanese readily saw that course and rejected it as in every way worse for them than what they did.

Exactly none of the critical questions in the Pacific war's outbreak or strategies turned on some existential race war between whites vs Asiatics, or a programme for colonial liberation.  Neither the Chinese nor the Japanese imagined they shared a race. The Chinese saw how Japan's army behaved in Nanking if there was any doubt in the matter. Philippine society, dominated by mixed race mestizos, had a nationalism which was not racial, but nation-based. The slightest touch of actual Japanese occupation turned sentiment entirely toward resisting.  Nobody but a few pinheads in Tokyo ever paid the slightest attention to Japan's propaganda line that they were freeing orientals from white western colonialists. The Japanese were ruled by a pack of murderous enslaving thugs who cut off their subject's heads with wild abandon. The out-group for Japanese militarists was everyone who wasn't Japanese, and fanatically pro-war to boot.

And the US never set a single war priority based on a "Yellow Peril". Popular consensus reacted poorly against the Japanese minority, because that is an utterly normal reaction to the shock of being at war, everywhere and always. In time cooler heads prevailed, in complete contrast to across the board Japanese mass murder of foreign captives and their fellow Asians alike.

The Japanese naval leaders who directed the strategy employed most definitely did not swallow the propaganda line that the blue-eyes would crumple because they lacked hara (guts), or Bushido will, or any such nonsense. The US leaders who put Germany first with a 70-30 split on effort were not doing so based on racist contempt for the Japanese. They were each rationally calculating where the actual dangers lay, and what was militarily more important. Correctly.

Yamamoto had studied at Harvard. He had toured the US widely, and that cross-cultural experience was not unique to him, nor to his counterparts in the American elite.  He knew the industrial potential of the US by direct observation, and knew that it dwarfed Japan's. He accurately predicted that the period of a free hand after Pearl Harbor would be limited. He invented the phrase "sleeping giant" - "I fear we have only awakened a sleeping giant, and filled it with terrible resolve" - that's Yamamoto after Pearl succeeds, to his own senior commanders. These are not illusions. They are decisions, gambles if you like, but made rationally, with eyes open and respect for the adversary.

It is important to study Japanese naval prewar thinking in a little more detail. They thought that a decisive surface engagement in the inner defense perimeter - perhaps off the Philippines, perhaps farther out than that - would decide the naval war. They assumed that if they could win such an engagement decisively, akin to their performance in the Russo-Japanese war, the US would be too far behind in remaining BB strength at that point to reconquer the rest of its defensive perimeter. The US would rebuild BB strength at a rate of only 2 per year, plus repairs. This would impose an additional period of stalemate, several years long, during which the Japanese navy would be too strong in BBs for the US to challenge. They then expected to win a negotiated peace under such circumstances, based also on the priority they assumed the US would give to Europe and the war against Germany. Given that a Russian defeat looked likely in late 1941, they expected the European war to be daunting and difficult even for the American giant.

To achieve that decisive BB engagement, Japanese staffs hoped to inflict losses on the USN BB fleet as it tried to drive across the Pacific. They would avoid committing their own BB fleet prematurely, and instead seek attrition of the US BB count using other weapons. The core of that idea was their superior torpedos, which would make a number of non-BB arms dangerous to BBs. Their submarine arm was given an anti warship mission. This actually proved a mistake compared to using it vs merchant shipping, but they did not understand how rare sub vs capital ship encounters would turn out to be. Note though that they still did sink a number of full fleet carriers with subs, proving the idea wasn't crazy, it just underused their excellent sub fleet.

The Japanese also had the best naval aviation in the world in 1941, both carrier- and land-based, with the best air launched torpedoes. Ki-21 Betty bombers had a range the US could only dream about. Aichi Vals were marginally less capable than SBDs in all categories but range. Kate torpedo planes were far superior to US Devastators, let alone British Swordfish biplanes, in range and in every other respect. The Zero interceptor was far superior to F4Fs and Buffaloes. Their pilots were also superbly trained, with years of wartime experience from the China conflict. 

They also equipped their cruisers with excellent torpedos and trained those and their destroyer crews in night surface attack. All these arms were expected to snipe at the US BB fleet as it fought its way across the Pacific to its eventual grand battle with the Japanese battle fleet, keeping numbers to no better than even. They then expected Yamato and Musashi would outclass any individual BB the USN had, and help them win the decisive battle in spectacular fashion.

It is easy in hindsight to criticize this script or prewar conception. But the US did take years to drive across the Pacific. The USN did take heavy losses in night surface combat against superior Japanese torpedo armed lighter ships, though radar helped to reduce their edge in such fighting. Less commonly noticed, there was an eventual series of major surface engagements - multiple battles in Leyte gulf - in which the Japanese BB fleet was finally committed, roughly where they thought it would happen. The Japanese plan was poor and hamstrung by fuel shortages, and US air power broke up much of that attempt. Yet they still achieved a night BB engagement against older US BBs, but lost it. Objectively, Japan had lost the naval war by then and Leyte Gulf was not a battle they could have won decisively even with better luck. The point is there was more truth in the prewar vision than many suppose.

The Americans had similar expectations, in fact. The US war plans for dealing with Japan envisioned holding the Philippines and perhaps other lesser bases on the way, and fighting across to them in a primarily naval campaign, with minor marine supplements. They figured on a decisive surface naval engagement between battleships, triggered by that advance. The reasoning was that a full US fleet based in Manila was expected to dominate the southern seas and cut Japan off from any conquest in that area, and to prevent that threat, that Japan would have to come out and fight. In other words, both sides imagined that a Mahan style battleship main fleet battle would decide the war.

The US believed it could win such an engagement because of the 5:5:3 treaty ratios among battleships, even without UK support, but especially with some. Neither side believed that battleships laid down after the conflict broke out would be available in time to be decisive in the war itself, because the construction time for full BBs was so long. The 4 Iowa class BBs actually completed during the war were all laid down in 1939 and 1940, before the conflict broke out. 

2 North Carolina BBs were laid down in 1937 and the 4 South Dakota class BBs were laid down in 1939. So yes the US managed to field 10 BBs during the conflict (or 8 during and 2 right before during 1941, more accurately), but they had all been ordered 1-4 years before it started, and took 4 years or so each to complete. The US had 17 BBs at the start of the war and was receiving 2 per year. Against those, the Japanese could count on 12, including Yamato and Mushashi. They had every reason to expect that a successful Pearl operation would leave them with battleship superiority for up to 2-3 years. Of course, aircraft carriers proved more important in the Pacific war as it was actually fought, and had shorter construction times.  The BB number calculations at the core of their prewar planning just didn't matter, compared to CV numbers and more specifically, total naval air arm strength.

Japan was in an ongoing war in China, which had escalated in 1937 (after seizure of Manchuria in the early 1930s). The US responded with various economic sanctions and called for Japan to withdraw from China. In 1941, Japan occupied French Indochina, taking advantage of the German occupation of France which rendered the territories effectively undefended.

The US reacted to the seizure of French Indochina with much stricter economic sanctions. Specifically, the US ended all oil exports to Japan. While previous sanctions, focused on metals, targeted items Japan could get from Korea and Manchuria, Japan had no outside sources of oil. She had a strategic oil reserve, but it would barely suffice to sustain full tempo naval operations for six months. She could make that reserve last longer by reducing naval operations to a minimum, but would be drawing on the reserve anyway to sustain absolutely necessary merchant marine operations, and to continue use of the air force in China (one of the main legs of Japanese superiority over the more numerous but badly equipped Chinese armies).

Japan consumed 31 million barrels of oil, against domestic production of only 3 million barrels, in 1941, before the additional wartime demands of the navy and air force. Also, they need refined product, not just crude, at the places it is consumed. The merchant marine alone also saw a jump in usage supplying far-flung conquered areas and the forces sent to them. In the event, their total stockpile did not grow even after capturing the Dutch East Indies and getting the facilities back online. It held pretty steady against higher usage in 1942, fell some in 1943, and fell drastically thereafter. Consumption also dropped as the fleet and merchant fleet was sunk.

From Japan's point of view, therefore, the oil embargo presented only a few alternatives: 

1.  She could negotiate to lift the embargo by giving the US whatever it demanded in return for that, just sufficient to keep the oil flowing. 

2  Or she could temporize, shut off the navy, and limp on with her existing stockpile, with no means of replenishing it. 

3.  Or she could try to solve her oil import dependency by military action, specifically by seizing the Dutch East Indies and the rich oil fields at Balikpapan, and to a lesser extent on Borneo. This was one of the largest oil producing regions in the world, heavily developed by what we now call the Shell oil company. The oil output from that area would suffice to sustain military operations in China indefinitely, and active naval operations pretty much indefinitely (only some livable limitations on operational tempo especially with the heavy battleship part of the fleet, and the like).

On the first option, the pain point was the US demands, which included not only withdrawal from Indochina, but withdrawal from mainland China. There was some misunderstanding on that point - the Japanese were apparently under the impression that this US demand even included Manchuria. The US was prepared to let Japan keep Manchuria (and Korea), but did demand a wholesale evacuation of their forces from mainland China, otherwise. This amounted to a diplomatically inflicted defeat on the ambitions of the Japanese army over the entire previous decade, and was anathema to the Japanese army leaders. Officers even hinting at contemplating that course of action were routinely assassinated by zealots in the army. The navy was more open to that course, but it was still a desperate one.

For the second, the pain point was that it gave no permanent "out", and that is also removed the Japanese navy's ability to act within about 1 year. If the embargo remained that long and Japan just ran down her stockpiles to run the merchant navy and the air force, the navy would be basically paralyzed by lack of fuel in about that time frame. It could run lighter units and some shoestring operations, but running the entire fleet around the entire Pacific would be completely out of the question in about 12 months time. The oil to burn to drive their engines simply would not exist - or rather, it was in the US and inaccessible.

Thus, the third option, to seize the oil of the Dutch East Indies, was a vanishing opportunity. If the oil stockpile was to be used for that massive naval fight, it would have to be used pretty much immediately, and the flow of oil from captured imports would then need to be established within about 6 months, maximum.

Holland was occupied by Germany, just as France was, so Indonesia was defended by minor overseas forces of the Dutch in Java. Those forces were, however, also allied to the UK and Australia, with bases at Singapore (the UK, 1 BB and 1 BC present there, some aircraft) and Australia (a few heavy cruisers and a minor air force).

The Dutch could be readily defeated, but British forces in the area, specifically at Singapore, would help defend them. Thus seizure of the oil would require war with the UK.  The operation to fight the UK and Dutch in the East Indies would proceed from air bases in newly captured Indochina, plus sea forces steaming there from Japan.

The Philippines lay directly astride the route this offensive would need to take. And the whole point of the war was to capture oil and bring it home in vulnerable oil tankers, sailing right past the Philippines.

There was no question in the Japanese high command's mind that invading Indonesia would draw from the US a reaction at least as forceful as the one over French Indochina. If they did nothing to neutralize the US navy before starting the operation, the US navy could, in peace, sail to Manila, build up a massive naval and air force there, and open hostilities in alliance with the UK and Australia at any time. The US would already be at Japan's oil jugular.  This meant they would face a repeat of the same demands to give back all conquests or face war, in conditions where they would be heavily disadvantaged.

The historical choice was their alternative. Strike to neutralize the US fleet at Hawaii, strike at Singapore to neutralize the Royal Navy in the area, then attack the Philippines when they could not be defended. With air forces there neutralized, the operation to seize Java and the Dutch indies and the oil, would proceed safely and rapidly. Once taken, Japan would have economic self sufficiency and the ability to sustain all her armed forces, including her navy, for the ensuing war.

From their standpoint, then, the US oil embargo poised only two realistic options. Go big or go home. 

They went big.


COULD THE JAPANESE GRAB THE INDIES WITHOUT ATTACKING THE US?

If the Japanese attack the Dutch East Indies but *do not* attack the US, either at Pearl or in the Philippines, war with the British Empire still pretty much starts the same time it did historically. Even in extremis and with no US intervention, the British weren't about to let the Japanese steamroll the Dutch possessions. The British didn't truly understand the mobility of the Japanese army and navy, the weakness of Malaya and their Singapore fortress, of their own Indian Army, or of unescorted Royal Navy capital ships to air attack until they were already in and it was too late.  In any case, the Japanese would have not haved spared them: leaving Britain in Singapore, near the Indies oilfields was even worse than leaving the Americans in Manila, and cutting the Burma Road was also tempting.  Finally, ejecting the arrogant British from Hong Kong was a feather in the cap of Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere agitprop, for those fantasists who took that project seriously.

Either way, the Japanese would certainly take the southwest area from the weak colonial forces without attacking the Americans. But then, how do they defend this new empire? 

The Japanese now face the threat of a US intervention from the very start of their war, at a time of the blue-eyes' own choosing, with far less strategic depth. Their critical sea lanes between the Philippines and China are within range of all types of US air and sea power.  The US already had war plans to fight across the Pacific to reinforce the Philippines, and then to cut the straits. The Imperial war machine cannot survive once that oil ocean route is cut. In every important respect, this delivers worse military outcomes from the path they chose.

The Taiwan strait is 81 miles wide at its narrowest point. The Luzon strait is larger, but divided by islands and shallows into 3 channels for large shipping - the northern Bashi channel is 51 miles wide, the middle Balintang is 24 miles wide, and the southern Babuyan channel is 14 miles wide.  Compared to looking for a convoy in the North Atlantic or the middle of the Pacific ocean (routes down to Rabaul, say), those count as narrows. It is a lot easier to find a convoy in one or another of those channels than to find one anywhere in the Atlantic, from the equator to Greenland.  So these were the favorite hunting grounds for US submarines, because a modest wolfpack of a few boats could cover the width with a skirmish line, and one or another would spot the transiting shipping. In the actual war, the Japanese could and did hunt the submarines with air patrols, destroyers and subchasers. Contest the skies over them with US aircraft from the Philippines and all that gets a lot harder. Add land based bombers, surface warships and PT boats stalking the convoys and you have the PQ-17 convoy debacle, every week for the rest of the war.

The Americans could even disrupt the grab for empire sooner than that, opening hostilities during the southwest area operation. If Pearl Harbor doesn't happen, the US has 5 more battleships and 330 more first line aircraft. With no early attack on the Philippines airfields, throw in another ~100 aircraft not lost there too. Can those forces make a difference even before Singapore and Java falls? Entirely possible.  More likely, it would take 3-4 months into 1942 or longer for the conservative US command to deem itself ready for offensive operations, and the Japanese would take the Indies in the meantime.

Manila was designed to be a major US naval base - that is the entire reason the US kept the Philippines after the Spanish American war. All US war plans called for staging the fleet across the Pacific to the Philippines, using a string of US island bases from Hawaii to Guam. If the US and Japan aren't at war yet, the entire fleet stages there. Not just 2 CVs from Pearl, but anything the US wants to shift to the theater. The US has 5 major carriers with over 400 carrier aircraft. Not just a CV force - the US has 17 battleships, none got hit at Pearl because Pearl didn't happen.

The US doesn't lose 330 land based aircraft, including 70 P40s at Pearl, for the same reason. The US gets to ship these aircraft out to the Philippines unmolested on merchant ships, and uncrate them at leisure. And 200 aircraft are still intact the Philippines. There is no December 8th raid on a lax airfield, there are no invasion losses, and US total air power can be reinforced, trained up and brought to bear in an offensive role.

Japan's air forces had a distict edge in readiness and pilot quality early in the war, by virtue of having been at war already for nearly a decade. They also had better carrier aircraft until 1943, though the SBD was better than the Val from the outset. The Zero was way better than the F4F, and the Kate light years ahead of the awful TBD Devastator. But in land based air power, they had no real edge in quality and a distinct deficit in quantity, forces wide. Japan enjoyed a period of air superiority in the southern areas simply because the US air forces weren't deployed there yet, and the forward bases (Philippines, Singapore, Wake, Guam, etc) were lost before they could get there.

The stateside, peacetime strength of the US army air force was already impressive, even leaving aside how fast it would ramp as soon as war switched on mobilization and output. In December 1941 the US had 4 P-40 squadrons in the Philippines and 6 more in Hawaii, plus 27 stateside, 4 in the Panama Canal Zone and 1 in Iceland. There were already 5 P-38 squadrons, all still stateside. There were 12 more squadrons of P-39s in the states.  For bombers, there were 7 B-17 squadrons in Hawaii, 4 in the Philippines, and 24 more stateside. Also, 11 squadrons of B-25 mediums plus 7 of new B-26s, and 19 of A-20 light bombers - all told, as many squadrons of mediums as of heavies.  

There were another 30 squadrons using older B-18 bombers and a dozen using older fighters like the P-36. These weren't useful as is, but upgraded to newer types as formations, as fast as planes are produced and reach them.

And the December 1941 American air fleet was hardly museum pieces, albeit not yet superior to Japanese types. The P-40 was not outclassed by the Zero. It required vertical fighting tactics to work well against them, but the Flying Tigers had already shown how to do that in China. Superior dive speed gave the P-40 the option to simply deny battle and separate; superior armor and firepower allowed it to make a single pass and then disengage. Getting the jump on the enemy was much more meaningful in the air combat of the day than is generally recognized. P-40s could defeat Zeros even in some sorts of dogfights by maintaining airspeed and exploiting their roll rate advantage - scissoring teamwork ("Thatch Weave") in place of sustained turning dogfighting. There was some learning curve to figure such things out, but a few months in action and those lessons were learned.

With vertical tactics implemented, the Japanese didn't even have anything that could handle the 400mph P38 once it arrived; its airworthiness and maintenance challenges were a bigger threat to it than the enemy, as was also true of the underpowered P39.

The Philippines had received a war warning and the air raid on Clark was on the 8th, but it was still a tactical surprise. Most of the US air power on Luzon was still lined up on runways worried about sabotage security, not a major air raid. That was laxity and cost them 100 of their 200 planes in theater in a single day.

You don't get to take out all the US air in the Philippines in a surprise attack if you don't conduct any surprise attacks. And if it's the US who chooses the moment, the Japanese are quite unlikely to have air superiority from the outset of a war with the US as attacker. Instead, best case is that you get one-for-one attrition fighting, which the US can sustain much better than can Japan.

B-17s were poor anti shipping bombers, but were just fine hitting Japanese airfields and port facilities, if they weren't  taken out.  SBDs kill ships just fine, whether flown by the navy off carriers or by Marines off land airstrips.  There was a modest learning curve for B-25s, but once up that modest learning curve they were perfectly effective anti shipping medium bombers.

US submarines operating out of the Philippines into contested airspace have 3-4 times the time on station and don't need to dive and hide from Japanese air, compared to long ops out of Darwin with no supporting air. Not to mention air search helping to tell them where tankers are.

The Japanese don't just have to take Java and its surroundings, they need to repair the oil facilities and then haul home through the straits between China and the Philippines, industrial quantities of oil. Continually. They can't be interrupted for even a few months without risking outright loss of the war. They can't lose a lot of tankers doing it.

US heavy bombers or US BB sorties need only hours off Balikpapan and Palembang at any time, and Japan loses the war that afternoon.

The Japanese fleet gets to cover against threats that far to the southwest, plus the straits near Taiwan, plus the Saipan and Truk region. The US fleet gets to position in peace from Pearl to Australia to Manila, just as it likes, before a shot is fired, to threaten any of the above. Don't use up too much oil steaming fleets of BBs back and forth, either.

The US can wait until mid 1942, or even the start of 1943, to strike. Entirely at its leisure, under no pressure at all. What is Japan gaining in the meantime? Oil and rubber imports marginally above consumption as it fights in China and the Burmese theater and against the UK, at most. Compare what happens to US land based air strength in the meantime.

The Japanese are not better off in any of that. Only if the US just completely stayed out of it, would their position be improved. And that is within the control of the US, not them. The same US that proved willing to issue war ultimatums over minutiae like Indochina.  Not a sound bet, especially to a ruthless militarist regime which has just watched other Western powers fold to the Germans like a cheap suit.

The Japanese have land based air, and it outranged carrier air for the whole war. They sank the Prince of Wales and Repulse with them. 

They raided Ceylon (and sank a small British carrier there) using a superior carrier force, as well, but that is a secondary point. Meaning, the Indian ocean wasn't exactly a safe place for the Allies, before the Japanese carrier fleet was dealt with. (It could not be everywhere, however, and intel often knew where it was, etc).

The actual raids on Palembang happen after the Brits have hundreds of modern planes on carriers, and CAP and flak sufficient to neutralize land based air counters, which have gotten weak through Japanese losses over time. Sending an Ark Royal and a Hermes after it in early 1942 would have been suicide - Bettys would just have sunk the attempters.

Now, US carriers might have raided it as a one-off, Dolittle raid style. But that isn't the same as standing off it for days conducting 100-200 plane raids on it until it is blasted. 

What has changed by 1944 is the US has carrier air strong enough to operate in range of land based air and just outmatch it, and the Japanese air force is weak enough, all over, that they can't even trump smaller task forces with the forces they have for peripheral areas.

On the tech stuff, the US heavy bombers were very tough targets for Japanese aircraft down to early 1944. The Japanese fighter types are simply too lightly armored and the land based air (army) types too lightly armed. This wasn't Ploesti. Late war, over Japan, the Japanese had types like the Frank that could engage heavy bombers. Trying to take on B-17s in 1942 with Oscars is another matter entirely. In practice, they dealt with the heavies by hitting them on the ground at their air bases, until they couldn't, and then they just didn't deal with them.

The only real "protection" they from heavy bombers after that was distance and bad weather, a vast and less strategic forward target set between the US bombers and themselves, and the US logistical difficulties flying significant heavy bomber fleets out of bases far enough forward to hit things regularly. That didn't change until the late 1944 B-29 campaign from Saipan. Even that was poorly run until early 1945 when Lemay took over and focused on incinerating Japanese industry in the Home Islands

If Japan doesn't take Indonesia they run out of oil in six months even without US action against their economy. Standing on defense completely just wasn't a practical option. If they do take Indonesia, they need to defend vulnerable oil facilities from even ranged attack, as well as the complete sea route of their tankers from those to Japan. The allies get to pick their locations, means, and timings of attack at any of those.

For those who don't know the facility stuff in detail, Japan's pre-1940 as well as its post 1941 wartime oil supply came from the Palembang area on the southern end of Sumatra, plus various locations around the coast of Borneo. Several of these produced crude oil, but only two had significant oil refinery facilities - the vomplex at Palembang and that at Balikpapan, on the southeastern corner of Borneo. The former provide fully 70% of Japan's high octane aviation gas. They increased output from Balikpanan during the war, to diversify and because the tanker runs were shorter.

In 1943, the complex at Balikpapan was knocked offline for a six month period by a series of five B-24 raids from western New Guniea, flying over 2000 miles. A bit over 300 total bomber sorties over the target dropping a little under 450 tons of bombs achieved that neutralization. Each raid had a little over 100 bombers max. Meanwhile, the Palembang refineries were knock offline for a 3 month period by two air raids of around 100 naval aircraft each, by the British carrier force, late in the war. A previous attempt to knock them out with B-29s flying at extreme range clear from Ceylon was unsuccessful, hitting weather over the target for only minimal effect.

Put 2 US carriers off either oilfield for just a few days, or B-17s operating from Philippine bases within 1500 miles of either oilfield for a week or two, and these are shut down. With them goes the avgas to keep their planes in the air. Not long after, the rest of that region's oil target set would be demolished too: Singapore, Penang, Tarakan, etc.

Without the fields, the Japanese navy runs out of oil to move its capital ships within about six months. They need a deep perimeter away from those locations, covered by strong enough land based air to make commitment of allied carriers too dangerous to try, and sufficient to neutralize by bombing raids any major US airbases sufficient to run major heavy bomber operations, on a sustained basis. Any Japanese strategy, to be viable, needs to seize those locations rapidly (within six months) and defend them against those means of attack, or anything equally destructive.


PEARL HARBOR

The Japanese considered attacking the Philippines directly, along with the general offensive to take the Dutch East Indies, without any strike at Pearl. But it still meant war with the US. Several of their senior military commanders thought the Pearl operation was far too risky, and others wanted to use the carriers for the main drive to the southwest, from the outset.

It was Yamamoto personally who insisted on the Pearl operation. He threatened to resign if he were not allowed to carry it out, and secured a commitment that his entire staff would resign with him. That ended the fighting internally over whether to risk it - the country wasn't going to take such a risk then overrule and fire its entire naval high command over how to do it, the day before the war started.

Why did Yamamoto insist? One because he thought it would work. Two because he really didn't like his chances if on December 8 a fully intact and alerted USN is ready to move, to pick it shots, and try to interfere with the whole far flung plan of conquest. They needed to take fifty places on a shoestring in 2-3 months. The last thing he wanted to do was need to cover every single move against a full sortie by the whole US pacific fleet, covering any of them, from Rabaul to Singapore. 

The strategist in him told him, seize the initiative, use surprise, fight the decisive battle as soon as possible in the most favorable possible way. Then cover the fifty economy of force, shoestring ops from a position of commanding total naval strength. He accurately foretold the result - "I shall run riot for six months to a year; after that, I can't answer for." It wasn't political anything, it was just, if we do this, this risk up front is the only way its going to work. He was right about that, and in the short run his plan worked brilliantly.

BBs were the objective Yamamoto intended in the Pearl Harbor attack, so this is postulated as evidence that he didn't "get" the importance of CVs yet. There is some truth to that, but it overstates its case. First, he conceived the operation in the first place, showing a great willingness to stake the outcome of at least the early part of the war on naval air power and what it could do. But second, his able subordinates were even more air minded than he was, and they set the final targeting priorities.

Genda, specifically, was the man responsible for the actual design of the Pearl Harbor strike and the tasking of its attack aircraft, types, armaments, and waves to the various targets expected to be present. And he assigned about 3/4 of the strength of the strike to air minded targets.

They expected 6 to 8 BBs and 2 CVs to be present. The land airfields also contained over 300 US aircraft. Genda had to hit the BBs to fulfill his superiors' idea of the mission, but he himself was concerned to eliminate any possible riposte hitting the Japanese carriers, both from the CVs and from the land based air.

There were two strike waves, not in the sense of reuse of aircraft, but in the sense of taking off and forming up after one another and arriving over the target in a sequence. In the first wave, the Kates were divided between 40 carrying specially modified torpedos meant to work in the shallow waters of the harbor, with the rest carried 1760 lb (800 kg) bombs specially constructed from 16 inch armor piercing battleship shells. Those were to be dropped from altitude like plunging BB fire. All of the Vals in the first wave were assigned *airfield* targets. The Vals only carried 550 lb bombs, which were considered too light to be effective against BB targets. Most of the Zeros accompanying the first wave were also assigned to strafe the US airfields.

Now here is a little known addition to that. 16 of the 40 torpedo carrying Kates had the CVs expected to be present at their primary targets. 8 had been assigned to each, while just 4 were to be assigned to each BB expected to be vulnerable to torpedo attack. In the event, the CVs were not there and only 4 of the BBs were vulnerable to torpedo attack. Some of the CV assigned torpedo planes attacked cruisers and such around the harbor, however. Note, there were no torpedo equipped planes beyond those 40 in the first wave.

All the high altitude Kates had BB targets, especially the landward of any pairs that could not be hit by torpedos. The single deadliest hit of the attack was from one of those, which found the powder magazines of the Arizona and blew her up.

Meanwhile, over 50 Vals were hitting the land airstrips, with parked airplane targets.

The second wave had a smaller number of Kates, and this time those were all level bombers carrying 550 lb bombs centerline, plus additional lighter bombs under the wings. Their targets were all aircraft hangers. Meanwhile over 80 Vals were to strike the harbor area - and their primary target was the aircraft carriers. Cruisers and other warships were secondary targets for those. 550 lb bombs were expected to be effective against carriers and anything lighter than a full BB. In the event, these did not find CVs present, and many of them attacked the only underway BB trying to steam out of the harbor, and forced her to beach. They also hit DDs and cruisers etc around the harbor.

Planes specifically targeted at the BBs were thus 24 of the torpedo Kates in the first wave plus all the 800 kg BB shell Kates in that wave. Planes specifically targeted at the CVs were 16 torpedo Kates from the first plus 80 Vals in the second wave. There were more strike bombers with CVs as primary targets than there were with BBs as primary targets, in a ratio of about 4 to 3, though there was a predominance of BB targets for the heaviest weapons in the first wave with maximum surprise. Meanwhile, the land airfields were as heavily targets as the CVs, with just under 100 strike bombers having the land airfields as their primary targets.

In short, Genda allocated a bit over 1/3rd of his strike force vs the land airfields, an equal sized bit over 1/3rd to just 2 expected CVs, and more like 1/4 (though those the heaviest armed planes) vs the 6 to 8 BBs expected to be present.

This is not a sign of someone overly focused on the BBs or who discounted air power.

In addition, Genda wanted a follow on strike after recovery of all aircraft from both the first and second waves. This would not have been quite as strong as those waves; there would be less surprise, some losses and battle damage. But the first waves had already inflicted over 300 destroyed aircraft, so the US would not have been able to put up any serious air opposition  compared to the Zero escort the Japanese could still send. His superiors overruled him, in part because the US CVs had not been found, so the Japanese strike force was vulnerable to a riposte. In hindsight, Genda was clearly right.  They didn't have to refrain from that second strike.


MIDWAY

The Japanese wargamed the attack on Midway, and US carriers sunk a bunch of their carriers in a sneaky attack before they were detected. The Japanese umpires considered this ridiculous and bent to pressure to declare it could never happen, and "refloated" the sunken Japanese carriers, and the exercise continued as though they were never hit. If only it had been so easy in real life.

If the Japanese win Midway, the threat of carrier air raids on Pearl becomes serious enough that the US won't keep the main fleet there. Invasion has nothing to do with any of it. The US can put a strong fighter CAP over Pearl, but the anti ship strike capability of the base is less, during 1942, than that of even 1 US aircraft carrier, and certainly less than 2 of them.

While there was considerable US airpower in Hawaii, very little of it was effective against ships. In the second half of 1942, at various times 9 fighter squadrons were stationed on all of the Hawaiian fields combined, and 8 squadrons of B-17s all told (though they rotated through, with usually only half that number present). But there was only one squadron of SBDs. B-17s were quite ineffective vs shipping at that point in the war. Skip bombing technique hadn't been developed (which lighter B-25s were better at anyway).

Tens of thousands of plane production totals and development of skip bombing and a large Marine air arm and spare naval aviation beyond what was needed to equip the carriers and conduct land based search - just weren't there in June of 1942. Nor in September, nor in December.

As it was, there were times in late 1942 when the US was down to a single operational carrier in the entire theater. The Guadalcanal operation almost failed in the face of Japanese naval and air action to cut off the island, despite having lost most of their fleet air arm months earlier.

Without the loss of their carriers, and if the US had lost the 3 it sent to Midway instead (or 2 out of 3 perhaps, or all 3 while taking out 1 Japanese - similar effects), the US would not have been able to launch the Guadalcanal operation during 1942. Japan would have had some freedom to consider alternate additional offensive moves in the second half of 1942 - vs Pearl (air attack akin to the raids on Sri Lanka in the Indian ocean earlier in the year, not invasion), a renewed Port Morsby amphibious operation, raids on New Calendonia and the like to cut the direct sea lanes between the US and Australia.

They would certainly have built up additional air bases in the Solomons without interference, and would have been in a far stronger position to disrupt US build up in either Australia or Polynesia. The US main fleet would likely have moved back to San Francisco for a while, and the first major US counterattack of the war would likely have aimed at retaking Midway and resecuring Pearl as a base, rather than focusing on the south Pacific. That might have been followed up by a central Pacific offensive rather than a year of south Pacific attrition and slow advances.

But regardless, the US would also have had to wait for its carrier arm arm to catch up with the Japanese. The first Essex class carriers were arriving at the very end of 1942, but if the earlier carriers had been lost, it would have been mid 1943 before there were enough Essex CVs and Independence class CVLs to risk challenging an unimpaired Japanese fleet air arm. This puts the timetable at something like retaking Midway in the summer of 1943, and advancing in the central Pacific, outer defenses of the Japanese defensive zone, in the last quarter of 1943.

That would likely have triggered a new carrier engagement, but it circumstances vastly better for Japan than the "Marianas Turkey Shoot", historically. The US would have had improved carrier fighters, but the Japanese would have had a large edge in pilot quality instead of a large deficit - if such an engagement happened soon after the US re-engages offensively, rather than after first destroying the Japanese air cadre and then attriting their replacements for a year straight, as happened historically.

The end result would have ranged upward to 2 years of delay in the outcome, if Japan did well in those first new engagements. If the US won those as lopsidedly as Midway, and went with a pure central Pacific strategy, bypassing the entire south Pacific theater, the war extension might have been as short as just 6 months. But that's an outlier best case scenario for the US, not the expectation. 12-18 months of war extension is the expectation.

The Japanese probably lose enough aircraft in even a won battle of Midway that they retire to Japan and take replacements before doing anything further in the central Pacific. They build up planes on Midway island, but it is mostly just an air search base. The US likely pulls the bulk of the surface fleet back to San Francisco. We don't have to worry about where the US sends it carriers because by hypothesis it doesn't have any.

The Japanese can conduct one op in the south Pacific theater with the remaining unused carrier division while the main force takes its replacements. That could be a permanent invasion of Port Moresby (Coral Sea redone without USN interference) or it could be a raid on New Caledonia, along the lines of the April Ceylon operation - in and out.

Then by around August the Japanese have serious options. The US is totally defensive for the remainder of 1942, and into early 1943. It will be mid 1943 before there are enough Essex and Independence class carriers to match an undiminished Japanese fleet air arm. The last 3 months of so of that, the Japanese just want to be on defense, watching, not pressing their luck. But that still leaves them 6 to 9 months to do whatever with the only carrier arm in the entire Pacific.

If the Japanese also fix any of their other "own goals" in the meantime, they can give the US fits with that period of initiative. Step one is to turn the subs loose against US merchant shipping trying to maintain overseas supply to Pearl, Polynesia, and Australia. 

The US is not going to manage a serious build up in the far southern areas in this period if they can't base a fleet at Pearl. Every base along the way to Australia is now subject to intermittent carrier raids, Japanese flying boats are conducting air search for submarines unopposed over much of the area, and Japanese submarines aren't waiting around ports looking for US carriers (all sunk anyway), but are hunting merchant ships instead.

The US would make its first major offensive operation of the war a carrier supported invasion to retake Midway island. Only then rebase the fleet at Pearl. Then rather than start a southern Pacific strategy a year behind the historical timetable, the US would instead probably conduct a central Pacific or "northern" strategy and drive to the Carolinas and Marshalls without first doing the Solomons or New Guinea.

That is a tougher fight than the historical one. In this replay, the Japanese have a full fleet air arm. Their air strength hasn't been sapped by a year of attrition fighting in the Solomons and they never lost the core air cadre of the carriers. They could even use some of the intervening time to train new pilots by having some of the carrier veterans in the schools instead of flying until dying. The island chains have land based air support supplemented by 6 first line carriers, not the attrited forces they historically had to oppose 500+ US aircraft in the historical central Pacific offensives.

Whatever happens next, it can't be worse for Japan than the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot.

All of which just shows the obvious: the Japanese are far stronger if they win Midway than they were losing it. They remain on the defensive by mid 1943, but with a much stronger hand.

With no Midway or Coral Sea attacks at all, the Japanese keep their air fleet arm, but the US also keeps 3 carriers with 250 naval aircraft. 

The US might not be able to grab the initiative so early at Guadalcanal, but by the end of 1942 with all the old carriers alive and Essex class carriers joining the fleet, the US gets the initiative in 1943. By mid 1943 it has enough carrier strength to trade blow for blow with the Japanese carrier fleet and be the side with a carrier arm left standing. 

So sometime in the first half of 1943 the US takes the offensive and seeks main fleet battle. Win or lose, the US can absorb those losses and the Japanese can't.

The Japanese gain 6 months that way, easily. If they do well in the first carrier battles that result (as they historically did in the smaller, late 1942 carrier battles around the Solomons) then maybe a full year.

In all those circumstances, the Japanese would have had a solid defensive position with a central reserve of their full fleet carrier arm and a dozen BBs, vs a US carrier fleet that could only match but not exceed them, and a similar relationship in BBs, down to the beginning of 1944.

Could they have achieved a tactical defensive success in those circumstances, and offered peace afterwards? Would the US have been so unfavorable to anything but unconditional surrender in such circumstances if the Germans were victorious in Russia and waiting for the western allies on the continent with an intact and barely engaged army of 300 divisions, and an as yet still undefeated Luftwaffe?

The Japanese calculation was not nearly as crazy as it appears in hindsight. The key, though, is that they bet the farm on the Germans winning in Europe.  Their position would have been reasonably strong if Germany had won in Russia; it was pretty hopeless when it didn't. 

The question people should be asking is not why the Japanese went to war in 1941, but why they didn't make peace by, say, the second half of 1943, when it was clear Germany was going to lose in Russia and they were clearly going to be ground to powder by the US. That's the irrational bit.


GUADALCANAL

The US had nothing at stake on Guadalcanal that it couldn't readily afford to lose. The lost ships in Iron Bottom Sound vastly outweighed losses ashore in expense or portion of available forces and so forth. It would have sucked to be defeated there for those on the island, certainly. It was not much fun as it was, and campaign length and malaria did more to sap US infantry strength in all of it than the Japanese did. There was no decisive victory on offer on or near Guadalcanal. The carrier engagements were the closest it came, and the Japanese did well in those, but they just weren't decisive, or even that important in the grand scheme of things. Essex carriers getting built and US airmen shooting down Japanese airmen for months on end where decisive processes. US subs sinking the Japanese merchant marine likewise. Banzai charges ashore, not even in the rankings. Night surface actions close offshore, tactical importance only.

Yes naval bombardment, sustained, could have neutralized Henderson Field. Naval strength left offshore once Henderson is knocked out could have preventec resupply of the US forces ashore. That might after a long enough period have even led to their destruction or surrender. All contigent on Japan maintaining a huge naval optempo in the area for months on end, with the US navy and naval air able to engage vs that effort at any time, at will, or to refrain from doing so.

What does this get the Japanese? Nothing. Minus Henderson, Guadalcanal is completely useless and just like twenty other islands all around it. Destroying one US division leaves about 40 more still coming. A few months at most.

If the US uses naval air to interfer, the heavy fleet elements risked could be lost. Historically, they lost 2 fast battleships off Guadalcanal, and didn't lay a glove on any US BB. They sank some cruisers - great. The war was never going to be won or lost by cruisers.

Japan viewed the whole campaign as an economy of force thing to be fought for the delay it offered. Arguably, they sent way too much into action there, not too little. They could not affird to trade 2 fast BBs for some cruisers. They could not afford to trade even losses or rag out damage to their remaining large carriers - even doing somewhat better than even exchanges there basically ruined what was left of their fleet air arm. They could not afford the ongoing air combat attrition of the later stages of the Solomons campaign, esoecially too their pilot pool rather than in aircraft numbers.

If they send more and win for three months, does it stop anything the Americans do later? No. Do they defend a renewed effort there as aggressively? Guadalcanal was a far worse position to defend than Rabaul was, in every respect. 


CARRIER FORCES

It was vital to the actual US strategy and the advance across the Pacific that the US had a fleet air arm strong enough to overwhelm land based air, and achieve complete air superiority where amphibious invasions were conducted.

The first 3 Essex class were ordered in July of 1940. 8 more were ordered in September of 1940. 2 more were ordered a week after Pearl Harbor. During the war, another 10 were authorized, but only 2 of those were completed in time to see combat service, and 6 were cancelled in 1944 (unstarted) when it was clear they wouldn't be in time to matter.

After Pearl, the Princeton class CVLs were ordered as conversions of light cruiser hulls already laid down during 1941. Those were changes to US carrier strength during the war, but the ships themselves were already months into construction before Pearl Harbor.

Other than the 2 latest arriving Essex class (long after the US had complete carrier superiority), and the 2 ordered a week after Pearl, the only US carriers built start to finish during the period of US belligerence were the escort "jeep" carriers, the early versions off merchant ship hulls, and later models deliberately built as carriers from the outset. Those had much shorter construction times, and the first flotillas of them were available by late 1942 to support the Torch operation in the Atlantic. ASW was their highest priority after that. It wasn't under mid 1943 that there were important numbers of them available for the Pacific theater.

The point is that the lead times for carrier construction were so long that the US really didn't have the option to react to events during WW II to increase carrier strength. We went to war with the carriers we had and we got the ones that the FDR administration and Congress had the foresight to order back in the summer and fall of 1940. The catalyst for those orders was the fall of France, not developments in the Pacific.

Just some construction, planning, and lead time background on the US carrier force...

Did US dominance in naval air power stem from turning on the shipyards after Pearl Harbor and flooding the Japanese with ships? No. The carriers that won the war in 1943-1944 had been laid down well before Pearl Harbor. The US Essex class was ordered in 1940, as an extension and implementation of a "two ocean navy" plan first authorized in 1938. This authorized a 70% increase in the overall size of the USN. In other words, it was only *pre-war* US naval expansion that allowed the US to field a navy capable of turning the tide in 1943-44. If the US had waited for the outbreak of war, none of that fleet would have been ready until 1945 or 1946.

Even so, the US carrier surge came pretty late. There were 2 Essex and 4 Independence CVLs fighting in the first half of 1943, and a similar number on station in the second half. It was really only the Midway victory cutting the Japanese fleet air arm in half (or more) that allowed the USN to take the offensive before the start of 1944.

Air power attrition was a critical factor in Japan's defeat, and especially in the course of 1943 she took air losses that could not be made good, at least not in the sense of keeping up with the expanding US air force and US naval aviation. But Japanese production performance was actually quite a bit better in the air power field than is generally recognized. They managed to produce 76,000 aircraft during WW II. Yes that is about 20% of the 325,000 or so made by the US, but the US was fighting Germany with at least 70% of its strength. If the war in Europe hadn't gone as well (in Russia especially), that might have needed to be more like 80%, and the balance of air power in the Pacific could have been closer to even.


THE WAR OF THE MARUS

One field where the Japanese were unprepared and vulnerable was their merchant navy and the vulnerability of the same to submarine attack. It was behind in the tech to handle that attack, though it might have done much better with air based ASW than it actually did.

The US sub offensive was decisive on its own, historically, because it hit an area of very poor Japanese command and "play", not because there was nothing they could have done about it that they didn't already try.

It is certainly true that the US sub offensive would have been decisive in itself without any change to Japanese priorities, actions, and event outcomes related directly to the ASW struggle against them. But there were plenty of "own goals" in that fight on the Japanese side, and also conceivable Japanese successes that might have made a major difference in that war.

Start with possible intelligence and espionage outcomes. We know how much the US benefited from cracking Japanese codes without their knowing about it. That contributed mightily to US sub successes, not just to higher profile one offs like Midway. But it was also something the Japanese might have readily discovered. Had they done so, they might have altered their codes more often and similar, reducing US knowledge of their merchant ship sailings and routes and so forth.

Similarly, we see in the Atlantic how huge a difference ASW air cover equipped with advanced centimeter radar was to conquering the U-boat menace during 1943. Well, that was a technology that might readily have been stolen, by capture of equipment by the Germans or Japanese. It might have been copied afterward, particularly by the Germans, and potentially shared with their Axis partners. Japan had excellent land based naval aviation, in their flying boats and Betties, with great range and endurance. They didn't dedicate enough effort to airborne ASW in the actual war, but that was an "own goal" and readily avoidable. If they had also had access to stolen tech to amplify its impact, they could have conducted a much more successful ASW campaign than they managed historically.

The Japanese were also slow to institute convoy systems, with a large portion of ships sailing alone at midwar and even into 1944. Allied experience showed that convoys reduce losses dramatically simply by reducing the number of intercepts that enemy subs achieve. WW II subs were also so much slower submerged than on the surface that any escort, and especially long lasting air escort, could dramatically reduce their effectiveness by preventing re-engagement after first discovery.

Germany had some of the best radio direction finding tech in the world during WWII, including from quite early in the struggle (1941 e.g.). But they never really shared it with Japan, though they could have readily done so, even before US belligerence, during the period when they were urging Japanese entry but hadn't secured it yet. The US sub fleet was able to communicate and coordinate sub "wolfpack" tactics without much fear of being located and evaded, simply because Japanese abilities in this area were relatively poor. But this was a technical own goal for the combined Axis, not something fated.

Japan spent a significant portion of its wartime ship building capacity on super battleships, late model heavy cruisers, and destroyer flotilla leader light cruisers. All had very little actual impact on the war. The same capacity would have been much better directed at producing more light escort vessels, under 500 tons, with just enough surface speed to run down a sub. As well as additional merchant shipping to replace losses and so forth. The Japanese "martial" focus and "big engagement" focus of their shipbuilding program was another "own goal", in other words, and readily avoidable by rational analysis of priorities.

Japan never mounted any sustained air campaign against the US submarine bases at Darwin in northern Australia, nor against the sea exits from that center of US sub operations. But they had all the air resources to do so, and to make the seas between Darwin and the Indonesian archipelago their own equivalent of the bay of Biscay in the battle of the Atlantic. At best they occasionally patrolled the straits into the interior of the Indonesian waters, and their destroyers did sink a number of US subs in transit of those choke points. But systematic air coverage over them, forcing the US subs to make the whole transit from Darwin submerged, night air patrol even for surfaced subs with airborne radar, daytime raids on Darwin port facilities, mining the waters around Darwin by air - were all possible tactics the Japanese just didn't try.

If all or most of those avoidable mistakes had been corrected, and technical cooperation or "lucky break" items had gone Japan's way instead of going against them, they might readily have done far better in the ASW campaign than they did historically. Basically, they played their available "hand" in the matter very badly, and a lot of the US success in that area reflected poor Japanese "play" as much as it did any US strength in the area.

A Japan that made all or most of those changes would have been much better commanded and had a much better sense of its priorities and weaknesses than they actually had, historically. But those are changes of a very different kind from needing 10 times the ship building industry or similar. They were command differences, choices open to them in most cases, feasible intel or cooperation changes at the hardest. Many of them were there for the asking. 


WHAT IFS?

Command could have agreed to Genda's follow on strike at Pearl, further damaging the BBs and knocking out the fuel farms.

Japan didn't have to try Midway at all - it was clearly premature from the standpoint of prewar strategy, which had been to stand on the defensive and whittle down US capital ships as they tried to cross the central Pacific.

There was no point in the Aleutian operations. 

Japan didn't have to conduct the Port Moresby Coral Sea operation on a shoestring with a single carrier division instead of the complete carrier force (which they used successfully for the Ceylon operation), giving the US even odds. 

Sub operations might have tried mining the waters off San Francisco and the like. The Germans had a "happy time" off the US east coast in 1942 before the US got its convoy act together, and similar laxity and opportunity undoubtedly went unused in the Pacific, simply because Japan gave the wrong mission to its subs.

Japan was indecisive in commitment of its BB fleet for most of the war, turning away from action whenever there was any apparent risk. There were only a handful of exceptions, but they could have conducted neutralizing fires on Henderson and similar much more often than they did.

Japan could have profitably used naval mine warfare in the Solomons campaign, using both surface and air deployed mines. The US landing force on Guadalcanal was very vulnerable to sustained cutting off of its naval resupply. Owning those waters for a night at a time using surface ships wasn't the right way to exploit that vulnerability. Instead, the might have turned any night the US navy wasn't present into 1000 sea mines laid, then used land based air raids to interfere with any sweeping operations in daylight.

Japan didn't have to waste most of its smaller carriers on sideshow covering operations that got them sunk without ever accomplishing anything. They might have been used together with fleet carriers as the US CVLs worked. Slower carriers might have worked ASW operations instead.

More realism about logistics might readily have kept much larger air forces in operation from Rabaul earlier in the Solomons campaign. The air battles around the island happened with Japanese land based air very weak in the whole area, and this was not objectively required. It was at bottom just another instance of the failure to apply the principle of *mass* in Japanese operations.

Japan might have noticed that some of its codes were compromised, earlier.

Japan could have rotated expert pilots home to train new pilots instead of leaving them at the front until they died.

Japan didn't need to try a push into India in the far east theater, but could have directed more effort at the Burmese road to further isolate China. She also had the ability to launch land offensives in China significantly earlier than 1944, and could have increased that opportunity by running greater risks along the Russian border. There wasn't much decisive available in the China theater, to be sure, but it still wasn't "played" well on the Japanese side.

Japan had a limited marine machinery and engine capability that limited its production of warships during the war. But it could readily have focused more of that capacity on small subchasers in the 300 ton and under range, instead of 3000 to 5000 ton light cruisers that proved singularly ineffective as a ship class. The latter ships led DD flotillas, and participated in a few night surface actions but never really accomplished anything significant during the war beyond providing targets to Allied aircraft and subs. Neither fish nor fowl, basically.

The Japanese never really instituted a convoy system for their merchant shipping. Allied experience in both world wars showed that merely instituting convoys could reduce sinkings up to 85% by reducing the number of enemy intercepts.  Adding escorts would limit enemy attacks to submerged operations, air cover even more so.

With more of a focus on ASW operations by Japan's excellent naval aircraft (Betties and Mavis etc), the US sub force could have been handled much, much better than it was.

If the Japanese had had centimeter radar not long after the UK and the US had it, they wouldn't have lost their night time surface war dominance so quickly. And their air ASW campaign vs US subs could have been 10 times as effective or more. The Germans might have shot down a plane carrier centimeter radar, or learned about it and conducted a Brandenberger style operation to capture one intact, and reverse engineered it, and shared it with Japan. Humint networks like the Russians had in America were probably out of the question for either, but the Germans were fine at command ops and the Japanese had long periods of local superiority here and there to capture vital equipment.

Plenty of the improvements the Allies made in air ASW were based on objective analysis that anyone could have performed. Operations research advances were available to anyone who looked for them.  The Japanese might have captured a small US ship or two and gotten better sonar by technology transfer through capture and reverse engineering.

Japan could have used its own excellent sub fleet against US merchant shipping in the Pacific. Allied shipping was the bottleneck in force projection for the whole war, and sinking millions of tons would have imposed serious delays and limits on Allied warfighting capacity at distance.  Sustained raids on Darwin on the north coast of Australia could have done a lot to limit the effectiveness of US submarines, using land based air and occasional carrier raids, along the lines of the Ceylon operation in 1942. The Japanese could have mined the Darwin harbor and its approaches. Germany had excellent naval mine tech it could have shared with the Japanese.

Japan's later land defense tactics of defending from deep bunkers with firepower arms were vastly superior to banzai charges. The Japanese had learned this by Saipan, but didn't apply it consistently until Okinawa and Iwo Jima.

Instead of using submarines to resupply bypassed garrisons on every dot in the Pacific, they could have evacuated such garrisons the same way.

Germany had a fantastic night fighter force, with good airborne radar, ground direction procedures, bomber killer designs, and the like. All of it was just technology and know how and could readily have been shared with the Japanese. Massed B29 fleets firebombing Japan at night with impunity in 1945 would not have been possible with such technology transfer. The US could still have built up enough long range P-51s to cover daylight raids, but that would have been more costly than it was historically.

******
VIETNAM SIDEBAR

the measure of military intelligence in war is not set by the dumbest supply sergeant you saw in an episode of MASH, but by the best general on each side and their most clear sighted plans. Those are the things strategy is tested and measured by. Journalist level understanding of war by historians and intellectuals generations later very frequently believe that they are vastly better informed, smarter, and more moral people with all the right political opinions. But that is (practically all) just bias and self regard; it is not knowledge.

I will illustrate not with "domino theory" but with the propositions that the US lost the war in Vietnam because it pursued dumb attrition strategy instead of a smart hearts and minds strategy, as it clearly proven by the strategy actually applied being attrition, and it not having worked because the US clearly lost, and the strategy being clearly inappropriate because it was a guerilla war, and everyone knows that the proper COIN approach to guerilla war is hearts and minds. Perhaps there is added a subtext that fundamentally it wasn't military anyway, but political, fundamentally a popularity contest inside South Vietnam between communism and the SVN government (of imperials stooge capitalist running dogs - I exaggerate for clarity), which of course was naturally won by communism, since that was so much more attractive (or something). It may fairly be said that such views are common among historians, journalist level understanding of the war, and can be found (in parts, with more reasonable qualifications at time, no doubt) earlier in this thread.

Here is the problem with that account. It isn't true in the slightest particular, not as military theory, but as actual empirical history of the Vietnam war. It is pure conventional wisdom and bias.

Westmoreland, the supposed apostle of attrition, was removed from command of MACV in June of 1968. He had followed a strategy of attrition and tactics of search and destroy missions, the main target of the above critique. But he did not set US strategy from mid 1968 onward. The US hadn't lost the war by June of 1968. It had escalated in country, drawn the Tet offensive, and faced and defeated it. It had inflicted very serious losses on the VC especially, both before and during that fight, and significant but more sustainable losses on the NVA.

Westmoreland also was not fully in charge of US strategy even down to 1968. His recommendations on troop levels were mostly followed, with some censoring from McNamara at Sec Def, but in the main he did get what he wanted on force levels. He did not get what he wanted on bombing or sanctuary restrictions. Fears of escalation and the idea of using bombing and pauses as "negotiations", along with micromanagement, limited any actual attrition use of US air power outside of the territory of SVN.

Westmoreland's replacement, Abrams, did not follow a strategy of attrition nor tactics of search and destroy. He followed a COIn hearts and minds strategy, and tactics of clear and hold - fundamentally a defensive stance aimed at protecting the population of SVN and preventing the VC and NVA from achieving areas of political control, inside SVN, with any significant population. He also followed a policy of Vietnamization, training ARVN to take over the war. That was largely handed down to his as a political requirement from Nixon. Nixon and Kissenger continued to use bombing as a negotiating instrument, but were more ruthless "negotiators" than Johnson and McNamara had been.

The war was not lost in the Westmoreland period, nor in the Abrams drawdown. In fact by the time of most of Abrams approach and certainly by about 1970, the VC was basically defeated, and there was no significant indigenous insurgency inside SVN. It has lost most of its strength even by the end of Tet and before the change of approaches, and it could not operate effectively with 500,000 US forces in country, without ruinous losses that it could not replace. 

The NLF side switched its tactics to main force NVA units and operating from sanctuaries outside SVN, plus controlling some base areas inside SVN that were in inhospitable and largely unpopulated areas (highlands, iron triangle, etc). It wasn't winning any popularity contests in the SVN countryside, and it wasn't flooded with recruits eager to establish communism and throw out the imperialist Americans. That's all tosh. There had indeed been a real insurgency and a domestic one, not just NVN based, in the early part of the war. But they lost. The war just didn't end in consequence, because there were still NVA forces and still cross border sanctuaries.

The NVA could dial down its op tempo to what it could sustain, and wait, as the US drew down its troop strength in country. So they did. When that strength was near zero, they attacked across the borders with several division of Soviet supplied armor and half a dozen full NVA infantry divisions. But US air power was still in country, and ARVN readily defeated this "Easter offensive" of 1972, with that aid.

So the US *still* hadn't managed to lose the war yet. That happened in 1975, when a re-run of the Easter offensive with twice as much armor, succeeded. Besides having twice the armor, the big difference was this time US air power wasn't around any more. The popularity of the NVA in the countryside of SVN made no more difference at that point and in that struggle than the popularity of Germans made in Poland in 1939. It wasn't a guerilla war. It was a cross border invasion by a tank army or two.

If hearts and minds mattered in reaching that outcome, it was those in the US congress between 1972 and 1975 that probably mattered most, and maybe those in the rest of the US in the preceding 4 years. Not those in SVN.

Notice, however, that the diagnosis that the attrition strategy being wrong lost the war exactly coincides with the strategy change when Westmoreland was replaced by Abrams. Which coincides with Tet, and LBJ deciding not to run for re-election, and little things like *the democratic party losing a presidential election* in the US, as that party split (over the war, but also over desegregation and civil rights), handing victory to Nixon. Almost as though loss of the Vietnam war has been confused by someone or other with Democrats losing political power in the US...

But perhaps the issue was just that the war was lost by becoming so unpopular with the US people. This would show up in a candidate or party advocating immediate peace and withdrawal winning elections vs another committed to continuing the war. In 1972, with most US forces withdrawn and the war basically left to ARVN, the architect of that drawndown runs against the peace now candidate - and wins in a landslide. So the policy being followed in fact hadn't lost popular support in the US - yet. That doesn't change until the transition 1972 to 1975, with Watergate and Nixon's resignation in the meantime.

Did the US actually apply an attrition strategy in the Vietnam war, consistently enough to call that the actual strategy followed? Were the results of that strategy, when it was actually applied, in fact so horrible and ineffective, militarily? Or in COIN terms, in the sense of the recruitment of VC and the change in their fielded forces? Or, instead, is the "failure" of that strategy just being "graded" against the question, did it keep a Democratic president in power? Is it being criticized because things worked so much better after it was abandoned for the rival clear and hold, hearts and minds strategy? If so, what becomes of the claim that the proof that it hadn't worked was the US and SVN defeat - in 1975?

These are the sorts of considerations that spring to mind, reading the conventional wisdom propounded as supposedly what everyone "knows", in the thread above. Basically, I don't think that we know anything of the kind. Some historians and some military analysts have takes on the subject, all of them highly debatable. That's really about it.


NOTES ON CONTEMPORARY CONFLICT

While many report on Russian ATGMs, fewer know that Hezbollah also had and used TOW and Milan. Total ATGMs fired in the conflict by Hezbollah were probably around 1000 and certainly exceeded 500. Some however were used on infantry targets.

46-50 Merkava main battle tanks (of the 400 deployed) and 14 APCs (all were heavy types based on T-55 or Centurion chassis) were hit by anti-tank weapons, including 22 incidents where tank armour and 5 cases where APC armour was penetrated. Another 6 tanks and at least 1 APC were blown up by mines and IEDs. 23 tank and 5 APC crew members were killed.

Only 5 tanks were total write offs. 2 were from IEDs and 3 burned after ATGM penetrations. Some of the damaged tanks were hit over 20 times before being penetrated.

The worst single incident saw 11 tanks disabled with 8 KIA, when a tank battalion tried to advance through an AT kill zone without infantry or artillery support or even prior recon.

Israel KIA for the whole fight were 116 to 120 IDF depending on source, meaning those behind armor were roughly a quarter of the losses. Numerically the larger losses - though mostly lightly wounded - occurred among Israeli civilians, 43 KIA and 1400 WIA by rockets. Hezbollah losses were 4-8 times those of the IDF and Lebanese civilians suffered the most by far.

The Merkava is not invulnerable on a modern battlefield against modern AT weapons. But the realities have been hugely distorted by journalist level accounts. The prime failing throughout was sequential rather than coordinated use of the different arms, leading to combined arms failure.

The main defect of Israeli combined arms wasn't lack of infantry, though that was a problem too. It was poor armor artillery cooperation. The Israelis used massive amounts of air and artillery firepower. They just used it completely independent of the ground thrusts. Prior in time, or much deeper into Lebanon in space. The result was everywhere the firepower arms were being used, the defending infantry could simply "go deep" in their bunkers. Wherever it wasn't they could come out and man ATGMs to stop advances, or saturate dismounted advances with MRL fire or small arms and heavy weapons etc.

The proper counter to light force positional defenses is real time saturation by indirect firepower *as* armor or infantry probes. This the Israelis simply neglected to do. The higher commanders looked on firepower methods as an *alternative* to ground incursion, and resorted to ground forces only when firepower arms alone failed to stop MRL attacks. Then they shut off or lifted deep their own firepower arms, probably out of an excessive fear of "friendly fire", also overconfidence in their heavy armor, and flat being "rusty" about all this stuff.

The Israelis had to learn the same artillery-armor cooperation lesson in 1973. Then they lost not 5 tanks but *400* tanks, but pressed their attack anyway, and won. Besides a willingness to learn and use combined arms, the stark difference was in Israeli loss tolerance.

They used firepower alone trying to stay completely assymmetric to keep own side losses minimal. Then they tried to use armor alone again to keep own side losses minimal. The way you actually win, on the other hand, is to try to make enemy side losses maximal, whatever it costs own side forces in the short term - and that, they were simply unwilling to do politically, this time.

I was at a tech conference where the techies were despairing about their efforts to create truly human like AI, and one of them remarked that at this point, they could only hope to get insect level intelligence, and even that they couldn't hope to implement at insect physical scale. An army colonel in the back raised his hand to make a comment. "You give me a machine as smart as a mosquito and as big as a softball, and I'll take over the world."

He already knows he can get grenades smaller than a softball and quite destructive (indeed, if necessary he can get nuke cores about that size); he already knows he can get a "quad chopter" drone at the toy store that can be programmed to fly anywhere; he already knows he can put a GPS in the thing so it always knows where it is; he already knows he can put accurate small scale maps and put them in SD cards the size of a fingernail; he already knows how to deliver dangerous munitions near his enemies from a multitude of platforms; he already knows how to arrange the manufacture of scads of any small sophisticated components he might require; he already has a full military doctrine about getting inside the enemy's C^3 I to paralyze his forces. All he needs is the grenade to be smart enough to fly through building interiors and into bunkers and caves and tunnels and so forth, seeking its targets with its own sensors as efficiently as mosquitoes manage to find and bite us - the insect mind in the brilliant grenade. Give him that, and he's got all the rest wired.

The tech guys think they have to make a replacement private for him, made out of metal and silicon. He doesn't need more privates, he's got privates coming out of his backside. He just needs insect intelligence on a cheap, expendable submunition, and existing tech and tactics can do all the rest.


****
OPERATIONAL PRINCIPLES FOR ALL TIME

1 - your whole army can readily destroy any small portion of the enemy force. If you could arrange to do this many times in sequence, you'd easily win. War is about not fighting fair, and the fundamental original way to be unfair is dead simple. Gang up.

2 - it is easier to gang up on people if you surround them and their friends are far away. Little separated clumps that don't support each other are fresh meat, dead already and just don't know it yet.

3 - therefore, to live and support each other, a side's forces need to stop the enemy from "running rings around them". Hence, lines. If you don't have one, see 2 then 1 - the enemy is going to kill you effortlessly.

4 - just because the enemy has a line right now doesn't mean he still will at the end of your combat phase. Blow holes faster than he can close them, and you get to go to 3, and you win.

5 - to patch holes, reserves are needed. Somebody not absolutely needed to hold the line in his own sector is free to move where he is needed. Others can't or they just move where the hole is, they don't close it.

6 - "overprotected" points or sectors can supply reserves to either side of themselves. They can also attack in their own sector.

7 - multiple options are good. Taut ropes barely enough to do the job will get cut.

8 - someone is hammering and someone is getting hammered. Someone is calling the tune and someone is being forced to dance in response. This is called "the initiative" and other things being equal you want to have it, not give it away to the other guy.

9 - the single most important thing is always to keep your own force alive and in being and effective and supporting each other. The second most important thing is killing the enemy. Terrain, objectives, scenario victory terms and rules don't matter. If your force is alive and the enemy force is dead, you will win regardless.

10 - have a plan. Use options for yourself and forced reactions on your opponent to "command both armies" and steer to some way you can win. You can be sure your enemy has a plan, and if you don't have one, his will wind up coming true almost by default.