History Forum / War History / World War II / July 2009

The key point here is the difference between fighting and waging all
aspects of war.

In general, nobody was better that the Germans at the lower levels of
combat.  Even on the army level, they were able to pull off seeming
miracles.

This was largely due to a training regimen that tried to instill
certain points of view, including almost insane levels of
aggressiveness.  (This is valuable in warfare:  most decisions in
war are made by people who really don't know what's going on.
People in such circumstances tend to be timid, and can easily
be pushed off-balance by an aggressive display.)

To me, it looks like this was too successful.  I get the impression
that German generals were more similar to each other than generals
of other armies.  This means, unfortunately for Germany, that they
tended to share the same blind spots that the emphasis on tactical
and operational combat and aggressiveness fostered.

For example, German strategic intelligence was generally bad.  They
consistently overestimated Western capabilities and underestimated
Soviet.  This led to the undue spreading-out of defenses against
Western amphibious offensives that just weren't going to happen, and
repeated surprises from the Red Army.

German logistics were not great, either, and that cost them in the
East in particular.  The impression I've got from my reading is that
German generals had a tendency to think supplies should get to them,
while generals of other countries had a tendency to realize that
supply problems should happen.

The German General Staff approach also seems to have caused the
Germans a great deal of difficulty in setting high-level strategic
goals.  This is very evident in WWI:  in the absence of a higher
level commander (the Kaiser) setting priorities, Germany attacked
primarily west in even-numbered years and east in odd-numbered.
This also cost them in the Soviet Union in WWII:  consider all
the disagreements as to exactly what the army should be trying to
accomplish in 1941.

In neither world war did the Germans organize their economy all
that well.  They certainly tried in WWII, but it doesn't look to me
like they did as well as the Allies.  German companies did not
cooperate all that well in WWII, unlike the totalitarian centralism
of the Soviets or the rather different central control in Britain
and the US.

At least in WWII, Hitler controlled the foreign policy, not that he
was all that good at it.  In WWI, the General Staff made sure that the
only alternative available in case of war with Russia was to invade
Belgium and march on Paris.  Later on, the General Staff made the
decisions on how much to antagonize the US.

If you read a good history of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71,
you'll notice a lot of these things coming into play.  However, the
Germans had considerable numerical superiority, and the French generals
were mostly picked for political reliability, and so the high-level
dissent and the potential logistics issues didn't cause problems.
It's fairly easy to see how they could have.

So, I agree with Willmott.  The Germans were very good at fighting.
Nobody else fought battles better.  These things make good reading,
and while one is reading about an outnumbered and badly supplied German
force fighting brilliantly to restore a bad strategic situation, it
is often hard to ask a few questions:  why were the Germans outnumbered
there?  why were they badly supplied?  how did the strategic situation
get that bad?

This is compounded by the fact that many of the better-reading accounts
were by Germans, who generally didn't understand why they were losing.
Instead, they tend to blame it on overall force ratios, which they
tend to grossly distort.

Compare the assorted German goals in Barbarossa.  Now, compare
Eisenhower's plan to defeat as many Germans as possible west of the
Rhine:  a plan that was, in general, carried out, and which reflected
logistics.  It wasn't brilliant, but it was realistic and generally
consistently carried out.

I think you've missed the author's point. The Germans were often very
effective at fighting at the individual soldier and small unit level,
and in the early parts of the war, used mobility far better than most of
their opponents. The causes of this effectiveness seem to lie in the
high quality of training of their officers and NCOs, and the fact that
they'd lost WWI, causing them to re-examine much of their system, and
purge obsolete practices. Some of their equipment was also good. By
contrast, their opponents had to learn painful lessons and reform their
conduct of land operations before they could fight the Germans on equal
terms. The French got overrun before they could learn; the British were
saved by the sea; the USSR lost vast amounts of territory.

However, German political direction and grand strategy were dire. Had
they been able to separate the UK from France, and thus take on Poland,
France, and the USSR in separate sequential wars, as seems to have been
the intention, they might have reached stability as a continental
empire. But they failed to keep the UK out of the war, conquer it, or
force it to make peace, requiring them to keep on spending money and
lives on the U-boat campaign. That wasn't needed for war on the USSR,
and brought the USA to a state of undeclared hostilities. They then
declared war on the USA when they could have left it to the Japanese,
thus rousing the USA to a maximum effort. And from then on, they just
had too much against them.

The reasons for that poor strategy were tied up with Nazi politics and
ideology. Understanding that is hard work, but you do have to realise
that the Nazi leadership really did believe that the UK, USSR and USA
were all controlled behind the scenes by the same Jewish conspiracy, and
that it was necessary to involve the USA in the war so as to reduce its
time to arm while at peace. At least, that's what it seems to have been,
as far as I can tell.

Not in my opinion. The problem is that the author is confusing a lot of
things as the so called myth. Including the fact that it existed at all.
I have seen a lot of claims for individual examples of German military
excellence like the invasion of France but their are also contrasting
examples like Kursk or the BoB for that matter. Still the main problem
was that Germany had assumed that they could only win a short war and
therefore only prepared for a short war or at least short campaigns.
This worked against Poland and France but not against the USSR.

One myth that is common is that German equipment was the best. This is
certainly not true. For example Soviet artillery outranged the German
field artillery.

Ken Young

Quoting: THE GREAT CRUSADE Author: H. P. Willmott

We should first read the 400-page book, but this summary is
unpromising so far as it talks about vague "German" aims and
achievements instead of identifying specific characters of the
Nazi political regime, OKH, German technology and so on.

1.  "Military genius" is best demonstrated by actual cases in
which smaller armies defeat larger armies because of superior
tactics (e.g. Rommel's Afrika Korps) or superior equipment
(aircraft cannon rather than solid-shot machine guns) or
superior intelligence (U-boat forces reading the British
merchant navy cipher) etc.

2.  "Understanding the nature of war" looks like a string of
words that actually explains nothing.   Obviously in 1939 no
veteran of WW1 "understood the nature of war" so far as
unfamiliar with (a) radar, (b) effective aerial bombing,
(c) modern ciphers and codes and disinformation
techniques, and so on -- perhaps not even generals who
had written polemics or manuals for new weapons (e.g.
Guderian, Fuller.)  But however we define or recognize
"understanding the nature of war" it seems impossible
to find in this understanding a peculiarly German or
French or British character.

3.  So far as foresight is concerned, military orthodoxy
made in 1939 various predictions e.g.
-- No European country could "afford" war expenditures
for longer than a year or two;
-- No civilian population could endure modern bombing.
-- Larger armies usually defeat smaller armies.
-- The enemy can be paralysed by "surgical" elimination
of essential items in his system (e.g. ball bearings, oil fuel.)
Actual events usually confirmed these orthodox doctrines,
but not invariably.  E.g. smaller armies sometimes defeated
larger ones (as war colleges had attempted to teach for
centuries.)  These events constitute the actual stuff of
the history of WW2 -- but they do not by themselves offer
arguments how well country A or country B "understood
the nature of war."

The argument that the winners understood better "the
nature of war" looks like circular reasoning.  It does not
tell the story of WW2 and, after the story is finished,
it does not add anything to our knowledge.

Perhaps one way to test the blind spot would be to explain why the
author is considered wrong. Also excellence needs to be defined,
given perfection is impossible, what are the weightings given to the
various successes and failures?

Napoleon did not find the Germans that hard to defeat, the
Germans undertook considerable changes given the results
were so poor from their point of view.

However I presume what is being talked about is the hundred
years or so between the end of Napoleon and the end of WWII.

The author is pointing out military excellence should result in wins
or at least non disastrous losses, whereas Germany won in the
19th century and lost disastrously in the 20th.

The 20th century losses tend to result in the splitting of German
performance into strategy (good in the 19th, bad in the 20th century)
and tactics (considered generally good throughout the period).

One factor that needs to be accounted for is basic war making
capacity, the German population grew much faster than its main
neighbours in the second half of the 19th century and early 20th
century, France grew by 10% between 1870 and 1914, Germany
by 66%.  In the 19th century coal and iron resources were a major
part of war capacity, these Germany had in abundance, as oil, light
metals and steel became more important Germany's war making
ability began to decline.

To stay with WWII.  As the saying goes armies prepare to fight the
last war, and since no one prepares to lose the loser of the last war
is usually the one to try something new.  What does the Nazi decision
to undertake unsustainable peace time military expenditure and
therefore either risking collapse or forcing the need to use the military
count as, a military or political decision?  It certainly helped give the
Germans an edge in the early fighting.

Reports of German excellence in WWII tend to be concentrated on
the army, not the navy or air force.  The following is a case against
claiming excellence.

To start with the navy, its pre war program was a repeat of WWI
in strategic terms, the aircraft carrier was way down the list of
ships it wanted, and submarines were not emphasised.  The surface
fleet did reasonably well in WWII in the limited opportunities it had,
given the losses in capturing Norway.  So tactics reasonable.  The
S-boat was developed and used effectively, as was the u-boat.  The
U-boats were normally used properly, as commerce raiders so that
was good strategy.

The difficulty in navies changing course was highlighted when the
U-boats were defeated, even small warships take years to
design and build.  It took until 1945 for the Germans to field the
first new designs that pushed the balance back in their direction.
It should be noted u-boat tactics did not change much during the
war, wolf packs were a pre war innovation that required numbers
to use consistently and a lack of merchant ships sailing alone, a high
percentage of merchant ship losses were when sailing alone during
the first 3 years of the war.

In the period September 1939 to April 1940 the Germans lost 23
u-boats versus the sinking of 224 merchant ships of 810,067 GRT,
or around 1 loss per 35,000 GRT.  This is not a highly profitable
exchange rate, and it was a warning about the balance of power
of the current submarines and anti submarine ships.  A pre war warning
was the effect of radar on the proposed night surface attack plans.  The
two warnings were largely ignored. The effect of aircraft on u-boats
was largely met by moving operations further away from land.  Since
aircraft carriers existed there was in theory no ocean place where
aircraft could not go but there does not seem to have been much
urgency placed on the problem even as longer ranged allied aircraft
came into service.  As long as there was an air gap in the route to
England the problem seems to have been assumed unimportant.

So discounted the effects of aircraft on operations, the problem
radar would produce and the early war losses.

I should note there were losses to submarine laid mines early in the
war and of course an early policy of seeking out the RN which
meant more successes and more losses in the time period.

Moving to the air force, it was probably the best air force in
existence in 1939, given equipment, including self sealing fuel tanks
as standard, radio beams for navigation, and doctrine, it had learnt
some to most of the lessons on offer in the Spanish civil war.  With
its leader being a senior government figure it had little to fear from
co-operating with the army, and in any case it was largely staffed by
ex army men.  Relations with the navy were less successful.

One Spanish civil war lesson was bombers were hard to intercept,
though not as hard as the original doctrine, the ratio of bombers to
fighters was increased but not enough as the losses over France and
England would show. So a lesson learnt but not well enough given the
later experience, how is this counted?

The Luftwaffe was a major beneficiary of the Nazi policy of rearmament
beyond peace time ability to pay for it.  Air forces take a long time to
assemble, so the Luftwaffe had the numbers in the 1940 fighting.  It
also had the advantage the allied air forces had not prepared for mobile
warfare, as airfields were threatened air units went through major
disruptions when they had to move.

Strategically the Luftwaffe ignored just about all lessons from 1940,
failing to alter its force mix or increase its supply of new aircraft and
aircrew, the result was the crisis of late 1941 and a lack of force
in 1943 and 1944.  It also never came up with a way of consistently
dealing with escorted bomber formations.

So it is hard to mark the Air Force and Navy as excellent, given the
size of the mistakes made.

This leaves the German army, generally the panzer divisions, but also
the infantry tactics with its emphasis on crew served weapons.  The
panzer division idea was tried pre war, refined in Poland and further
refined in France.  It was further refined in 1942 to where tanks
became primarily an anti tank weapon, rather than the pre war ideas
of trying to leave enemy tanks to the anti tank guns.

The overall fighting in 1939 and 1940 shows certainly qualifies as
excellence in tactics and strategy (assuming we ignore the fact the
Germans had started the war).  The Germans learnt from the
fighting in Poland and undertook a training program to bring the
reserve formations to higher standards.  Small unit tactics were
clearly better than any opponent.

The fighting in the western desert consistently showed the Germans
better at mobile warfare than the British.

One reason for the German success was the realisation is the armies
could move faster thanks to tanks and trucks then there had to be faster
command structures, this was an advantage they retained against most
opponents for most of the war, it was most noticeable in France in 1940
and in the east.

Is the decision to invade the USSR considered a military of political one?
How about the idea the Red Army would allow itself to be defeated close
to the borders, given the German supply system could not deal with a
Red army withdrawal like that done against Napoleon?

There is usually a modifier or excuse given the to the German army
performance due to Hitler's control.  If that is given similar ones need
to be given to the Red Army.  It had lost large numbers of experienced
officers in the purges, and had Stalin in charge.  Another point is the cost
to the USSR of being unable to put radios in every tank and aircraft,
meaning they could not easily warn each other or co-ordinate, this was
a real disadvantage tactically.

Italy is noted as terrain favouring the defender.

The German army facing the allies in Normandy was considerably
more experienced, from the commanders on down, Montgomery had
never commanded an Army Group in battle for example, versus
von Rundstedt.  Most allied divisions used had seen little or no combat
before Normandy.  Take a look at the steady introduction of inexperienced
US formations into combat in France in 1944 and 1945.  Also the limits
imposed by the allied supply lines.

A lot of the idea of German army excellence is the way it fought well
when outnumbered, western allied armies rarely had units in that position,
so while the Germans deserve the credit for the performance in those
combats there is the down side of why were they in the position at all?

The army tended to make good use of the resources available and was
tested in a way only the armies in the east were tested.  The Finns appear
to have held their performance, the other axis allied armies were rated
as not as good as the Germans but they also tended to have inferior
equipment.  Western allied armies had far fewer crisis moments.

The German army generally retained its performance even after years
of losses, it understood rebuilding units was generally better than
fielding entirely new ones, something Hitler tended to ignore.

So the army generally had good tactics, won significant victories in the
first half of the war, performed well under pressure, coped with supply
shortages, with the withdrawal of air support and took until around
March 1945 to fall apart, the allied armies in France and Germany taking
around 370,000 prisoners that month.

On the fighting front there is no doubt the German army set the
standard for most of the war.

The big blind spot of the German army was supply, from constantly
changing weapon specifications which slowed down production, to
inadequate supply forces, the invasion of the USSR being the most
obvious example.  As a result units were continually under strength
and under supplied.

Given the concentration on the actual fighting it is not surprising
the German army is often rated as excellent, you need to decide
though how much it handicapped itself by continually neglecting
the supply situation and of course the strategic direction.

Geoffrey Sinclair
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