Re: THE GREAT CRUSADE

They received far less coal than they needed, or than they had
received under a previous regime of wartime restrictions (1939-40).

The only sectors where German coal deliveries were more or less
consistent were iron ore mines (production of which went to Germany)
and railways (ditto for much of the traffic)

He is certainly right that Germany took from, rather than supply to,
foodstuffs in general and grain in particular, France.

The food situation has been abundantly discussed in sourced posts in
this group before. This one has some elements:

http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.war.world-war-ii/msg/cd8ccb5abf105da8
?hl=en

One word to Clo-clo: Tooze wrote a good book, but don't go imagining
his mention by Bay Man is a considered reply.

LC

They received at least coal from Germany.

You clearly do not know.

cite please.

Read Adam Tooze.

The French particularly would have been delighted to receive fuel and grain
from Germany.

What a deal! Grain for their "baguettes" and the fuel to bake them just
right.

Actually the opposite was true, Germany plundered France  of its foodstuff
and coal leaving just enough to prevent true hunger (and unrest).

OK I assume the above statement is a slip of the pen as I do not think that
Nazi Germany in general was particularly concerned about the nutritional
conditions prevailing in their conquered lands and keeping them warm in the
wintertime.

While the Nazis were not able to do as much as they wished to protect their
population from allied bombers they certainly kept it reasonably well fed
and remarkably healthy until the very end much to the surprise of the allied
troops, particularly the Russians (*), and guess where much of this
foodstuff was produced?

(*) for whom as we all know plump frauleins proved irresistible.

Germany waged war without enough finished materials, raw materials, a poor
agriculture or men, there were few to no reserves, marching everywhere.

They made early spectacular gains, however nothing conclusive.  The
economies of the British and French empires vastly dwarfed Germany's.
Anyone with half a brain in 1939 would not consider waging war on the UK and
France.  Germany's economy could not wage a war for a long period.  The UK &
France was militarily larger than Germany - with Germany virtually having no
navy in comparison.  The Soviet economy was much larger than Germany's as
was its military.  Against that background to even "consider" waging war on
any front was madness.

Germany had a leader who thought short sharp campaigns would win.  A massive
gamble.  It paid off in France and the low countries, beyond their wildest
dreams, mainly due to allied incompetence rather than German brilliance. If
the tenuous German attacking logistical thread through France was broken it
would have failed.  An reckless outside gamble paid off.

So Germany after the fall of France is facing the UK and the USSR.  Again,
the economies of were larger than Germany's - Germany now has to supply
grain and fuel to conquered countries.  Not only that the RNs blockade is
highly effective and Germany is desperately short of raw materials,
especially oil and rubber.  The UK now has access to US military industry as
well as its own.

In this situation it is also madness to even consider attacking the USSR,
with its massive military, large economy, large industry and vast land mass.
Attacking the USSR means Germany is fighting the UK & the USSR.

Again Germany, inflated by the gain of France, does the same and attacks,
without enough men, materials, oil, rubber or ammunition and still marching
dragging guns behind horses at the rear.  Their tactics are now well known.
Again, incompetence allows the Germans to make spectacular gains in the
USSR. This time, the massive manpower of the USSR, industry in the east and
land mass prevents any quick knock out punch.

It is only a matter of time to defeat, with Germany unable to sustain a long
war against the UK and USSR alone as their economies were collectively much
larger.  After failing to defeat the USSR in one swift move, meaning a
protracted war with the USSR, Germany foolishly declares war on the USA.
The USA entering the war means certain defeat much quicker.

Adam Tooze in Wages of Destruction, goes into the economic angle in much
depth, which probably backs up this author.

The myth of the Germans being a superior war nation was WW2 propaganda to
unify and cover much allied embarrassing ineptitude.  Propaganda was never
put right after and many authors, doing research, have blown the myths away.

The author is a military historian that lectures at war colleges and writes
books, many of which have been well received; I buy used books and read
them - I would feel uppity to claim him wrong. But I'll give a try at
explaining why I think the author is unclear in this case.

Professor Willmott states that the German military in World War II was not
of excellent quality. He claims that the commonly held belief that they were
excellent is a myth. The author asserts, as explanation, "that the German
military genius was in fighting, not in war."

The passage "that the German military genius was in fighting, not in war" is
irresolvable to me as it stands, but a small change of wording improves my
comfort zone. I'll post my thoughts on them and welcome any comments and
corrections.

* Military: generally, the military is a branch of the government, and is a
segment of, and answerable to, the government.

* War: (verb) Make or wage war.

The military performs it's tactical function by fighting. The author admires
this in the Germans. That leaves the strategic aspects of the German
military performance as the suspect that ruins their excellence rating.

I understand the German military made a number of strategic errors during
campaigns in Russia. It happens. But the major strategic short-comings that
impacted the German military was made by nonmilitary departments of the Nazi
party. The crappy balance of payments forever, the irrational apportioning
of funding for different branches of the military, the decision of not to
put the economy on total war production until 1943, the decision to do war
on Poland in 1939 when the military maintained they could not be prepared
for big-league war before 1944, the decision to employ atrocity to an
extreme degree as policy in the East. Etc.

I would enlarge the scope of strategic culprits in the statement. How about:
"I must admit to a contempt for that popularly accepted but pernicious myth
of Nazi Germany's military excellence in war..."

Not criticizing, just saying.

Kitamun

--

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
Remove the nb for email.

Book: THE GREAT CRUSADE

Author: H. P. Willmott

Publisher: The Free Press - 1990

This book was recommended to me as an interesting narrative history of World
War Two. Six months ago I bought a copy and read it.

The publisher informs the reader that the author interprets the events
covered in this book for the modern reader. The flyleaf states the author
debunks many myths of WWII, not the least that of German military
excellence.

The author writes in the forward of his irritation with the common belief of
German military excellence in World War II. The paragraph:

"If any single aspect of the Second World War can be said to form the thread
of this history then I must admit to a contempt for that popularly accepted
but pernicious myth of German military excellence which, in THE GREAT
CRUSADE, is presented for what it is, both pernicious and a myth. The easy
facility with which an uncritical view of German performance in the Second
World War has gained widespread acceptance in western society since 1945 has
been a source of alternating amusement and irritation to me for obvious
reasons. If the German military was as good as conventional wisdom would
have us believe, then why did it lose, and in defeat is there not
confirmation of a suitably amended Wilde witticism: "To lose one world war
may be regarded as a misfortune: to lose both looks like carelessness."
Expounded at various parts of this text is the view that the German military
genius was in fighting, not in war, that indeed Germany's failure stemmed
from her inability to understand the nature of war. In terms of organizing
for war Germany was totally outclassed by her enemies, and those who cite
the extent of German conquest as evidence of military proficiency fail to
note the obvious, that the destruction of the German state after such
conquest is evidence of a fundamental German misappreciation of the nature
of war itself."

I admit I subscribe to the myth of German military excellence. I tried
believing that the German military was merely O.K. for awhile but got tired
of feeling sheepish and returned to the conventional myth.

Do I have a blind-spot in regard to the author's assertion?

Kitamun

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