Famous Churchill Quote and Question?
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Devon Hill dsbh...@shaw.ca
Churchill once said 'You havn't known war until you fought the Hun'......
Now that is certainly acknowledgement of the fighting ability of the German though I am not sure he is referring to WW1 or WW2............
With that in mind though, what was it that made the Teuton such an excellent soldier? Or is this perhaps a bit of a myth? It would seem on a per capita basis, the German has done very well through history on a military basis.......at least that is my reading of it.....
Is there something in particular to the German makeup that makes for a strong soldier?
Thank you for your help...
Devon in Canada.
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thorn ...@visi.com (David Thornley)
One reason is the German General Staff, which was instituted following the Napoleonic Wars. It was something of a reaction to seeing the difference in effectiveness between Frederick the Great's army and the Prussian army of 1806, which really wasn't all *that* much later. It was specifically intended to keep the Prussian army up-to-date and well-trained.
This was probably ***isted by the militaristic history of Prussia, which left the Army largely on its own, away from civilian control.
Or is this perhaps a bit of a myth? It would Tactically and operationally, this is true. However, the General Staff system seems to have made the German government perceive everything as a tactical and operational problem. In 1914, for example, the question of what countries Germany should fight was entirely subordinated to the problem of getting an operational advantage over France. In 1918, the strategic question of how best to defeat the British was addressed on a tactical level.
I use examples from WWI, since the role of the military was much stronger then, so its ill effects are clearer. This does not mean that the military was different in WWII. Its political naivety meant that the commanders didn't see the diplomatic situation as clearly as Hitler did, its traditional independence made them unwilling to go along, and so the German Army struggled along with a complete lack of accord between the person who knew best what needed to be done and the people who knew how to do it.
Nope. Take any well-nourished well-educated group of men, train them well, lead and equip them properly, and they're strong soldiers.
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"Emmanuel Gustin" REMOVE.Emmanuel.Gus...@skynet.be
But this may have been an important part of the German advantage.
Germany on of the first continental states to be industrialized and 'modernised' in a big way; in contrast to the smaller and more rural France, which was out-produced as well as out-numbered.
In comparison, Germany's neighbours tended to be small or economically backward; sometimes both. And in some cases handicapped by an etnic diversity that required every officer to be able to give his commands in several languages, and affected the cohesion of the armies.
Germany may also have had the advantage socially; Scharnhorst and Gneisenau emphasised the link between liberal social and military reforms -- towards an army of 'citizen soldiers' and social equality between citizens and nobility. Armies reflect the social organisation of the civil society that produces them in more ways than one. German armies had strict discipline, but a too large social and organisational gap between soldiers and officers is bad for unit cohesion and bad for morale. (A condition not unknown in the French army, where in May 1940 soldiers camped in the dirt while commanding officers stuffed themselves with Lucullan meals.) Bismarck's later policy of preventing social unrest by attention to the worker's wages and social security may have had the advantage of producing healthy and well-educated soldiers, in a time when urban recruits to the British Army were often unfit for service because of malnourishment and poor health.
(The 'welfare state' in Britain found some of its initial push in the fear that the 'rickety and flat-chested' urban youth would be unable to defend the empire against stronger, tougher opponents.) Demands by Germany military theorists that officers would eat from the same field kitchens as the soldiers implied that German soldiers were usually relatively well looked after, even if the citizens back home were famished. Of course, there were occasional disasters.
Of course the main German advantage was simply that it was the most powerful nation in Western Europe. It could always defeat each of its opponents individually, although it was doomed to lose the war if they joined forces.
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Emmanuel Gustin Emmanuel.Gustin -rem@ve- skynet dot be Flying Guns Page: http://users.skynet.be/Emmanuel.Gustin/
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"Alan Allport" allp...@sasdot.upenndot.edu
Because your post wanders around chronologically it's not clear to which time period you're referring here, but - since this is a WWII group - the idea that ordinary Landsers were "relatively well looked after" is pretty much demolished in Stephen Fritz's study _Frontsoldaten_.
As far as the thread's more general question: no-one yet has made the crucial distinction between *Prussian* and German - still significant even in 1939-1945.
Alan.
"a425couple" a425cou...@hotmail.com
Very nice and informative post Mr. Gustin, Reminds me of my U.S. Marine corps days.
Yes in camp, officers and enlisted ate in the same mess hall. The Officers were separated by a low partition and got the food in their own serving line, but it was the same food.
And every area (mess & camp) always had an Officer of the Day on duty who was required to eat meals in the mess and record their comments on the "quanity" and "quality" of the food.
In the field, the food was the same.
When C-rats were p***ed out, the enlisted marines picked up their food first. If there was not enough an officer did without. Pretty good way to make sure the problem was addressed and did not happen again!
kyle_brofolow ...@yahoo.com (Brage)
is it true that churchill wanted to go whit the first wave of soilders too france. but the SHEAF recomendet him not to do
"Andrew Clark" acl...@starcottDELETETHISBIT.freeserve.co.uk
Not quite. Churchill wanted to observe the landings at close range from a Royal Navy destroyer, something which Eisenhower (SHAEF) and Montgomery both disapproved of but could not prevent. Churchill was eventually persuaded by the King, who said that if Churchill went, then he would go too, and as Churchill couldn't put the King at risk, the plan fell through.
Churchill was very keen on getting close to the front and the fighting throughout WW2.
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yaakov_maca ...@hotmail.com (Y. Macales)
I do not claim to be an expert, but isn't the extreme authoritarian nature of German and Japanese society a factor?
For example, Albert Einstein hated the authoritarian society and school system and decided to leave Germany because of that. I read a book by a German Jew who grew up in the 1920's and he said that the teachers would hit children who gave wrong answers to his questions. Unquestioning obedience of authority was drilled into Germans and Japanese from the youngest age. It is true that anti-authoritarian societies like the US and Britain can turn out good soldiers too, but didn't the Germans and Japanese have some sort of advantage, at least initially? I have the feeling, the man-for-man, the Germans and Japanese were better soldiers than the British or Americans (while admitting there were many Americans and British who were as good as the best of their enemies) but it was the Allies' abilities to be more flexible in strategy and efficient in weapons design and production that really won the war for them. After all, Japanese soldiers were either willing or forced to fight to the death, their pilots in the Zero were willing to fly without armor protection, the German commanders were willing to allow their men to be starved and frozen at Stalingrad without demanding they be allowed to fight their way out, etc, etc. I can't see Americans or British soldiers and commanders acting this way.
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Merlin Dorfman dorf...@rahul.net
: Not quite. Churchill wanted to observe the landings at close : range from a Royal Navy destroyer, something which : Eisenhower (SHAEF) and Montgomery both disapproved of but : could not prevent. Churchill was eventually persuaded by the : King, who said that if Churchill went, then he would go too, : and as Churchill couldn't put the King at risk, the plan : fell through.
What a remarkable man King George VI must have been (in marked contrast to his older brother...) I'm sure you've heard the story that, as the Blitz got worse, it was recommended that the young Princesses (Queen Elizabeth II and the late Princess Margaret) should be evacuated to the countryside or perhaps to Canada. The Queen (HM Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, who died in 2001 at age 100) replied that: "The princesses will not go unless I go. I will not go unless the King goes. And the King is not going!"
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Brad Meyer bradm...@attbi.com
There was also the story that, after the palace had been bombed and the King nearly killed, she is said to have remarked "Wonderful, now I can look the east end in the face".
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"Tarjei T. Jensen" tar...@online.no
The German soliders were better trained and better led. More was expected of a German solider with regards to initiative. The German section had 13 men.
I suspect that the allies only had 8 men sections. This means that each German section is probably more mobile on the battlefield because there is more men to carry the load. Or they can carry more ordonance and need less resupply.
The British had a unique blend of competence and ineptness (incompetence).
The competence in the lower ranks seems to have been balanced by ineptness in the higher ranks. They spent a lot of time during the war getting basic things right. E.g. standardize training and doctrine. They seems to have had a knack for drawing wrong conclusions and learning very slowly. They were control freaks and never grasped that the Germans got more from their people by trusting them (and training them).
The Germans seems to be better at improvising. Somehow they managed to fight effectively without ever having proper supplies. I belive the German doctrine was "Logistics is not everything, but everything is nothing without logistics".
greetings,
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thorn ...@visi.com (David Thornley)
I'm not an expert either, but it doesn't seem to me that this was a clear win. For example, the German soldier was expected to show initiative, whereas the Japanese soldier was expected to obey orders and show no fear.
The Germans did, although I attribute much of that to the General Staff and better training. The Japanese army was overall very unimpressive in performance against any sort of modern army. The Singapore campaign is an exception, but the difference there is largely the difference in the commanders, Yamashita vs. Percival.
I have the feeling, the man-for-man, the Germans and Japanese The Japanese soldiers were very tough, but badly trained and equipped and very badly led. German soldiers were better.
However, in a modern war it doesn't matter all that much whether one side has better soldiers. It's the total military machine that matters.
US infantry tended not to be as good as German, but US artillery more than made up for that. The US and British eventually evolved their own ways of fighting that were quite successful in defeating the Germans.
After all, Japanese soldiers were either willing or forced to You'd be surprised. When the situation demanded, US and British soldiers and commanders could be quite heroic and self-sacrificing.
One difference with the Japanese is that the Japanese military placed little value on the lives of their men, and were willing to sacrifice them to no purpose. The US and British were much less willing to die uselessly, but often willing to face certain or near-certain death when necessary.
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David H. Thornley | If you want my opinion, ask.
da...@thornley.net | If you don't, flee.
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"Andrew Clark" acl...@starcottDELETETHISBIT.freeserve.co.uk
Heer soldiers were certainly well-trained in the early years, but the quality dropped off significantly after 1943.
Luftwaffe and Waffen SS soldiers often received very poor training. The same applies to leadership quality.
By 1944-45, German and western Allied armies both had a mixture of very good units with high-quality training and leadership and less good units.
Initiative was certainly expected of the Heer soldier and officer, but by the mid-war the same was expected of the western Allied soldier and officer too.
A Heer infantry Trupp varied in size between 10-20 men, organised within a Zug of around 40 men. A typical British (and also Canadian and other Commonwealth) army infantry section consisted of a sergeant, corporal and 8 other ranks, total 10, organised within a platoon of 37 men. The two organisations were quite similar.
Except that the Commonwealth infantry section typically has access to mechanised transport like a Loyd or Universal tracked carrier, which can carry far more re-supply than the men alone.
I think this is very fair comment for the years 1939-42.
However, from June 1942 British Army infantry training was completely revised and from early 1943 onward was on a par with any in the world.
The Heer certainly were masters of improvisation, but that is a weakness, not a strength. The German armed forces improvised because they had to. The parallel with the British in 1939-43 is exact.
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"Martin Rapier" m.rap...@sheffield.ac.uk
Officially the US squad had 12 men and the British section 10, although the 1944 platoon commanders handbook only shows 8 man sections as it was common practive to leave an element out of battle. Just like the Germans, under combat conditions rifle company strengths rapidly dwindled and actual platoon strengths were around 20 men. Rifle sections could still function with only 6-7 men but their margin for further casualties was extremely low at this level.
All the nationalities later in the war operated outside the standard TO&E on occasions and grouped men and weapons on a mission oriented basis within the platoon, which with such depressed manpower levels made sense - typically grouping heavy weapons with the platoon 2iC as a fire group and an ***ault group with the platoon commander.
Cheers Martin
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"Andy Wells" yagga...@interchange.ubc.ca
Devon, ...
Probably WW1 - that was the only war in which Churchill saw active service.
He resigned his post as First Lord of the Admirality in 1915 as a result of the Gallipoli disaster and joined the army to serve on the Western Front.
In relation to the First World War, it was simply a case of organisational ability, available manpower, and willingness to escalate scientific means of carrying out war. Britain and France both put great faith in the Russian "bear", but the Russians suffered severely at the hands of the Germans because the Germans were better equipped, led, fed, and mobile. It was the same for the first couple of years on the Western Front. The French army and BEF only just managed to curb the German advance on the Marne in late 1914, and the thoroughness with which the Germans dug themselves in astounded British and French troops, used as they were to trenchfoot, lice, and wandering through muddy, 3-foot-awash trenches. The Germans on the other hand, had concrete bunkers (that were barely dented even when the "Hawthorn Mine" went off in July 1916 at the Battle of the Somme), electric heaters, an underground telephone exchange and so on. The only thing that the Germans lacked - and this became crucial by 1917 - was plentiful and good quality food. After the British and German navies gave themselves a mutual mauling at Jutland in 1916 the German navy returned to Kiel to lick its wounds - it remained blockaded there for the remainder of the war - and there simply weren't enough U-Boats to give Britain as bad a time as the Royal Navy gave Germany. One of the criminal things about the end of the war was the continuation of the blockade on Germany into 1919.
However, it has no always been this way. True, in 1870 the Prussian army had defeated a superior French force in the Franco-Prussian war - thereby contributing in no small measure to the chain of events that led to the First World War - but before Bismarck's rise to power in the early 1860s, Prussia was by no means the largest or strongest force in Germany. That honour usually went to Austria. In the Napoleonic Wars, Prussia's forces were defeated time and again between 1793 and 1809, only to rise to prominence during the 1813 campaign and when Blucher turned up in the nick of time at Waterloo. Throughout the eighteenth century, Prussian feats of arms had been great, particularly under Frederick the Great (one of Hitler's idols), but they had failed to modernise by the 1790s, such that, when met with an army which (for the first time in western experience) went for all-out victory (i.e. the French Revolutionary Army), they simply could not cope. After 1814, Prussia came to supersede the Austrians as a military force to be reckoned with, a fact emphasised by Prussia's victory in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866.
However, the foregoing analysis takes as an ***umption that Prussia was the precursor to Germany and Austria has nothing to do with what we refer to as 'German'. This distinction is historically constructed, especially in the case of the Second World War where Austria was united with Germany (and 98-99% of Austrian citizens ratified the Anschluss in a plebiscite), and it ignores the huge debates that took place in the German speaking regions of Europe in the 1860s-1870s which questioned whether a new German Empire should have a little (kleinedeutschland) or greater (grossdeutschland) focus.
So, in short, no. Nothing more than what is in the British makeup to make them good soldiers. It depends entirely upon your enemy, your preparedness, and your resources. In 1939 Germany (to a greater or lesser extent) had all of these, it did so in 1914. It decidedly did not when it rushed into war against France in the 1790s. So the myth of teutonic invincibility is something the Nazis in particular played upon - that Hitler was consciously doing this is apparent when he called operations 'Barbarossa' and so on -
but the fact that people still think it to be so is a result of historically constituted factors. You could argue that one of these factors is a cultural predisposition to regimentation, but I think this would be pushing it.
Germany's success in war is profoundly modern, as is the myth that Germans and Teutons have always been good warriors.
Cheers, Andy Wells yagga...@hotmail.com
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"Andrew Clark" acl...@starcottDELETETHISBIT.freeserve.co.uk
Churchill was under fire in the Boer War and the Sudan campaign too, although not as a soldier.
(snip excellent analysis) The German armed forces and the Germany economy were ***uredly not prepared in 1939 for the war which actually resulted: ie a total mobilisation war lasting 6 years. In fact, German military logistics and tactics were specifically designed for short campaigns with long intervals of recovery.
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"Tarjei T. Jensen" tar...@online.no
A section of 6-7 men would leave too few men to fight efficiently. With sections of 6-7 men you need to operate two sections together in order to fight effectively. Otherwise you will not be able to move around the battlefield: too much gear.
greetings,
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"Tarjei T. Jensen" tar...@online.no
Nowhere near what was expected of a german. The British used their artillery to compensate for their inability to train and lead properly.
It is not enough to have roughly the same amount of men. It is HOW your organize them that provides the combat ability. The ability to move around the battlefield without being bogged down is crucial.
> Except that the Commonwealth infantry section typically has I doubt they rode them when they were fighting. And supplies and the number of hands to move them around matters a lot when you are fighting. It is no good having a large supply train if your fighting troops are too few to carry the supplies with them.
Anyway the British compensated for not having enough heavy weapons in the infantry by adding more of it. They should have copied either the MG34, MG42 or the US Browning and the 81mm mortars.
The army had problems with training and quality of manpower throughout the war. They trained too few officers before the war and paid the price during the war (high ranking officers are long lead items).
The British Army never managed to rid themselves of the control mania during WWII. They kept screwing up as late as Goose Green: It was not until the batallion commander got himself killed that they started making progress.
The second in command had a much more flexible attitude and was prevailed because he took advantage of the opportunity as they arose.
It is a strength. They seemed to be masters at squeezing the maximum bang for the buck.
Read David French' "Raising Churchill's Amy".
greetings,
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thorn ...@visi.com (David Thornley)
>The German armed forces and the Germany economy were >***uredly not prepared in 1939 for the war which actually >resulted: ie a total mobilisation war lasting 6 years. In >fact, German military logistics and tactics were >specifically designed for short campaigns with long >intervals of recovery.
In fact, this is how the Germans fought until the invasion of the Soviet Union, with the exception of the Kriegsmarine and (much more importantly) the Luftwaffe, which was engaged against the British from about May 1940 on, and never really had a chance to recover from the Battle of Britain.
This was also the German plan for the Soviet Union: a quick decisive war that would allow the Germans to stand down again to some extent. Indeed, Hitler ordered production for the army cut.
Of course, the French campaign is something of a reverse: originally, it was expected to be a long hard struggle (Hitler's original directive emphasized seizing bases in Belgium to be used against Britain, and not a victory in France).
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David H. Thornley | If you want my opinion, ask.
da...@thornley.net | If you don't, flee.
http://www.thornley.net/~thornley/david/ | O-
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"Andrew Clark" acl...@starcottDELETETHISBIT.freeserve.co.uk
Sez you. What's your source?
Artillery was certainly the only combat arm in which the western Allies consistently outcl***ed the Germans, but to imply that the British had a complete inability to lead and train is plain stupid. After all, those marvellous Germans were in fact beaten by the British and Canadians and Australians and Americans in close quarter infantry combat on battlefields all over the world.
This is a pointless truism.
History tells us that the Heer operated infantry truppes or sections of around 7-10 usually very capable men within a well-officered Zug of 25-40 men. A relative lack of men, artillery and air support led to a compensatory high level of use of machine guns, light automatic weapons, anti-tank weapons and mortars. Personal battlefield mobility was relatively low as, broadly, the men had lots to carry.
The Commonwealth and US armies had sections of 10 men within platoons of 40 men. Training and experience was variable, and a relatively low usage of automatic weapons meant that the firepower generated by an Allied section was generally lower than that generated by a Heer truppe. On the other hand, personal battlefield mobility was good as individual loads were lower. Allied supporting fire from mortars, artillery and air support was outstanding and plentiful, and this compensated in most situations for the lower standard and firepower of the Allied section.
Yes. And the western Allied armies, with better personal mobility and better logistics based on mechanised transport, had a greater ability to "move around the battlefield" than the Heer.
I'm not sure which war you are fighting here. While the British carriers were not designed to be front-line infantry fighting vehicles, they were outstanding tactical armoured supply and transport vehicles operating immediately behind and up to the combat troops. The need, so often seen in the Heer, for ammunition and supplies to be man-hauled simply didn't occur as a matter of routine in the Commonwealth army in Europe.
The MG34 and 42 were outstanding weapons and certainly the Allies would have benefited from copying them.
Which "US Browning" do you mean? The Browning Automatic Rifle (M1918A2) was a poor weapon, significantly inferior to its British equivalent, the Bren. The Browning medium MG (M1917A1 or M1919A4) was an adequate weapon, but no better (and in some ways significantly worse) than the Vickers medium MG used in Commonwealth armies. The Browning M1919A6 was a disaster.
Again, sez you. What's your source?
What precisely do you mean by this? It sounds like tabloid journalism rather than historical analysis.
(snip off-topic Falklands War) This sounds like a Liddle Hart-ism.
I have. And you seem to be focusing on the obvious and acknowledged defects of the early-war British Army and ignoring the lessons that had been learnt by 1943. French makes the point very clearly that the British Army changed out of all recognition during WW2, as could only be expected after 20 years of neglect. You are also muddling strategic factors with tactical ones.
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thorn ...@visi.com (David Thornley)
One might say that the Germans compensated for the inability to run a real Western-style mechanized war by trying to increase the efficiency of their infantry. It would be about as true.
Different armies had different strengths and weaknesses, and picking out one facet of military efficiency and judging all armies soley on it is fatuous.
but to Well, the German infantry was fought in Europe and North Africa, but one can pick out numerous situations there where the need was for close-quarter infantry fighting and the Germans came out second best.
I believe this was something of a late war phenomenon, and earlier the German infantry was more mobile. Of course, the German organization was readily adaptable to this, since the squad was built around the machine gun to a greater extent than in Western armies.
You have described an organization well suited for the defense.
An exaggeration of that would be the Soviet defensive zones which would hold the front where the Soviets were not planning to attack (at least later in the war, when the Soviets had plenty of weapons and were running a bit short on men).
This is very important for armies on the offensive. The infantry has got to be able to move. (Yes, I know, the US Army was considerably better on defense, for whatever reasons.) Allied supporting fire from mortars, Right. This to some extent combined firepower and mobility.
The more lavish Western use of tanks also helped, in that the Western armies had enough tanks to make lots of armored formations and still provide lots of infantry support. (While the lavish Western use of tanks was partly due to the US ability to build the things, it was also due to Western decisions.) Yup.
How successful was the Heer in a mobile situation? From mid-1943 on, the fighting tended to be either brutal fighting in good defensive terrain, or rapid Western advances. They threw two Panzer armies against a thin section of the US line by surprise and barely managed a breakthrough, which was cordoned off and defeated.
(Yes, I know the Ardennes was good defensive terrain. The Germans had been pushed out of better.) The MG34 apparently had its disadvantages in the field (one first-hand opinion I got was that it was a wonderful weapon and a joy to fire when kept immaculately clean), but the MG42 was clearly the best light machine gun of the war (and arguably the best medium).
However, I don't know that the advantage over the Bren would have been large enough to make up for the wartime changeover.
This is of course not true of the US, which would have benefitted at almost any time by replacing the BAR with the MG42 or the Bren or something like that.
Like every army, the British had their better and worse weapons.
(Yes, the Italians had some "better".)
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David H. Thornley | If you want my opinion, ask.
da...@thornley.net | If you don't, flee.
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"Tarjei T. Jensen" tar...@online.no
> One might say that the Germans compensated for the inability to They already had a superior infantry fighting doctrine from the end of WW1.
They had proper training material available. That meant that a German could read up on something a Brit had to learn the hard way. That might save a year or more of training.
The idiotic thing is that the British had perfect understanding of everything. They relly understood armoured warfare. It was just that they screwed up royally on the execution. They were unable to understand what the Germans were doing to them in 1940. They didn't learn. It lasted until Monty in North Africa. O'Connor showed how to stop the Germans by integrating tanks, infantry, artillery and anti tank guns, but the organization didn't learn.
After the British artillery had done what to the Germans?
I think the reason the British kept the Bren was that the top br*** was convince that with a belt fed weapon the men would fire the weapon indiscriminantly and run out of ammunition.
Anyway it was probably felt that with the artillery and close air support they could afford a substandard squad machinegun. Or they could produce more of them trying to compensate.
The germans were not above "stealing" designs from the enemy. E.g. the 120mm mortar. The bazooka (in 88mm). The Sten gun. They tried to copy the Mosquito. They produced their own 76mm ammunition for captured Russian 76mm field guns.
The British copied the Bergman submachine gun as the Lancaster (?) submachine gun if my memory serves me right.
greetings,
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"Tarjei T. Jensen" tar...@online.no
Raising Churchills Army. David French keeps repeating that in the book.
AFTER the artillery had crushed the defence.
No. It is simple to organize the men so that you loose combat ability. All you have to do is to allocate too few men to each section.
As they were defending, they could afford it. If they were attacking you need mobility and must have more men to carry the gear.
It is the other way around. They had to increase artillery because they were unable to provide the infantry with weapons of sufficient quality.
Translated: better machine guns and heavier mortars. The best men went to the Royal Navy and RAF.
The Germans had control of the mortars closer to the fighting line and could react faster. If my memory serves me right, it was easier to get hold of artillery support in the German army.
The medium MG Browning was reasonably portable and belt fed.
If you read the book, you know they never managed to rid themselves of the defects. They merely compensated for them. They developed a workaround (artillery and close support air strikes) which worked against a resource starved enemy.
It is telling that the British Army as late as the 1980s still had not managed to absorb the lessons they should have learned from WW1. BTW The same applies to our army (Norwegian).
greetings,
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"Andrew Clark" acl...@starcottDELETETHISBIT.freeserve.co.uk
This is not the definitive or conclusive guide to the British Army in WW2. Other historians have reached very different opinions from French - eg Fraser in "WE Shall Shock Them" (London, 1983) said "As the war went on, the army changed its character and became expert. Its officers and NCOs became, in the main, adept at their jobs. Staffs became skilful, their work smooth running. Organisation [...] became rational and effective. None of this would have sufficed for victory unless the soldiers themselves had become masters of their art".
Try reading more widely before pronouncing your judgements.
Not always by any means. In fact, artillery very rarely "crushed" the defence, but merely suppressed it for a while.
Infantry close quarter fighting then became necessary. If you think artillery was so overwhelming a weapon, post your evidence of specific battles or incidents.
This is what I mean by a pointless truism. Who did this, and when? And why?
The German army had a long period of attack, remember? And even in defence, infantry battlefield mobility is important.
Your ***ertion is without force.
Rubbish.
The British Army had two of the best, if not the best, light and medium machine guns in the Bren and Vickers, with an average division having 1262 LMG and 40 MMG. There were 359 mortars in an average division, with each company having a two-inch mortar, a separate motorised platoon of 3" mortars to each battalion, and a divisional heavy (4.2") motorised mortar company. These mortars were as good as anything fielded by the Heer.
Mortars were augmented by plentiful field artillery with which, unlike the German and Soviet armies, the infantry company commanders had good instant communications. Hogg comments that in 1944 the whole of a British infantry regiment's artillery (24 field guns) could be brought to bear in under a minute, and the 72 guns and 16 heavy mortars of the division in less than three minutes. This is a flexible application of concentrated firepower for which any German divisional commander would have given his eye-teeth.
Not quite. The RN and RAF, unlike the Army, both had more volunteers and had the ability and opportunity to reject unsuitable conscripts, allowing them to retain a very high quality service. The Army had to work with whatever it got, and this gave mixed results. The Army was most short of tradesmen and educated NCOs and junior officers: precisely the sort of men snatched up by the RAF and RN.
This os wrong. There were certainly more mortars in the Heer infantry companies, but these had less collective firepower than the artillery-backed British infantry company. As for reaction times, just look at the response times above as cited by Hogg.
Your memory serves you wrong. The reverse is true.
fed.
But it was no better, and in some respects significantly worse, than the British belt-fed Vickers. Your original point was "the British [...] should have copied either the MG34, MG42 or the US Browning...". Copying the Browning M1917A1 or M1919A4 would have been a retrograde step.
You persist in regarding structural realities as "defects".
They are not. The British Army was a relatively small but richly equipped citizen army drawing its manpower from a smaller population base than the Heer, and operating within the constraints of a distinctly casualty-shy political environment. This made it essential for firepower to be used in place of flesh. That wasn't a weakness or defect or a sign of a lack of proper training or competence or military professionalism, it was a simple reality of warmaking by a democracy.
(snip continuing off-topic references).
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"Andrew Clark" acl...@starcottDELETETHISBIT.freeserve.co.uk
This is nonsense.
Firstly, the British Army by the end of WW1 had an infantry fighting doctrine easily as good as that of Germany, and training materials and procedures to match. The infantry regiment depots of that war were filled with veteran instructors using common battle doctrines issued by the War Office infantry training department. This system broke down in the inter-war decades of neglect, resulting in 1939 in an Army training structure entirely ill-equipped to produce a m*** army with a consistent, modern battle doctrine.
Secondly, as pointed out before, by the end of 1941 steps had been taken to address this. The 64 regimental training centres were merged to form 25 Infantry Training Centres, and all recruits received standard primary training and then standard infantry training. The Reserve Training Divisions (48, 76, 77 and 80) were formed at the same time to provide a vehicle for continuing specialised training for graduates from the ITCs.
A GHQ Battle School was established in November 1941 to standardise and develop specialised junior officer training for modern war; in November 1942 it was re-named the School of Infantry. In February 1943 over 44,000 sub-standard NCOs were weeded out of the Infantry and an Infantry NCO training school established. The Small Arms and Heavy Weapons Schools were expanded and attendance made compulsory. In August 1942 an Advanced Handling and Fieldcraft School opened to teach officers and NCOs about the tactical use of mechanised formations and infantry weapons.
This expansion of training coincided with the introduction of new standardised battle drills of the sort long used in the German army: communal tactical training for all members of a section, platoon or battalion in all aspects of modern war. Coupled with field exercises on the grandest scale and new Standard Operation Procedures, these drills enabled the m***-production of professional well-trained soldiers.
Try reading "Infantry Tactics 1939-45", Farrar-Hockley (1976) or "Training in the Army", Gibb (1976).
If you look at primary sources like Brooke's diaries, the new generation of British generals knew precisely what the Heer was doing in France. After all, most of the tactics of armoured blitzkrieg had been invented in Britain from 1918 onward. The problem was that the BEF could do very little in 1940 to stop the Heer, although where opportunities arose in the retreat, much damage was done.
The British Army was very slow indeed to learn all-arms integration, and the early desert battles showed this very pointedly. But by Tunisia, in 1943, the lessons had been well-learnt, if not always heeded in practice.
You seem to be implying that the British use of artillery was somehow unsporting or cowardly or unprofessional. It wasn't.
This is pretty stupid. The whole concept of the light machine gun developed after WW1 was based on three criteria: ie a gun light enough to be carried by infantry around the battlefield, firing short bursts rather than sustained fire to avoid the need for water-cooling and frequent barrel changes and with ammunition carried in a form which was suitable for rough handling. The British, French, Russians, Austrians and Italians all produced gas-operated bipod weapons firing around 30 rifle-calibre rounds from drum curved or straight box magazines. Only the Germans produced a belt-fed general purpose machine gun.
The use of a magazine feed on the Bren had nothing to do with "top br***" fears about excessive use of ammunition. It had to do with basic weapon design principles solved in the same way by dozens of gun manufacturers.
Incidentally, Which may explain why it was adopted and kept in service.
This is also stupid. In the first place, Ian Hogg (a noted weapon commentator) describes the Bren as "the finest light machine gun ever adopted in quantity by any army". Secondly, the Bren was introduced to the British Army in 1934, long before close air support was envisaged.
(snips) The Lanchester was indeed a copy of the MP28. The Sten Mk I was a simplified copy of the Lanchester. Interestingly, by the end of the war the Germans were copying the Sten as the MP3008!
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