Question: World War 1 Turning Point

[Apathy]

Why was 1917 the turning point of World War 1?



Discuss.

[Bryson C]

You might get more replies in the history section.

But for a start in 1917:

The Naval bockade of Germany started. Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare, and the U.S. entred the war.

[Ericsson]

Well !!!
the British and the french convinced themselves during World War 1
that they were doing just fine on the battlefields...
Only the timely participation of the United States saved Paris and in the months thereafter,enabled the Allies to win the
War..."

also the Germans Won the major Battles
whit one-Half to one third fewer casualties than the Allies
and how the American troops in 1918 saves the allies from defeat and negotiated peace whit the Germans...

[Apathy]

You might get more replies in the history section.

But for a start in 1917:

The Naval bockade of Germany started. Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare, and the U.S. entred the war.

I thought the naval blockade started earlier in the war. :S

[Violet Fashion by Mindy]

There was no turning point.

If you really look into it. The turning point was the replacement of the Kaiser and the collapse of the German home front.

It's navy was not defeated.

It's army was still reletivly intact.

Basically it was the collapse of the German home front that caused them to come to the peace table in 1918.

And if you really wanted to get into the nitty gritty. The key turning point was arguably the day the German Navy mutinied. It's U-Boats had been deployed in advance of the battle squadrens. It's respective fleets were being assembled for one last attempt to remove the English blockade.

England without a fleet would of meant a peace on more favourble terms to Germany.

WW1 ended in stalemate. That's all there is to it.

[California Joe]

Minardiau, American involvement made a difference at the end. I know you don't like that reasoning but it is true. I agree that a specific "turning point" wasn't exactly a verifiable thing but come on. It didn't end in a stalemate. It ended with Germany getting assraped by the other European powers. Cause they could.

[Violet Fashion by Mindy]

The war would of ended in 1919 or 1920 at the latest. If the Americans had of stayed out. In a military sense the American contribution minimal at best. I've always said that, always will say that.

But I'm sensible enough to know that the US involvment was the key political turning point of the war. In the sense that had the allies had of launched a full scale invasion of Germany then Germany would of well and truly been ****ed.

At the end of the day it's all what if's anyway.

[Lokos]

In a military sense the American contribution minimal at best. I've always said that, always will say that.

But the German military leadership only admitted the war was over after Operation Michael because of the inevitability of more than a million American combatants arriving in-theater to bolster Allied offensive efforts. Would they have opted for the surrender if the Americans were still neutral?

Regardless of the 'military' contribution of the Americans, the threat of their full-scale involvement alone dissuaded the Germans. No one wants to bleed out completely over a lost cause. As long as the Amis weren't there, though, it wasn't a 'lost cause'.

Lokos

[roland]

1917 was NOT a turning point: 1917 was quite calm, a year of reorganisation for the the French after the disaster of the offensive of April 1917 and the mutinies.
The turning points are:

- 1914: First Battle of the Marne, when the French stopped the Germans and the war of position started,
- 1915: Batte of Verdun when the Germans failed to puncture the French front,
- Spring 1918 when the last big Germans offensive were stopped and second victory of the Marne,
- 4 last month of the war when the front started moving again and the allies were crushing the Germans.

[Kitsune]

I don't know wether 1917 was THE turning point of WWI.
In the west, there was not much movement in favor of the Germans either in the year before, either. And during 1917 some good things happened: Russia gave up and the French military nearly collapsed. Then in Spring 1918, the Germans opened up with an offensive that broke through the Allied lines and made more ground than anyone had in the West since 1914. And when the Western Allies began with their counter-offensive in Summer 1918, this was actually the first successful offensive of Western forces in the war. (With this in mind one could also claim that Summer 1918 was the turning point).

In any case, the Americans made a difference. And the "Dolchstosslegende" was not so much the claim of German nationalists that one could have still won the war, but rather that the fast demobilisation of the German army ordered by the new German government took away the last German trump card that could have ensured a relatively fair treatment of Germany by the victors. Without it's army, Germany was completely helpless and victim to the complete humiliation and exploitation that was subsequently done by the French and British. This accusation is in so far unfair as that the German democrats themselves did not expect this and were as shocked about the contents of the Versailles treaty (or the treatment of the Germans during the negotiations) as anybody else.

[Yosy]

1917 was NOT a turning point: 1917 was quite calm, a year of reorganisation for the the French after the disaster of the offensive of April 1917 and the mutinies.
The turning points are:

- 1914: First Battle of the Marne, when the French stopped the Germans and the war of position started,
- 1915: Batte of Verdun when the Germans failed to puncture the French front,
- Spring 1918 when the last big Germans offensive were stopped and second victory of the Marne,
- 4 last month of the war when the front started moving again and the allies were crushing the Germans.

Don't really agree with you mate: the turning points of the war were just the battles of the Marne: the first in 1914 started the war of positions, the second in 1918 ended it. Verdun was a giant bloodbath for both sides.

[Atlantic Friend]

1917 was NOT a turning point: 1917 was quite calm, a year of reorganisation for the the French after the disaster of the offensive of April 1917 and the mutinies.
The turning points are:

- 1914: First Battle of the Marne, when the French stopped the Germans and the war of position started,
- 1915: Batte of Verdun when the Germans failed to puncture the French front,
- Spring 1918 when the last big Germans offensive were stopped and second victory of the Marne,
- 4 last month of the war when the front started moving again and the allies were crushing the Germans.

I agree with Roland about the turning points. The Marne battle saves the Western allies from a crushing defeat by disrupting the Schlieffen war plan. Verdun is supposed to bleed the French army white, but its cost is also horrendous on German armies. The second battle of the Marne sends Germany to a more passive posture. The last 4 months show Germany retreating towards the 1914 borders for the first time in 4 years.

I'll just add these two ones that did not directly involved France :

- 1917 : The Zimmermann telegram (Brits intercept a German diplomatic telegram showing that the Reich is ready to pre-empt a US intervention by supporting Mexican, and possibly Japanese militray action against the United States)

- 1917 : The Germans send revolutionary-in-exile Vladimir Illitch Oulianov, aka Lenin, to Russia and fund his political movement aimed at dislocating the Russian government.

[Ericsson]

you have the I.Q. of a wombat
man !!! read take some courses or open the light in your head.

in there final days, the man governing Wilhelmine Germany finally managed to put together a coherant and successful foreign policy.
they simply ignored France and the UK and sent President
wilson a message indicating they would accept his 14 points.
this was logical: the U.S had the Army that was defeating them.
from a puraly military point of view petain realized-as did pershing
that Germany was nowhere near beaten.
the Allies wanted to continus the war the German who wanted to preserve there army and their military cadre intact, saw an opportunity for doing
that by dealing whit wilson and wilson who was determined to end it,
had all the cards.Or moreaccuraly,the allies had lost most of theirs.
So on 29 October 1918 wilson's trusted adviser Colonel House
,put it to the allies leadership directly: if germany accepted the 14 points
and the allies did not then the U.S might well have to negotiate a peace directly whit Germany
whitout pershings 2 milion Americans, there was no Army capable of beating the Central Powers. Wilson's
terms became the allied terms.

[stonecutter]

...they simply ignored France and the UK and sent President
wilson a message indicating they would accept his 14 points.
this was logical: the U.S had the Army that was defeating them.



Well....by the end of WWII, the Germans were loathe to surrender to the Soviets, and if they had a choice, they'd surrender to the Americans instead. This wasn't because the Americans were "winning the war" moreso than the Soviets (the opposite was true), but it had everything to do with the fact that the Americans would treat them better. In WWI, Wilson stabbed his European allies in the back by going over their heads to negotiate with the Germans for an armistice, instead of listening to them (and his own general Pershing) who wanted nothing short of total victory over the Germans. To make things worse, Wilson then didn't do anything to make Germany stick to the terms of the Armistice, and the Allies felt they couldn't do much in this regard if the Americans weren't on board. It was this weak handling of Germany at the end of WWI that ultimately caused WWII.

[Violet Fashion by Mindy]

you have the I.Q. of a wombat
man !!! read take some courses or open the light in your head.


It's a question that has no defenitive answer.

You read up on your history. Just about every single historian will have a different answer.

[Atlantic Friend]

you have the I.Q. of a wombat
man !!! read take some courses or open the light in your head.

Who are you comparing to a wombat, Eric ?


in there final days, the man governing Wilhelmine Germany finally managed to put together a coherant and successful foreign policy.
they simply ignored France and the UK and sent President
wilson a message indicating they would accept his 14 points.this was logical: the U.S had the Army that was defeating them.
from a puraly military point of view petain realized-as did pershing
that Germany was nowhere near beaten.

Apparently, Generalfeldmarschall Lüdendorff had a very different opinion...isn't he the one who told the Kaiser (who the High Command had relegated to visiting hospitals and other PR tasks) that the war was now lost and that the German Army wouldn't stand the Western Allies' coming offensives ?

[roland]

LOL @Kitsune
Looks like the Germans "official" history about WWI didn't cahnged much from the 1935 time.
You'd better forget what you've been taught and retry from the beginning.
Here is one: http://www.firstworldwar.com/ that is as good as an anglo source can be, that means biased but correct.
But if you want to hear real good sources you'll have to learn French.
http://www.grande-guerre.org/
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/chtimiste/


And during 1917 some good things happened: Russia gave up and the French military nearly collapsed.

Too bad for Germany that they didn't do any progress on French lines, even during the mutinies. Is it that the German generals were completly stupid or is it that the French line was as strong as ever, even during the mutinies ?


Then in Spring 1918, the Germans opened up with an offensive that broke through the Allied lines and made more ground than anyone had in the West since 1914.
Not good for the Germans: the allies filled up the hole thanks to 40 division Petain sent on the British sector. The "battle of the emperor" you are probably speaking about was supposed to go to Paris.
The Germans spent there last ressources on the battles of spring 1918. After there failure there was no hope for them. That was a German defeat.



And when the Western Allies began with their counter-offensive in Summer 1918, this was actually the first successful offensive of Western forces in the war. (With this in mind one could also claim that Summer 1918 was the turning point).


yup, the diference is that the Germans had absolutelly no way to restore the situation. The offensives would have finished in Berlin had the war continued long enough.



In any case, the Americans made a difference.


LOL. so give us example, concret arguments where they made the difference:
- to stop the German offensive,
- in the second battle of the Marne
- in the offensives that followed.

Not saying that the American role wasn't important in the last month of the war, but you'll find nothing to back "they made the difference" like you say.
The biggest American impact was economic and moral.



And the "Dolchstosslegende" was not so much the claim of German nationalists that one could have still won the war, but rather that the fast demobilisation of the German army ordered by the new German government took away the last German trump card that could have ensured a relatively fair treatment of Germany by the victors. Without it's army, Germany was completely helpless and victim to the complete humiliation and exploitation that was subsequently done by the French and British. This accusation is in so far unfair as that the German democrats themselves did not expect this and were as shocked about the contents of the Versailles treaty (or the treatment of the Germans during the negotiations) as anybody else.

[ EDIT: sorry I misunderstood you: I thought you were pretending Germany could still win the war. My bad.
Rest of the post below modified. Still I let the part where I prove that Germany was beaten and well ]

25 september - 7 october 1918 French offensive in Champagne and Argonne:
[my translation sorry]


The results of the Champagne battle, carried out by the 4e and 5e French Army and by the American 1st Army, are brilliant. The Hindenburg line is dislocated on this side also, and carries a breach of 70 kilometers, from Suippe to the Meuse. The German 1st, 3nd and 5th army engaged all their reserves, which are about to be unable to continue the fight. In the front of Gouraud only, on 13 German divisions engaged, three were destroyed: 42e and 103e and the Bavarian division; Three are unusable because they are decimated and are going to be dissolved, seven suffered considerable losses, but still fight, with very reduced manpower. Reims is released; and for the first time since 1914, the city, ruined but not violated, sees the enemy driven back with 30 kilometers of its suburbs.
This battle cost the Germans 27000 prisoners and more than 500 guns.


8-16 october: allied offensive in North and Aisne


no more reserves available: hardly twenty exhausted divisions, which it was necessary to distribute in the various sectors to counter a rupture. On 191 German divisions which still exist on the French front, 139 were engaged and damaged... 84 divisions have been in front line and engaged for more than fifteen days, day and night, in a keen fight; They are exhausted. Everywhere, manpower are terribly reduced; the regiments of the 8th German division are nothing any more but skeletons; the 408e has a total of 400 men; the 238e, of 200; The 254e, of 240. Without speaking about dead and casualties whose appears considerable, the Army had lost more than 300,000 prisoners and the third of his artillery. Nearly 300 battalions had to be dissolved, and the 1920 class, all on line, is not enough to fill the holes. The line of fire is fed more by too old reservists or too young conscripts

That's just examples. We are not even speaking of:
- all the other very successfull offensives, notably some brillant British ones,
- 170,000 Americans put on line each month,
- This while the Germans were dying of starvation by tens of thousands,
- the Germans people, led by Communists, was revolting,

The allied had more success in the 4 last month of the war than in the first 4 years.

Germany was about to fall, simple like that.

[Count Lippe]

The turning point was when German advance on the western front ended, earlier in the war.
1917 was a very important year because the Americans entered the war and the Russians left, but It did not show who would win.

My 0,02€ ;)

[Ericsson]

Loans were only one part of the complex pattern of aid
American manufactures made war materials to allied specifications and shipped them to the allied. just to name Ovious Examples: British infantry used rifles produced be winchester and remington and does rifles fired ammunition produced in the United-States .British gunners manned 8-inch howitzers built by Midvale steel in pennsylvania given that in the first 2 years Not so great britain was able to produce only around 700.000
rifles and was desperate for heavy weapons The americans production was significant .
More Important still ... was the American supply of Explosives
because france & the UK & russia were heavily dependent on GERMAN
imports ...the British general staff had never seriously
looked into the extent to which the british were dependent on germany
Chemicals
and france got most of the raw materials for it's ammunition ..from germany.


if you go to Europe go see the ww1 cemeteries
the state of pennsylvania built a monument the size of an aircraft
carrier whit the american column rising out of the trees
celebrating a victory the french failed to achive in 4 years of slaughter
this legent of how the British & french army had won the war by knocking
the fight out of the Germans
passed rapidly into myth and folklore.

[roland]

@Ericsson: LOL it's you the folklore here. Your history book had been written by Walt Disney I'm affraid. Just look at the numbers, dates, battles, units involved and the weapons to have an idea closer to reality.

example:

Tank production 1918:
France: 4000
GB: 1391
Germany: 20
...
USA: 84
source: http://www.firstworldwar.com/weaponry/tanks.htm

Front Line Combat Aircraft, 1918:
France: 4500
GB: 3300
Germany: 2390
...
USA: 740
sources http://www.theaerodrome.com/aircraft/statistics.html

From memory: number of soldier november 1918:
USA 1.8 million
France and Britain: 9 Million ..... each.

History isn't here to make childrens sleep well, it's supposed to explain what really happened.
Stop bragging you yank: the honor of American weapons is high enough like that, no need to add some imaginary ones.

[Ericsson]

I could you be so naive... tanks and airplanes were not a factor in WW1
artillery and high explosive were
Germany had the superior artillery
like the 105 millimeter ,
150 millimeter
the monster 170 millimeter minenwerfer mortar
the 210 millimeter.
maybe your use to old history books full of allied propaganda
come on !!!! Do you really believe the allied were going to win the War whit out
the Americans ???/
Everything i toll you comes from what they teach in military college (HISTORY of WW1)
almost everybody is dead from that war. So more info is coming out
the same will happen for WW2 almost 50% of what really happened is still secret
I hope you don,t think the allied were going to win WW2 whit out the American
massive industrial might.

[1Cie GevGn]

If you want to know everything about WW1, get this DVD set;

http://www.bbcshop.com/invt/dd4745&bklist=icat,4,,5,6024

BBC's The Great War. a HUUUUUUGE set, 20 episodes of 40 minutes each. Great info on almost all aspects of the war. Kinda dated, but still lots of interviews. A must if you are seriously interested in WW1.

[roland]

I could you be so naive... tanks and airplanes were not a factor in WW1


LOL they were instrumental in the victory.
Notably the tank: it countered the two most important weapons of WWI: machine gun and .. barbed wires. It's way too often forgotten the barbed wire..
Before the tank, one of the most important role of the artillery in an offensive was to flatten the barbed wires.



artillery and high explosive were
Germany had the superior artillery
like the 105 millimeter ,
150 millimeter
the monster 170 millimeter minenwerfer mortar
the 210 millimeter.


artillery was very important of course. True the Germans were superiors but mostly in heavy artillery. The French had plenty of 75mm artillery that was much better than the German 77mm equivalent.
Anyway if the artillery had been enough to puncture the front that is what would have happened in 1915 in Verdun. That wasn't the case.
And as a defensive weapon, the machine gun and barbed wires were even more important than artillery.



maybe your use to old history books full of allied propaganda

Some yes, some not. There is certainly excellent historians on both side of the pond. What we are speaking about here is what is taught to childrens and how is the collective memory.
In short, like I understand it, it's that way:
- Americans: "the brave and proud Americans saved the French and British butt and did in 6 month what those incompetent (not to say mutined cowards) failed to do in 4 years" => bullsh:t
- Germans: "the war wasn't lost, our armies were resisting but we were backstabbed by the commies, then the French and British took this occasion to humiliate the poor Germans that benevolently had accepted the peace" => bullsh:t
- British: "certainly, with the French we did a very good job but it's the english that in the end punctured the German front with our tanks and forced the Germans to the armistice",
- French: "with the Brits we did a very good job but it's the French that had to do most of the job and we always had to convince the english not to run to the channel ports each time things were tough. The yanks and rosbif still managed to fvck our victory".
[The last sentence was hidden, the "official" history prefered to speak of the French and Americans fighting side by side like brothers]

All in all, sorry, the British and French version are the best, the French being the most fair and balanced.



come on !!!! Do you really believe the allied were going to win the War whit out
the Americans ???/
Everything i toll you comes from what they teach in military college (HISTORY of WW1)
almost everybody is dead from that war. So more info is coming out
the same will happen for WW2 almost 50% of what really happened is still secret
I hope you don,t think the allied were going to win WW2 whit out the American
massive industrial might.

It's not the soldiers that generally see the big pictures. It's the historians that consider all the divisions from the beginning to the end, study all the archives and work on obvious material. Soldiers testimony is still important but to show the "atmosphere", ordinary life, suffering, moral, things like that the raw numbers can't show.

Like I've said the most important effect of America in WW1 is moral, economic and industrial. Not forgetting that in the end they were a very potent force. But too late to pretend "we saved the British and French butt" like big retards like to say.
I can't speak a lot of the economic aspect but we all know Germany is rather land locked, that the blockade is strategically the most important reason of German's defeat, while the fact that the allies could deal and trade with the whole world, notably America, is the most important reason of there success.

We are NOT speaking of WWII here. Still there is a lot to say about the American collective memory about WWII in Europe too but there they have much more arguments....

[Esszett]

The turning point was when German advance on the western front ended, earlier in the war.
1917 was a very important year because the Americans entered the war and the Russians left, but It did not show who would win.

My 0,02€ ;)
x 2
Short and simple, but true IMO.

The whole German strategy was based on the Schlieffen-plan.
The Schlieffen-plan said that the Germans had to mobilize their troops much faster than the French and the Russians and to attack them preemptively in order to be able to win a two-front war.
It was essential to attack the French while they were not ready and to advance fast enough to encircle their troops to crush them (the "cutting sickle" after antique example).
The whole plan was based on SURPRISE (attack through neutral Belgium which would unfortunately give the British a reason to enter the war) and SPEED (faster mobilization, usage of trains to move troops, fast advance through France). Some say that the plan was the (not so well thought-out) precedessor of the Blitzkrieg-strategy.
I bet most German generals already expected to lose the war in the west when the German advance was stopped by the French and advised to retreat and try to gain a stalmate.
For a military-expert it must have been very clear that Germany could not win a static material-war against combined French and British forces while still fighting the Russians in the east.

Maybe in 1917 some Germans saw light at the end of the tunnel since the Russians left the war and the troops deployed on the Eastern front could be sent to the west as well.
But the generals must have seen that even these additional troops could not make a difference in the long run.
At latest when the Americans entered the war officially and sent even more troops and material the whole situation became completely hopeless for the Germans.
So the Americans made a difference (at least in ending the war earlier) but the real "turnpoint" of the war was in its very beginning IMO.
Sad thing is that the German generals kept on fighting even though they must have known that they had no chance just because they were commanded to do so.
One of the disadvantages of Prussian discipline and loyality.

[gadzook]

Besides the development of the tank by the Allies, I believe that the 1918 Influenza outbreak ended World War I. If you ever have the chance to walk the massive graveyards of the larger World War I battlefields and read up on the backstory of how those soldiers died you will see that roughly 2/3 of those buried in 1918 died of influenza...and not enemy action.

Influenza not only ravaged the trenches, but also the homefront which shutdown the production of war material, food and supplies.

[Kitsune]

@roland:

After re-checking my post, I still don't know what's wrong with it. What I said is basically ok. Also, despite trying very hard, I simply cannot imagine why it seemed to have offended you so badly.

A question: have you ever considered primal scream therapy? That might be a good idea...just a suggestion, of course. ;-)

[roland]

@roland:

After re-checking my post, I still don't know what's wrong with it. What I said is basically ok. Also, despite trying very hard, I simply cannot imagine why it seemed to have offended you so badly.

A question: have you ever considered primal scream therapy? That might be a good idea...just a suggestion, of course. ;-)

Yeah I see you prefer to stay in the generalities.
I've countered you numerous time and I've never seen you proving me wrong.
Just you post elsewhere the same cr@p about WWI and the poor Germany that didn't lost the war but were unjustly humiliated by the French that just before were suing for peace because of the mutinies.
We know your bullsh:t: it had been served to us numerous time also by the American red neck those last years.

Hypocrit.

[Freibier]

Pretty big mouth Roland, considering the fact that without english/american support you would be speaking german now and there probably wouldn't have been a second world war p-)

[JoaMei]

I could you be so naive... tanks and airplanes were not a factor in WW1
artillery and high explosive were
Germany had the superior artillery
like the 105 millimeter ,
150 millimeter
the monster 170 millimeter minenwerfer mortar
the 210 millimeter.
maybe your use to old history books full of allied propaganda
come on !!!! Do you really believe the allied were going to win the War whit out
the Americans ???/
Everything i toll you comes from what they teach in military college (HISTORY of WW1)
almost everybody is dead from that war. So more info is coming out
the same will happen for WW2 almost 50% of what really happened is still secret
I hope you don,t think the allied were going to win WW2 whit out the American
massive industrial might.

Airforce was extremely important for directing Artillery fire im WW1, those who could detect supply lines and depots without being harrassed by fighter had a significant advantage.

[roland]

Pretty big mouth Roland, considering the fact that without english/american support you would be speaking german now and there probably wouldn't have been a second world war p-)

LOL Freibier. Looking for a little flame war aren't we ? :)

Saying that the french would speak German is one of the most retarded statement.
While we are in retarded statement, here is mine: the French had spent 100 years to kick the English out of France, we would probably had spent less to kick the German out. France is eternal you should know that.

More seriously, you must know that since the English had been confined in its little rainy island after the hundred year war, he can't accept any dominating power in the continent. I'm sure you did never believed that the French and English were allied because they loved each others did you ?
Btw you should be really pissed against the English: In the Revolution wars, if it weren't the English, Germany would have enjoyed Liberty long before. You got "Prussified" instead. Poor Germans :(

[Kitsune]

@roland

I really do not understand you. Have you ever considered that France itself was treated quite generous at least two times in his history by those who had defeated it? First time I am refering to is the year 1815, after the Napoleonic wars during which the German states were mostly conquered and humiliated by France. But when France was beaten treated with consideration.

Second time was 1869/70. France, again, caused, started, declared and lost a war against a German state, this time against Prussia. And once again it came away quite well. It had reparations to pay but its status as a great power was not stripped away. It lost no right to build up an army of any size. It did not even loose one colony.

When France was the victor over Germany (not even because of its own sole power) it did not show itself as a gracious winner. But if you suggest that Germany was treated with too much consideration (quite amazing considering the treatment it received), please note that it might have been at least as much a mistake from the German side not to seek some sort of final solution for the French problem in 1815 or 1870.

Your claims to have proven me wrong seem quite hollow as well. To say that France in all its might would have crushed Germany in 1918 without any transatlantic help and that the Americans did only steal your victory - are simply ridiculous. For me its only one more reason to think that they should have staid home back then.

[roland]

@roland

I really do not understand you. Have you ever considered that France itself was treated quite generous at least two times in his history by those who had defeated it? First time I am refering to is the year 1815, after the Napoleonic wars during which the German states were mostly conquered and humiliated by France. But when France was beaten treated with consideration.

Second time was 1869/70. France, again, caused, started, declared and lost a war against a German state, this time against Prussia. And once again it came away quite well. It had reparations to pay but its status as a great power was not stripped away. It lost no right to build up an army of any size. It did not even loose one colony.


Well after Waterloo, the Prussians massacred there fair share of prisoners or out of combat soldiers. Not very nice that. The English and the Russians had to calm down the Prussians after the coalized victory.
In 1870 the Prussians did, again, there share of masacres against militrary and civilians as well.
And they took our Alsace and Lorraine. If it's treat France with consideration that I would like to know your definition of consideration.
Anyway in both case, I don't think it's benevolence that made the coalized/Prussians treat France not more badly. In 1815 the coalised still feared France. In 1870 when the Prussians left that was already getting pretty hot for them. Some military and civilians were regrouping and organizing on the countryside and already the Prussian supply lines were in danger.


When France was the victor over Germany (not even because of its own sole power) it did not show itself as a gracious winner. But if you suggest that Germany was treated with too much consideration (quite amazing considering the treatment it received), please note that it might have been at least as much a mistake from the German side not to seek some sort of final solution for the French problem in 1815 or 1870.

The Germans didn't decided alone in 1815 as they were just a not so big part of the coalition. In 1870 that was for everybody the best soluton.
Trying to destroy France is simply not realist. Destroying Germany after 1918 was: Germany is a only 150 year old country.


Your claims to have proven me wrong seem quite hollow as well. To say that France in all its might would have crushed Germany in 1918 without any transatlantic help and that the Americans did only steal your victory - are simply ridiculous.

The allied would have crushed Germany with or without the American troops.
And the fact that we lost the victory is not my claim. That's almost an historian consensus.
I've given arguments. What are yours ?

[Kitsune]

roland wrote:
Well after Waterloo, the Prussians massacred there fair share of prisoners or out of combat soldiers. Not very nice that. The English and the Russians had to calm down the Prussians after the coalized victory.
In 1870 the Prussians did, again, there share of masacres against militrary and civilians as well.
And they took our Alsace and Lorraine. If it's treat France with consideration that I would like to know your definition of consideration.
Anyway in both case, I don't think it's benevolence that made the coalized/Prussians treat France not more badly. In 1815 the coalised still feared France. In 1870 when the Prussians left that was already getting pretty hot for them. Some military and civilians were regrouping and organizing on the countryside and already the Prussian supply lines were in danger.

Alsace Lorraine was originally a 100% German region, which the French conquered in the 16th century. During the 30-years war, they invaded again and tried to secure their hold on it by creating a sort of death zone more more than 50 kilometers wide to the east of it by destroying all farmsteads, villages and towns in it (which is remembered by inhabitants of this region to this very day). Even in 1870 1.2 million of the 1.5 million inhabitants of Alsace Lorraine spoke German as mother language. So the French attitude to treat Alsace Lorraine as a region that is unquestinably theirs is quite disputable. By the way: the population of Alsace Lorraine was never asked wether it wanted to belong to France or Germany...not even the French did ever dare this.

As far as the Prussian soldiers behaviour during Waterloo are concerned, its true that not too many prisoners were taken by them that day. I just can say that Prussia had been deeply humiliated by their conquest and humiliating treatment by Napoleon. So they fought with a passion.

Please remember...not only had the Napoleon lead French been beaten, no, after a few years Napoleon returned to France from Elba and tried to start it all over again! And for a time he even seemed to manage that. After 100 days, his defeat at Waterloo prevented further exploits of his, however. so there was all reason to being fed up with the Gallic nation. And if France was feared in 1815 (which it was), why wasn't this seen as even more a reason to crush it once and for all?
The situation was not unsimiliar to the one in 1919: the defeated Germany had fought against France, Britain and Russia at the same time for four 4 years and with this demonstrated its power. It's potential was feared and rightly so. But in 1815 the victors decided (wisely) that it would be best to grant the French a peace they could live with. In 1919 it was especially France wanted to crush Germany. And that was certainly not more realistic than to try to crush France in 1815..."because Germany was only 150 years old". On the contrary: in restrospect one has to ascertain that the idea of the national state was very young in 1815 (26 years old) but in 1918 it was an well established idea.
I don't think that is no reason to very proud of Frances behaviour in 1919 as a Frenchman. But perhaps it was just that the early 19th century had been a more civilized time.

I also do not agree that there would be any overwhelming consensus among historians that France "lost" the victory in 1919. It and the other victors imposed a crushing peace upon Germany which rendered this country help- and defenseless. Along with the British the French took over all of Europe as their zone of interest, shamelessly bending everything according to their will from now on with help of the League of Nations, an organisation that was nearly totally dominated by them. The result was desastrous: ten years later dictatorships and unrest had popped up everywhere in Europe, which had become quite a different place from what it had been before WWI.
But France and Britain failed to hold down Germany (which they had not been able to defeat in the Great War by their own power). But even that is not the whole story, because even if they had, it would not have done them much good. They had made another mistake: they completely ignored Russia (aka Sovietunion). From the late twenties, Stalin was arming with great speed, in 1935 the Red Army had already far more tanks, artillery and planes than France and Britain together. And it's not like Russia at all to accept the French and British dominating Eastern Europe when it can help it, not under the Tsars, not today and certainly not during the Soviet era. In fact, the French and British arrogance must have been seen as downright a challenge by Stalin.
If Germany had been held to its Versaille treaty imposed military restrictions Stalin would have had a much more easy time to expand westward. It's very likely that the Soviets would have liberated Europe from parlamentarism to the rhine or even to the channel until the mid 40ties. Ending the Franco-British rule of Europe.
The Western Allies didn't loose the victory. But they forfeited the chance to create a stable lasting order in Europe. And such a one could have been only created WITH Germany (Europe's [-Russia] largest nation as far as poulation and economy is concerned) not AGAINST it. That would have meant to behave fairly and graciously, however.
But Imperialist greed proved stronger.

As far as 1870 is concerned: France did come of easy. No 800.000 civilians starved to death. No colonies were taken. Nor did France loose a sixth of its territory, only Alsace Lorraine. And considering its history and the ethnicity of its inhabitants it was quite understandable that it was taken back by Germany. (Bismarck did not even want that, by the way, for future Franco-German relations sake). France wasn't forbidden to have an army that could defend it borders and it was no subject to subsequent humiliating occupations by the Prussians (as Germany was by the French in 1921 and 1923).
And if you really believe that those French militas could have won against the Prussians (which had downright thrashed the regular French army in various battles) then you must agree that it was incredibly stupid for the French to pay one Franc of the agreed upon reparation money. And why didn't they just keep Alsace Lorraine? Why did they accept defeat in the first place?

And your arguments about WWI? It's simply that American support mattered a lot. American supplies helped the French and British armies to an enormous degree, American troops strengthened the defense lines. There is no telling how much farther the German troops would have gotten if they would not have been there. That the Allied defense-line would have been broken apart by the Reichswehr in spring 1918 may be no certainty but it is definitely a possibility. Two million men can make quite a difference. The simple statement that the French and British would have crushed the Germans wiht or without american help with absolute certainty is wrong...and that with absolute certainty.
From where do you believe came the sudden power from the western Allies allgedly had anyway...without showing it for the past 4 years?

You mention the tanks and airplanes. But these tanks weren't the well developed weapons of WWII, but slow and rather cumbersome things. Same for the airplanes: they weren't as important in WWI as they would become later.
In late Autumn 1918 the Allies offensive, after achieving great successes, had nonetheless lost its power and the tanks had mostly broken down. Winter was drawing near and the German troops had not even been pushed out of France. If the German government had not demobilized the army because they trusted Wilson's 14 points peace proposal, the war would have gone on...well into 1919. And military history shows that subsequent attacks are often less successful than their predecessor because the enemy adapts.

[roland]

roland wrote:

Alsace Lorraine was originally a 100% German region, which the French conquered in the 16th century. During the 30-years war, they invaded again and tried to secure their hold on it by creating a sort of death zone more more than 50 kilometers wide to the east of it by destroying all farmsteads, villages and towns in it (which is remembered by inhabitants of this region to this very day). Even in 1870 1.2 million of the 1.5 million inhabitants of Alsace Lorraine spoke German as mother language. So the French attitude to treat Alsace Lorraine as a region that is unquestinably theirs is quite disputable. By the way: the population of Alsace Lorraine was never asked wether it wanted to belong to France or Germany...not even the French did ever dare this.

Alsace and Lorraine don't belong to Germany. Alsace and Lorraine was part of Lotharingia, the region resulting of the split of the Franck empire of Charlemagne's (Karl der Große) between his three sons: the west for and Charles the Bald that became France, the East for Louis the German that became the holy roman German empire, and the middle for Lothaire.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/843-870_Europe.jpg
Both France and Germany were in competition to swallow the Lothaire part that's all. Just Alsace and Lorraine were the last to be eaten but asking for Alsace and Lorraine is the same logic as asking for Lyon, my town that was part of Lotharingia too.
Culturally the Alsacians were Germans AND French.
And no, no part of France was asked to become French: France had been built with sword force from Paris and gained loyalty of the population for its own merits and its protection.

Prussia never was part of Charlemagne/Karl der Große's empire btw. That's probably why they are barbarians. They are not westeners. Too bad Germany had been Prussified and the Germans had there memory erased after 1815. They had to forget that most of Germany was France allie.



As far as the Prussian soldiers behaviour during Waterloo are concerned, its true that not too many prisoners were taken by them that day. I just can say that Prussia had been deeply humiliated by their conquest and humiliating treatment by Napoleon. So they fought with a passion.


not an excuse.



Please remember...not only had the Napoleon lead French been beaten, no, after a few years Napoleon returned to France from Elba and tried to start it all over again! And for a time he even seemed to manage that. After 100 days, his defeat at Waterloo prevented further exploits of his, however. so there was all reason to being fed up with the Gallic nation.


strange how everybody forget that it was NOT France the agressor. France had been agressed in the first place. The ideas of the Revolution were spreading all over Europe and the Republican ideal was a threat for the monarchies so Austria, Prussia, Britain and Russia attacked France. Napoleon didn't wanted war. It's Britain that kept building coalitions over and over again each time one had been beaten. The Germans, notably Bavaria, and the French were allied. Ok, in the end, the Germans were fed up with those endless wars but so were the French that suffered even more than the Germans. Unfortunatelly the Prussian propaganda made the German only remind the bad part of the story.
Napoleon's main mistake was to have pushed his theory "the best defense is attack" a little too far though. He should have retreatd on our "natural frontier" and adopted a more defensive posture.



And if France was feared in 1815 (which it was), why wasn't this seen as even more a reason to crush it once and for all?


Once ? that would have been the second time: France had already been destroyed during the hundred year war, for all ? taking the hundred year war example, France took 4 centuries to recover but did. Since there isn't the channel to protect Prussia, I don't think the Prussians considered this option as wise. Then don't forget that Prussia didn't decided alone, they were a quite minor part of the coalition in fact, less important than the Brits or the Russians.

For sure I don't believe any Prussian benevolence one second. That's ridiculous to pretend that.



The situation was not unsimiliar to the one in 1919: the defeated Germany had fought against France, Britain and Russia at the same time for four 4 years and with this demonstrated his power. It's potential was feared and rightly so. But in 1815 the victors decided (wisely) that it would be best to grant the French a peace they could live with. In 1919 it was especially France wanted to crush Germany. I don't think that is no reason to very proud of as a Frenchman. But perhaps it was just that the early 19th century had been a more civilized time.


I said that Germany was an only 150 year old country, I was wrong. In 1918 Germany was only a 48 year old country. Taking into account the beginning of the "Prussification" of Germany, 1815, Prussian Germany was 103 year old witch is still not much mostly since we consider that the Prussification, if fast, still wasn't done in one day.
So, it would had been easy to restore different Germans states, and the German people wouldn't have suffered of that. On the contrary: they would have avoided WWII.
Okay, part of Germany would have been plundered and burned but that would have been just to make them understand well who was the winner and make them ask themselves some questions and search where they had been wrong.
That would have been not bad for the French moral either :)
Try, for once and for only a few minuts to put yourself at French place, you'll understand a few things I'm affraid you missed completly: the sacrifice of two generation, a country ruined and 1/3 completly detroyed all that for what ? a fvucking treaty !



As far as 1870 is concerned: France did come of easy. No 800.000 civilians starved to death. No colonies were taken. Nor did France loose a sixth of its territory, only Alsace Lorraine. And considering its history and the ethnicity of its inhabitants it was quite understandable that it was taken back by Germany. (Bismarck did not even want that, by the way, for future Franco-German relations sake). France wasn't forbidden to have an army that could defend it borders and it was no subject to subsequent humiliating occupations by the Prussians (as Germany was by the French in 1921 and 1923).
And if you really believe that those French militas could have won against the Prussians (which had downright thrashed the regular French army in various battles) then you must agree that it was incredibly stupid for the French to pay one Franc of the agreed upon reparation money. And why didn't they just keep Alsace Lorraine? Why did they accept defeat in the first place?

To avoid suffering since the Prussians were ready to leave. Also France had to crush a communist revolution. But there was a lot of debate about the conditions of the peace. Even a word was invented about this "capitulars" to name those who accepted this peace. Since then, the new Republic did all she could to get Alsace and Lorraine back. I've seen some school books of this period, both for girls and boys, that's impressive. I tell you, in 1914 the French were well prepared mentally.



And your arguments about WWI? It's simply that American support mattered a lot. American supplies helped the French and British armies to an enormous degree, American troops strengthened the defense lines. There is no telling how much farther the German troops would have gotten if they would not have been there. That the Allied defense-line would have been broken apart by the Reichswehr in spring 1918 may be no certainty but it is definitely a possibility. Two million men can make quite a difference.
From where do you believe came the sudden power from the western Allies allgedly had anyway...without showing it for the past 4 years?

You mention the tanks and airplanes. But these tanks weren't the well developed weapons of WWII, but slow and rather cumbersome things. Same for the airplanes: they weren't as important in WWI as they would become later.
In late Autumn 1918 the Allies offensive, after achieving great successes, had nonetheless lost its power and the tanks had mostly broken down. Winter was drawing near and the German troops had not even been pushed out of France. If the German government had not demobilized the army because they trusted Wilson's 14 points peace proposal, the war would have gone on...well into 1919. And military history shows that subsequent attacks are often less successful than their predecessor because the enemy adapts.

I'm getting a little tired now. I think I've replied your points previously and there http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?t=38315

regards.

[Esszett]

Prussia never was part of Charlemagne/Karl der Große's empire btw. That's probably why they are barbarians. They are not westeners. Too bad Germany had been Prussified and the Germans had there memory erased after 1815. They had to forget that most of Germany was France allie.

Yup, Prussia, or at least the "original" territory of Prussia, was not part of Charles the Great's empire.
Agree with that, but then WTF???
Prussians being babarians because of that?
Hope you are aware that the ones who ruled Prussia (nobles) were (ethnic) Germans.
So was it the influence of the Slavs they met in the newly conquered territories that "barbarised" them? Interesting theory.

Oh yeah, and AFAIK have the other German states been France's "allies" just as much as Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia have been Soviet-Russia's "allies".
And most probably liked the French even less than the Eastern Europeans liked the Russians.




I said that Germany was an only 150 year old country, I was wrong. In 1918 Germany was only a 48 year old country. Taking into account the beginning of the "Prussification" of Germany, 1815, Prussian Germany was 103 year old witch is still not much mostly since we consider that the Prussification, if fast, still wasn't done in one day.
So, it would had been easy to restore different Germans states, and the German people wouldn't have suffered of that. On the contrary: they would have avoided WWII.

Your argumentation is ridiculous.
So you say just because the official German state was relatively young at that time that the nationalism wasn't strong? You think there hasn't been a national identity among Germans?
Another very interesting theory.
I can think of some people living in relatively young states now who wouldn't be very pleased if someone tried to divide their nations.
I bet the Germans at that time wouldn't have been either.

You better be glad that noone got this "brilliant" idea back then.
Things could have gotten very much worse than they already did.



Okay, part of Germany would have been plundered and burned but that would have been just to make them understand well who was the winner and make them ask themselves some questions and search where they had been wrong.
That would have been not bad for the French moral either :)
Try, for once and for only a few minuts to put yourself at French place, you'll understand a few things I'm affraid you missed completly: the sacrifice of two generation, a country ruined and 1/3 completly detroyed all that for what ? a fvucking treaty !

I hope that's just a stupid joke!

[Atlantic Friend]

roland wrote:

Alsace Lorraine was originally a 100% German region, which the French conquered in the 16th century. During the 30-years war, they invaded again and tried to secure their hold on it by creating a sort of death zone more more than 50 kilometers wide to the east of it by destroying all farmsteads, villages and towns in it (which is remembered by inhabitants of this region to this very day). Even in 1870 1.2 million of the 1.5 million inhabitants of Alsace Lorraine spoke German as mother language. So the French attitude to treat Alsace Lorraine as a region that is unquestinably theirs is quite disputable. By the way: the population of Alsace Lorraine was never asked wether it wanted to belong to France or Germany...not even the French did ever dare this.

I think the question of Alsace-Lorraine is settled once and for all, at least in any foresseable future. Wouldn't you agree ?


As far as the Prussian soldiers behaviour during Waterloo are concerned, its true that not too many prisoners were taken by them that day. I just can say that Prussia had been deeply humiliated by their conquest and humiliating treatment by Napoleon. So they fought with a passion.

If what Roland stated is true, then the Prussian soldiers weren't fighting, unless killing prisoners is considered "fighting".



They had made another mistake: they completely ignored Russia (aka Sovietunion). From the late twenties, Stalin was arming with great speed, in 1935 the Red Army had already far more tanks, artillery and planes than France and Britain together. And it's not like Russia at all to accept the French and British dominating Eastern Europe when it can help it, not under the Tsars, not today and certainly not during the Soviet era. In fact, the French and British arrogance must have been seen as downright a challenge by Stalin.

But wasn't that Imperial Germany that helped create the Soviet Union, and then weren't the Weimar Republik and the Third Reich that fortified Soviet Russia through economic and military agreements ? Blaming the Soviet Union on France and Great Britain and exonerating Germany does sound a little...odd, given historical facts.

[ogukuo72]

But wasn't that Imperial Germany that helped create the Soviet Union, and then weren't the Weimar Republik and the Third Reich that fortified Soviet Russia through economic and military agreements ? Blaming the Soviet Union on France and Great Britain and exonerating Germany does sound a little...odd, given historical facts.

Good point.

You might even argue that Germany had caused a lot of problems for itself.

If Germany had not decided to start building a fleet to rival the Royal Navy in the late 19th century, the British might not have reconciled and formed an informal alliance with France under the detente cordiale.

In 1914, it marched through Belgium, blithely ignoring its neutrality and its pact with the United Kingdom which oblidged the later to come to its defence.

If Germany had not decided to launch unrestricted submarine attacks on all ships, the US might not have come into WW1.

If Germany had not decided - rather foolishly - to send a telegram to promise the Mexicans American territory (which the Mexican would have to fight for!) if they would invade the US, and then to admit that they did send the telegram, then the US might not have come into WW1.

If Germany had not launched Operation Michael in Mar 1918, and continue to launch major offensives one after the other despite the defeat of each in turn, then it might still have sufficient strategic reserves to contain Allied breakthroughs in Aug 1918.

If Germany had not decided to launch a major offensive in Verdun in 1916 and lost 1.2million men in the fight, it might still have sufficient forces to fight in 1918.

If Germany had not sent Lenin in a sealed train to start a revolution in Russia, it might not be faced with a Communist power to its east.

If Germany had not Russia had never become communist, there might not have been communist agitation within its own borders, which led to a mutiny in the fleet and workers striking.

The Germans had acted foolishly and arrogantly in WW1. Their many political and strategic mistakes contributed to their defeats.

This miserable performance was repeated in WW2. The same foolishness and arrogance - as well as naked aggression - led Germany to first pick a fight against Russia, then declare war against the US.

Simply put, Germany had always lost because of its foolishness, arrogance and aggression.

[orko_8]

I think that Gallipoli was a very important turning point. It had very strong strategic, military and political consequences for both sides. After the defeat, Churchill's political career came almost to an end, AFAIK.

[Field_Gunner]

1917=Vimy ridge...after failed french and then british attacks failed the canadians were sent in and after only 2 days of fighting the ridge was taken and was the single most successful Allied advance on the Western Front to that date.


dont forget people the two forces that advanced the furthest at the end of the was were the canadians and australia.

another point of interest when the first americans made it to the front lines they were tasked to move into british lines so the battered brits could get some rest. the brits were sent in the next day to releave the americans who took massive casualties and were "hooting and hollering" at the british the night befor because they were in "holes in the ground" and not fighting like "real men"....someone forgot to tell the yanks about germans having artillery and machine guns.

[ClydeFrog]

Jesus Roland, quit starting every single post with LOL. Makes you look really arrogant and sure doesn't make you any more credible.

As for ogukuo, you are just a fool. Like Germany could have forseen all those ifs and mights up there. Blaming Germany for the Soviet Union is like blaming the Brits for the Taliban. Not even mentioning Lenin was one of the better Commies. And when Prussians kill prisoners it's an atrocity but when French plunder and burn it's the right thing to do and even deserves a smiley-face?

It's thinking like yours that largely contibuted to the Germans feeling the invasion of 1940 was justified. So in ogouko's, or whatever his name is, logic that would mean the French foolishness and arrogance led to their country getting f-ed in the a in WW2.

[ogukuo72]

I might well be a fool, but it's not very civilised of you to point that out. ;)

Now, if you have calmed down and sorted out your thoughts, perhaps you can tell me why you think I am a fool?

[Vorian]

Guys these statements: "This territory was ours before you invade 400 years before" sound too Balkan. I expected the French and the Germans to be more sensible than us.

Anyway, the turning point in the war was the war declaration of the US. the military support was not very important but the economical aid was a huge advantage for the Allies. Germany was fighting in two fronts for too long and its economy could not bear the costs of war.

[Lokos]

As for ogukuo, you are just a fool.

I have seen no evidence to suggest that ogukuo is a fool. This insult was not to your credit.

Lokos

[ClydeFrog]

Okay i apologize for that rather harsh comment, but ogukuo gave a pretty one-sided review there. But let me explain.

In 1914, it marched through Belgium, blithely ignoring its neutrality and its pact with the United Kingdom which oblidged the later to come to its defence.
The alternative, a direct assault on the French border, would have been suicidal. The German-French-borderline is extremely small and of a terrain that offers little to no cover and no tactical maneuvering. An attack there would have led to complete slaughter. So the attack via Belgium was the only option. England would've entered the war along with France anyways.

If Germany had not decided to launch unrestricted submarine attacks on all ships, the US might not have come into WW1.The unrestricted submarine warfare was the only chance to lift the British naval siege, the single most devestating "turning point" in WWI. Had they succeeded many of their problems would've been gone. The possible entry of the US was more or less a fact anyway, with the US supplying the Brits and French.

If Germany had not decided - rather foolishly - to send a telegram to promise the Mexicans American territory (which the Mexican would have to fight for!) if they would invade the US, and then to admit that they did send the telegram, then the US might not have come into WW1.Yeah that telegram made the US decide to enter the war. Before that, they all loved the German Reich. This is how politics is done. You support those who fight your enemy. Same was done with Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. Noone questions the Brits or the US for that. But the winners write the history books.

If Germany had not launched Operation Michael in Mar 1918, and continue to launch major offensives one after the other despite the defeat of each in turn, then it might still have sufficient strategic reserves to contain Allied breakthroughs in Aug 1918.By march 1918 the German troops were already starving to death. Assault was the only option. Waiting wasn't.

If Germany had not decided to launch a major offensive in Verdun in 1916 and lost 1.2million men in the fight, it might still have sufficient forces to fight in 1918.What exactly makes you think Germany decided to attack that fort just for the heck of it? Speed was the main idea behind the Schlieffenplan. Besieging a fort for months woul've meant more and more problems for the German economy. Germany needed a victory in the west and it needed it fast. They learned from this by simply ignoring the Maginot-line in WW2. But prior to WW1 forts were either besieged or attacked, and as stated besiegeing was out of option. You always say 'didnt' they do thisandthat, they might have had enough troops to fight in august 1918.' That's the mistake you make: They were convinced their attacks would turn out victorious. You don't attack if you don't intend to win. Could they have forseen the future like we know it they would've done differnet things, but for them these all were promising yet risky strategies. Given their knowledge and the contemporary doctrines all were justified, even if they led to defeat in the end.

If Germany had not sent Lenin in a sealed train to start a revolution in Russia, it might not be faced with a Communist power to its east.

If Germany had not Russia had never become communist, there might not have been communist agitation within its own borders, which led to a mutiny in the fleet and workers striking.
Like said above Lenin wasn't a monster, he might have steered Communism in the right direction, that aside, do you really think Germany or anyone else could've forseen that Communism would become the monster it became? If so you are wiser than anyone in the early 20th century. Apart form that Stalin slaughtered most of his officers prior to WW2, so Communism kind of contributed to the early victories of the Wehrmacht on the eastern front. Considering the inner unrests that led to the collapse of the home front: The people actually were fed up more with their own leaders and the Kaiser in particular than they had sympathy for communism.

[roland]

Anyway, the turning point in the war was the war declaration of the US. the military support was not very important but the economical aid was a huge advantage for the Allies. Germany was fighting in two fronts for too long and its economy could not bear the costs of war.

The French and Brits could deal and trade with the whole world, notably the US, contrary to Germany that is rather land locked and was hermetically blockaded.
One can't only credit the US for that. Rather also credit geography and the allied navy, most notably British.
For sure the allied were damned glad to see the Yanks coming and the fact that Wilson fvcked our victory is largelly forgotted and forgiven ... as long as bigots don't start to claim that they "saved our butt". That is false, low and useless.

[Atlantic Friend]

Okay i apologize for that rather harsh comment, but ogukuo gave a pretty one-sided review there. But let me explain.


[quote]The alternative, a direct assault on the French border, would have been suicidal. The German-French-borderline is extremely small and of a terrain that offers little to no cover and no tactical maneuvering. An attack there would have led to complete slaughter. So the attack via Belgium was the only option. England would've entered the war along with France anyways.

Problem is, Clyde, Germany was one of the three powers that had signed the document guaranteeing the integrity of Beligian borders, along with France and England. And even with a German invasion of Belgium, England wasn't guaranteed to enter the war, as was shown in the days immediately preceding the cascade of declarations of war. In fact, part of Great Britain's City was heavily leaning againt intervention, and Sir Edward Grey did his best not to commit before the very last minute... Cluedo like, British neutrality was killed by Colonel Mustard in the library with the German Hochseeflotte, German invasion of Belgium, and Anglo-German commercial competition.


The unrestricted submarine warfare was the only chance to lift the British naval siege, the single most devestating "turning point" in WWI. Had they succeeded many of their problems would've been gone. The possible entry of the US was more or less a fact anyway, with the US supplying the Brits and French.

The United States were also supplying Germany through neutral Norway and Sweden. There again, a large part of the business cirtcles was opposed to war, and it's only because of the Morgan Bank activism, the sinking of the Lusitania, and the Zimmermann telegram that President Wilson declared war on Imperial Germany.


Yeah that telegram made the US decide to enter the war. Before that, they all loved the German Reich. This is how politics is done. You support those who fight your enemy. Same was done with Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. Noone questions the Brits or the US for that. But the winners write the history books.

The winners, the losers, the neutrals, everybody writes the goddamn history books, generally even before the war is over. That's why everybody is so totally "supportive" of the US action in Iraq, for example.


By march 1918 the German troops were already starving to death. Assault was the only option. Waiting wasn't.

Peace openings could have been another option, but WW1 is a long story of missed opportuinities in 1915,1916,1917,1918...




Like said above Lenin wasn't a monster, he might have steered Communism in the right direction, that aside, do you really think Germany or anyone else could've forseen that Communism would become the monster it became? If so you are wiser than anyone in the early 20th century. Apart form that Stalin slaughtered most of his officers prior to WW2, so Communism kind of contributed to the early victories of the Wehrmacht on the eastern front. Considering the inner unrests that led to the collapse of the home front: The people actually were fed up more with their own leaders and the Kaiser in particular than they had sympathy for communism.

Lenin was a small aristocrat whose goal was to destroy civilization as it was known in Europe and replace it with a proletarian dictatorship utopia, beginning with Russia. This fact was well known of the German services that supplied him with money and wanted the semi-democratic Kerensky regime to crumble. While Imperial Germany can't reasonably be called responsible for the horrors of the Stalinist regime (the Weimar Republik and the Third Reich are a different story there), no one can say that they could not anticipate what was to come should Lenin seize power.

They used him in that particular purpose, they gave him money, they sent him to Russia with German advisors. The irony was that Marx's, Engels' and Lenin's theory was best adapted to Germany's industrialized proletariat, and that they saw Russia as a make-do measure.

[ClydeFrog]

I'm in a hurry, so i won't respond to every single of your arguments in detail...

Peace openings in 1918 would've been useless, as the Entente and their ally the USA would've accepted nothing but surrender anyways.

I'm not arguing that the ignoring Belgiums was justified i'm saying it was the wiser military tactic. A direct attack on France at the well defended Rhine-Strasbourg border would've led to certain defeat. You really think England would've allowed Germany to occupy France and thus have continental-Europe under German control? Then i beg to differ. Ignoring Belgiums neutrality might have helped speed up the process, but Englands entry aside the French was inevitable.

Last thing i've got time to mention is your saying mid-war Germany was responsible for Stalinist Russia. I really like to know where you get that from. Might i say that Germany was in fact one of the few seeing Stalin as the monster he really was? We just had our own monster at that time so we can't be that proud of it. France, England and at the beginning America were largely underestimating the man.

[ogukuo72]

The rise of communism in Russia was due to many factors.

There was, in fact, a Febuary Revolution in Mar 1917, during which Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, to be replaced by Liberals and Socialists, under a provisional government headed first by Prince Georgy Yevgenyevich Lvov, then Alexander Kerensky.

This first provisional government did not make peace with Germany, but chose to continue the war.

Germany understood that the liberal government under Alexander Kerensky would not stop the war. On the other hand, here was an opportunity to knock Russia out of the war with minimal effort by preventing the consolidation of political stability in Russia.

Lenin was sounded out and German agents helped to put him on a train to Russia. Ironically, the Germans sealed the train to prevent Lenin from making stops through Germany to spread revolutionary fervour there. Lenin arrived in Russia on Apr 16 1917, a month after the Feb 1917 Revolution. He was to help lead the coup in Nov 1917, now celebrated at the Oct 1917 Revolution. In reality, it's nothing more heroic than a near bloodless coup.

The Germans were successful in their short-term goal of destablising Russia. Russia would endure civil war for almost five more years, well beyond WW1. In the long term, however, a powerful ideological enemy was to rise in its east.

Germany cannot be held responsible for the victory of the Bolsheviks in Russia. There were too many historical factors and considerations. But that single act in Apr 1917 of sending Lenin to Russia did form part of the causal chain that led to the rise of communism, not only in Russia, but in other parts of the world.

[sct1886]

Has everyone forgotten the one of the biggest contributions of the US to WW1? The Influenza Pandemic killed more soldiers than combat from what I have read. Someone with more time can pull up the numbers, but it certainly put a crimp in the fighting. It originated right here in the good old midwest, near Ft. Riley. History is fascinating, especially differing views and seeing how the big picture ties together.

[Atlantic Friend]

I'm in a hurry, so i won't respond to every single of your arguments in detail...

Peace openings in 1918 would've been useless, as the Entente and their ally the USA would've accepted nothing but surrender anyways.

Alas, at some points the cost of the war reached a point where it could only be a zero-sum game, ensuring that no side could face the expense barring pinning the blame and the cost on the other side.


I'm not arguing that the ignoring Belgiums was justified i'm saying it was the wiser military tactic.

One of the cases where tactical advantages fly against strategic sense.


A direct attack on France at the well defended Rhine-Strasbourg border would've led to certain defeat.

Most probably, it would have led to higher losses, but the French Army would not have been able to use either Belgian or British divisions to fill holes along the front. Plus, the German Imperial HQ was well aware than the French Plan XVII impl;ied immediate attacks in Alsace-Lorraine, so Germany would have had to assault French positions immediately.

The only valid argument for an invasion of Belgium was the "holiness" of the Schlieffen Plan that called for a double envelopment. Granted, that was a very good plan, but it also ensured British involvement.


You really think England would've allowed Germany to occupy France and thus have continental-Europe under German control? Then i beg to differ.

Let's face it : with France military occupied and Russia defeated, what could have done the British Empire ? Without any perspective of outside help from either the Russian/Soviet regime or the United States, some cooler heads at the Foreign Office would, at some points, have strongly advised opening negotiations with Germany.


Ignoring Belgiums neutrality might have helped speed up the process, but Englands entry aside the French was inevitable.

I really don't think so. Read some books about the development of the sarajevo crisis and you'll see French officials were dead worried about England remaining on the sidelines, even though the two nations had signed some secret military agreements, particularly about naval deployments.


Last thing i've got time to mention is your saying mid-war Germany was responsible for Stalinist Russia. I really like to know where you get that from. Might i say that Germany was in fact one of the few seeing Stalin as the monster he really was? We just had our own monster at that time so we can't be that proud of it. France, England and at the beginning America were largely underestimating the man.

It's just a question of causes and consequences : Stalinist Russia derived from Marxist-Leninist Russia, and Leninist Russia was made possible because Imperial Germany helped Lenin destroy the Russian state, as it fitted its war interests.

I'm not saying Germany (then or now) has to take the blame for Stalin's crimes, but Imperial Germany was directly responsible for Leninist Russia, as it made a conscious choice of helping the Bolsheviks destroy Russia's then semi-democratic government.

[Atlantic Friend]

The rise of communism in Russia was due to many factors.

There was, in fact, a Febuary Revolution in Mar 1917, during which Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, to be replaced by Liberals and Socialists, under a provisional government headed first by Prince Georgy Yevgenyevich Lvov, then Alexander Kerensky.

This first provisional government did not make peace with Germany, but chose to continue the war.

Germany understood that the liberal government under Alexander Kerensky would not stop the war. On the other hand, here was an opportunity to knock Russia out of the war with minimal effort by preventing the consolidation of political stability in Russia.

Lenin was sounded out and German agents helped to put him on a train to Russia. Ironically, the Germans sealed the train to prevent Lenin from making stops through Germany to spread revolutionary fervour there. Lenin arrived in Russia on Apr 16 1917, a month after the Feb 1917 Revolution. He was to help lead the coup in Nov 1917, now celebrated at the Oct 1917 Revolution. In reality, it's nothing more heroic than a near bloodless coup.

The Germans were successful in their short-term goal of destablising Russia. Russia would endure civil war for almost five more years, well beyond WW1. In the long term, however, a powerful ideological enemy was to rise in its east.

Germany cannot be held responsible for the victory of the Bolsheviks in Russia. There were too many historical factors and considerations. But that single act in Apr 1917 of sending Lenin to Russia did form part of the causal chain that led to the rise of communism, not only in Russia, but in other parts of the world.

I fail to see how a nation that :

1) aims to destroy another nation's government,
2) funds in that purpose a revolutionary movement,
3) sends the leader of said revolutionary movement in the target nation,
4) immediately benefits from the revolution through large territorial and economic gains,

cannot be held responsible for the aforesaid revolution.

Granted, sooner or later, there would have been a revolution in Russia, as there almost was in 1905. That is true. But my very humble opinion is that, as far as Lenin and the Bolsheviks and the 1917 Revolution are concerned, the role of Imperial Germany cannot be underestimated or overlooked.

[ClydeFrog]

I don't feel like quoting so i hope you don't mind if i'll just write ahead.

We could argue forever how a peace treaty in early 1918 would've looked. My belief is, that it wouldn't have been significantly different from that signed in Versaille, but i accept one can think differently about this.
That aside you have to accept, that the sping offensive wasn't without any success at all, unlike for example the Kursk offensive 25 years later. Again it was a high risk plan, but it wasn't destined to fail. The invasion of France in 1940 was also done with some very risky maneuvres, but they succeeded. Failure and success are sometimes very close together.

When i said England wouldn't let Germany take control of Europe, i meant they would engage before Germany could achieve that. Meaning they would ally with France once they felt France was losing the war. The English were and are always ensuring none of the continental nations in Europe gets too much power. That led to the Germans understanding an invasion over Belgium would only hasten Englands intervention, not causing it.

Considering the trench wars that were to come i doubt an attack at the southern Rhine would have been possible at all, with two equally strong armies massing on such a small front. I don't think anyone could've won there. It would've been Verdunx2, i think.

As for Leninist Russia. Well after all it was still the people in Russia who decided to revolt, not Lenin alone. If you say Germany supported that i agree, but the argumentation before made it look as if German intervention was the single cause for the revolution.

[Atlantic Friend]

I don't feel like quoting so i hope you don't mind if i'll just write ahead.

No problem here, Clyde, use whatever way you're most comfortable with.


We could argue forever how a peace treaty in early 1918 would've looked. My belief is, that it wouldn't have been significantly different from that signed in Versaille, but i accept one can think differently about this.


No, we are in total agreement here. The prospects for an equitable peace treaty in 1918 were totally nonexistent, and had been nonexistent since 1916-1917. We had a Franco-British expectedly unfair treaty, just as we would have had an Austro-German unfair treaty if the Central Powers had won that war. At some point, a zero-sum game just isn't worth it, but nobody had the guts or the brains to end the madness when it was still time.



That aside you have to accept, that the sping offensive wasn't without any success at all, unlike for example the Kursk offensive 25 years later.

I do - if you are talking about the 1918 spring offensive in the western front, that is. The Second Battle of the Marne could have placed Germany in a much better position to negotiate her way out of the war.


When i said England wouldn't let Germany take control of Europe, i meant they would engage before Germany could achieve that. Meaning they would ally with France once they felt France was losing the war. The English were and are always ensuring none of the continental nations in Europe gets too much power. That led to the Germans understanding an invasion over Belgium would only hasten Englands intervention, not causing it.

Oh, sorry here, I DID misunderstand what you were saying. Yes, at some point, Great Britain would either have had to commit in the name of power balance, or the jettison the whole policy. But consider how close Great Britain came to acknowledge such a German dominance over continental Europe, under the leadership of Lord Cadogan in 1939. Granted, Cadogan's reasoning took into account the human losses of WW1.

[ogukuo72]

Oh, sorry here, I DID misunderstand what you were saying. Yes, at some point, Great Britain would either have had to commit in the name of power balance, or the jettison the whole policy. But consider how close Great Britain came to acknowledge such a German dominance over continental Europe, under the leadership of Lord Cadogan in 1939. Granted, Cadogan's reasoning took into account the human losses of WW1.

I agree with you. There is simply no way that Britain would allow a single power in Europe to dominate the continent, be it France or Germany. This is the one constant in British foreign policy. When France was the predominant power under Napolean, it was natural that British sought allies such as Prussia to contain and defeat it. When Germany became the dominant power in the early 20th Century, there was simply no way for the British to stand back and do nothing. The invasion of Belgium provided a legal justification for Britain to enter the war on the side of France and Russia.

[ClydeFrog]

So we finally found something to agree on lol Now... what was the topic again? ;)

[Benny]

The American contribution to the end of the war in late 1918 was decisive, in my opinion.

It was not that the American military effort was decisive in 1918 - I think we all agree that the American effort was, at the time, secondary to the British-French and other allies.

What I believe is that, from a psychological point of view, the Germans found out that they could no longer win the war, in the long term.

Austria and Turkey would fall, sooner or later, and the Americans were on the allied side. In spite of beating Russia, Germany found out later that it was unable to gain a decisive victory in France and in the North sea against the Royal Navy.

The American manpower and industry would tip the balance, in 1918, 1919 or 1920. Defeat was just around the corner for Germany, and time counted against her.

On the other hand, Great Britain and France felt that, with America now in the war, victory was certain. It would cost a lot of lives and would still take a lot of effort, but they had a decisive card.

Germany's offensive in early 1918 took a heavy toll and broke the back of the German Army. Great Britain and France, although exhausted, were still able to gather enough reserves to plug the gap in the allied lines.

From that moment on Germany could no longer win - it could only hope for a good peace deal.

Benny

[roland]

I agree with you Benny.


From that moment on Germany could no longer win - it could only hope for a good peace deal.


What they got despite now they try to look like poor victims.

[Benny]

Do you know what's strange, Roland?

At the time, millions of men died or were wounded in battle for what I'm sure were sound and decisive motives. Nowadays, those same motives look almost naive or like they were taken from a cheap hollywood movie.

Somehow, almost one hundred years after that devastating conflict, we almost can't distinguish between winers and losers.

Benny

[roland]

Somehow, almost one hundred years after that devastating conflict, we almost can't distinguish between winers and losers.


hmmm, not sure about that. Remind me what Foch said after the first battle of the Marne while everybody (Brits) tried to take the credit for it: something like

"Ok, we don't know who won this battle. But if it had been lost I'm damned sure who would have lost it"

That's a good sumary of WWI French side imho.

[Benny]

Great quote!

It's always worse being on the defeated side!

[ogukuo72]

I thought the German contribution to the German defeat was pretty decisive too. Operation Michael was an absolute disaster for the Germans as it effectively destroyed their last reserves of effective manpower.

Indeed, the German tendency to launch offensives and attacks that - even if successful - turned out to be self-defeating. For example, in WW1, the offensives in the Verdun costed Germany 337,000 dead.

In WW2, most of the German offensives ended up as disasterous failures, including Operation Bleu, Operation Citadel, the attack at Mortain, the Ardennes offensive, not to mention Rommel's dashes across Libya. Each of these offensives cost Germany more dead, more material destroyed, more resources lost.

[ClydeFrog]

I agree with you Benny.



What they got despite now they try to look like poor victims.
Oh all the hating, it's just so very, very sad. Stop living in the 30s, Roland. Seriously, stop reading that "omg itz ze eavil Hunns"-propaganda. Overcome your jealousy.

And Oguoku, maybe you want to tell me how to make war without offensives, i'm really interested. Also maybe you should also mention some of the many successful offensives of WW2 like that on France, the Netherlands, Poland, Yugoslavia.. etc.. sorry for not using the correct operation names now, but i'm sure you'll know them. And BTW, how many French soldiers died in Verdun? Some 360.000?

[Benny]

It was probably the last battle of attrition Germany fought on the Great War, on a large scale. It was Germany's last effort to turn the table, before the American contribution and the war effort on other fronts played their decisive part. It just so happened that, despite its initial sucess, it failed due to the usual causes.

Benny

[roland]

Oh all the hating, it's just so very, very sad. Stop living in the 30s, Roland. Seriously, stop reading that "omg itz ze eavil Hunns"-propaganda. Overcome your jealousy.


jealousy ? lol France is bigger, and nicer than Germany :)
I have no hating at all against the Germans. Against the Prussians ? possible but they have disapeared and lost there country anyway.
I just hate when history is used as a political tool.

Now the French and Germans don't kick arse each other: they kick arse together ;)

[Atrox]

I thought the German contribution to the German defeat was pretty decisive too. Operation Michael was an absolute disaster for the Germans as it effectively destroyed their last reserves of effective manpower.

Immaterial. In 1918, Germany was fast running out of the raw materials to sustain its army. They were literally in a use-it-or-lose-it scenario. Michael was the last chance to break the Allied lines and achieve victory. If they had tried to stand on the defensive, the eventual Allied victory would have taken longer and cost more casualties, is all.


Indeed, the German tendency to launch offensives and attacks that - even if successful - turned out to be self-defeating. For example, in WW1, the offensives in the Verdun costed Germany 337,000 dead.

One thing on Verdun: It was never intended to break through the French lines - which, ironically enough, might actually have been possible.
The Purpose of Unternehmen Gericht was to force France to defend Verdun and bleed itself white. The Falkenhayn OHL predicted a loss ratio of 3 to 1 in Germany's favour. Those predictions proved inaccurate. Losses were in fact about equal.
France did bleed itself white in the Hell of Verdun . . . but so did Germany.


In WW2, most of the German offensives ended up as disasterous failures, including Operation Bleu, Operation Citadel, the attack at Mortain, the Ardennes offensive, not to mention Rommel's dashes across Libya. Each of these offensives cost Germany more dead, more material destroyed, more resources lost.

Ah, so the Allied offensives of those days didn't cost casualties?

Also, WWII is an entirely different ball game. After the first Russian winter, Hitler essentially took personal command . . . and the man was insane, as well as possessed of a notion with which a Frenchman should be familiar: that enough Siegeswillen (will to win) would always overcome enemy material superiority.

[Ericsson]

once again
the Germans 150 millimeter howitzer hardly larger then the 105
this hydraulic recoil weapon was initially assigned to each army corps:
together whit the larger relative 210 millimeter allowed the Germans to dominate the battlefields of the war..the 170millimeter minenwerfer each shell of the 170 fired contained as much high explosive as eighteen french 75 millimeter shells.
tanks ??? nor had the mechanical reliability ,cross-country capabilities ,and speed of the British tank been much improved since the slaughter at the Somme
the British tanks corps now learned exactly the same lesson
as the french had six months earlier. half of the underpowered and unwieldy monsters
were destroyed or abandoned on the battlefields
an attack whit 400 vehicles was initially impressive ,but when after forty-eight hours, there were only 60 or 70 still operating , armored operations in the modern sense of the world had obviously ceased ..
tanks did not help the allies that is a myth.
whit out uncle SAM Europe was domed.

[ogukuo72]

Yes Atrox, the Allied offensives of WW1 caused much casualties.

Which is a point that is not relevant to the point I'm making. The Allies could make good their casualties, especially with the Americans joining the war. The Germans could not.

This same pattern of a desperate last throw of the dice, wasting away all reserves in a futile hope that they would win through in the end through superior fighting power, would be repeated again and again WW2.

That is to say, the Germans in WW1 and WW2 had a nasty habit of trying to bit off more than they could chew.

[roland]

once again
the Germans 150 millimeter howitzer hardly larger then the 105
this hydraulic recoil weapon was initially assigned to each army corps:
together whit the larger relative 210 millimeter allowed the Germans to dominate the battlefields of the war..the 170millimeter minenwerfer each shell of the 170 fired contained as much high explosive as eighteen french 75 millimeter shells.
tanks ??? nor had the mechanical reliability ,cross-country capabilities ,and speed of the British tank been much improved since the slaughter at the Somme
the British tanks corps now learned exactly the same lesson
as the french had six months earlier. half of the underpowered and unwieldy monsters
were destroyed or abandoned on the battlefields
an attack whit 400 vehicles was initially impressive ,but when after forty-eight hours, there were only 60 or 70 still operating , armored operations in the modern sense of the world had obviously ceased ..
tanks did not help the allies that is a myth.
whit out uncle SAM Europe was domed.

So if the tank was so useless, please tell us:
- why no battle was planned in 1918 without heavy use of tank,
- why the French built 4000 tanks in 1918 and planned 12000 for 1919,
- are barbed wires and machine gun two of the most efficient defensive weapons of WWI yes or no ?
if you think no, you're a fool,
If yes don't you think tank is the apropriate tool against them ?

[Kitsune]

@ericsson:

While I agree with some things said in your post, the last sentence is simply ridiculous (and bordering on the offensive). Why should "Europe have been doomed"? If the result of WWI would have been a draw this would have been good. And even in the case of a weak German victory, what is your problem? It's not that the victory of Britain and France led to much good in the long run, didn't it? So, I doubt that the results of a German victory could have been much worse.
Of course there would have been some Franco-British problems with mangled self consciousness, sure. To loose after all your efforts, all your these dead is not easy to stomach. But I really would love to see a hypotetical parallel world in which they had to cope with a defeat. I really want to know wether they would have done much better than the Germans. I suspect that we would see certain political radicals doing rather well in that case. In France perhaps a revival of Bonapartism. And the British may have ended with a "Leader" that sets out to restore the British honor and greatness (with an ideology that has xenophobia, social darwinism and eugenics thorwn in for good measure). Someone who looks a bit like Charlie Chaplin perhaps.
Who knows?




@ogukuo72:

Your anti-german bias leads you to wrong conclusions. As usual.
There were lots of successful German invasions, both in WWI (compared to the other side in any case) and even more in WWII. Especially if one considers the disparate relations of war material, the German side did very well in WWI. And countless sucessful German invasions in WWII are downright legend among military historians.
Which leaves the usual accusation: the Germans lost. But nonetheless your statement that they tended to "bit off more than they could chew" is not quite justified.


Two reasons:

Firstly, the Germans were not the only ones with that problem. Take France, Britain and Russia in WWI. The military leadership of these countries expected a fast and comparatively easy victory. (Not entirely unjustified: The French and Russian army taken together were almost three times as large as the Imperial German one when WWI began...and coming from two opposite sides on top of it). But the result was a 4 year long massacre, which no one had expected. Tzarist Russia fall apart because of it, and even with the Western Allies the strain this war created had effects that lasted for decades.
In WWII this was even worse: once again France and Britain declared war because they believed that they could solve the "German problem" militarily with certainty. They were wrong. And even if they in the end could claim to be among the victors once again, WWII effectively marks the end of France's and Britain's Great Power status.


Secondly, your claims seem to be based on the asumption that Germany could have somehow easily evaded a defeat or even the whole conflict in both WWI and WWII if it had chosen another highly visible and obvious course of action. That assumption is highly debatable, however. What if in WWI the Russia had followed its general mobilisation with an invasion of Germany? That is what the German military leadership believed what would happen and it is not possible to disprove that assumption just like that. And one thing is certain: in case of an German-Russian war, the French would have joined the Russian efforts. However and whoever may have started it. so, it is possible that the German setting in motion of the Schlieffenplan was exactly the right choice in 1914.

And WWII? Well, in retrospect, the attack on Poland seems to fit the "biting more off than one could chew" assertion. However, it was not Germany alone that attacked Poland. And it was not easy to foresee that the Western powers would as completely ignore Stalin's collaboration as they did. And after that...well until summer 1940 it looked more as if France and Britain had bitten too much off, as said.
Which leaves the attack on the Sovietunion. Let's forgo the moralic aspect for the time being and let us just consider wether it was clever or not. And as it looks today it seems that Stalin WOULD have attacked Germany. Perhaps as early as in summer 1941. But even those (often Russian) historians who oppose that notion, do nowadays usually concede that an Soviet attack against Germany was highly likely for the year 1942. (And why not? An invasion would have been met with applause from the British side and with voiced understanding from Roosevelt. And Stalin had the largest land army by far. Even if you only regard the armor: it would have been a smashing 35.000 tanks on the Soviet side in 1942...compared to only about a tenth that number on the German one. And once Germany would have been conquered, Stalin would have gained France for free. He would have been stupid to let that opportunity slip.)
Or would the Germans have fought more effectively if they had waited for a Soviet invasion? Would it have been wise to trade away the advantages of surprise and having the initiative against the role of the defender? So that the Russians get lost in the vast endlessness of German terrain? Sorry, bad call, I dare say. Especially considering what happened in 1941. The most colossal land army the world had ever seen thrashed by a much lighter force. One thing one has to give the Wehrmacht: Barbarossa was simply amazing.
Conclusion: although it may be un-pc to say, but from a strictly military point of view the decision to attack the Sovietunion may not have been all that wrong.

[Lokos]

And as it looks today it seems that Stalin WOULD have attacked Germany. Perhaps as early as in summer 1941.

Rezun is not healthy for you. His writings are trash. The EARLIEST Stalin would have considered offensive action against the GGR was summer of 1942.


The most colossal land army the world had ever seen thrashed by a much lighter force. One thing one has to give the Wehrmacht: Barbarossa was simply amazing.

Uhh, you're misleading the public quite heinously.

On June 22 1941 the balance of forces was as follows:

Soviets - 2,680,000 in the Western MD's (5,550,000 overall, but we're only judging the forces actually arrayed)

Germans - 3,050,000 + 650,000 Finns/Romanians

Correlation: Soviet 1:1.4 German

German tactical and operational superiority often exceeded 10:1 and was conducive to sharp, victorious engagements with covering forces as the Soviets attempted (and failed) to concentrate.

On September 11 1941 the balance of forces was as follows:

Soviets - 3,464,000 (at the front)

Germans - 3,315,000 + 650,000 Finns/Romanians

Correlation: Soviet 1:1.16 German

Whilst German superiority had fallen significantly, it still remained decisive. Especially in armoured forces - the Soviets were outnumbered by between 2 and 3 to 1 in tanks and SPGs. The Soviets lost 20,000 tanks and SPGs in the first six months of the war. The vast majority were lost to logistical malfunctions (running out of ammo and fuel and being abandoned), not to enemy action.

On November 1 1941 the balance of forces was as follows:

Soviets - 2,200,000 (front)

Germans - 2,800,000 + 650,000 Finns/Romanians + 67,000 in northern Norway

Correlation: Soviet 1:1.9 German

This was the high noon of German superiority on the ground. Whilst the Soviets achieved a 1.23:1 superiority by December, they never went above 1.74:1 at any point in 1942 (staying at ~1.5:1 for most of the year).

***

Now, considering the difficulties the Soviet forces faced in 1941 (logistical, leadership, strategic blundering, confusion etc), it doesn't strike me as strange at all that the Germans were able to triumph so quickly at the onset. The German army of June 1941 was the best it had ever been or was ever going to be. It was composed almost solely of veterans of numerous other conflicts, was fully battle ready, was well supplied (initially), had clear chains of command and experienced leaders, was motivated and fully battle ready (as opposed to many Soviet cadre divisions that faced the Wehrmacht during the first two weeks of the war).

I appreciate your pride in German accomplishments. Don't overstate them, though.

Lokos

[Omaha]

Well, I am going to answer the original question.

My opinion, The battle of Belleau Wood. In June of 1918.


Also where the Marines were given the name "Devil Dogs".


That was the last best shot at Paris for the Germans. Which then meant they wouldn't and couldn't win. They lost the initiative.

EDIT:Spelling/Typo

[ogukuo72]

ogukuo72:

Your anti-german bias leads you to wrong conclusions. As usual.
There were lots of successful German invasions, both in WWI (compared to the other side in any case) and even more in WWII. Especially if one considers the disparate relations of war material, the German side did very well in WWI. And countless sucessful German invasions in WWII are downright legend among military historians.
Which leaves the usual accusation: the Germans lost. But nonetheless your statement that they tended to "bit off more than they could chew" is not quite justified.

Just because I don't buy into the myths so treasured by Germans mean that I am anti-German.

Having said that, I do find it discomforting that Germans (and other West Europeans) are so obsessed by such myths. It seems to indicate a reluctance to face the facts and one's history.

One of the myths I've been addressing here is that Germany was not really defeated in WW1. It was, and decisively so.

Another myth that I want to look at is the idea that Germany was an efficient , almost super human, military nation that could only be defeated by superior numbers. The reality, to me, seems to be that Germany was a country that consistently made military mistakes - and the same mistakes over and over again - that led to its defeat. Its obsession with the offensive is one of these.

Indeed, Germany not only made many mistakes on the military arena, it even proved to be more disasterous in the political arena. For short term gains, it helped created a greater threat or a worse situation. Lenin and the Bolshevik revolution is one obvious example. Germany's treatment of the people of the conquered nations was another.

Let's take a look at what some of the successful German offensives are in WW2:

The invasion of Poland (against a much smaller nation)
The invasion of Norway (against a much smaller nation)
The invasion of Belgium (against a much smaller nation)
The invasion of Holland (against a much smaller nation)
The invasion of Denmark (against a much smaller nation)
The invasion of Greece (against a much smaller nation)
The invasion of Yugoslavia (against a much smaller nation)

I wouldn't class the above as attacks that historians rave about, would you?

So that leaves the invasion of France. Not surprisingly, most historians focused on the Battle of France as it seems the two sides are more evenly matched. But of course, the France was already in a defeatist mood when the battle began. If the French had had the mellow of the Russians or the British, Germany would have had a much tougher time.

Of course, Germany - as usual - let their early successes get to their head, and they came to believe that they could defeat anybody.

This typical arrogance led it to several bad mistakes:

It decided to leave Britain alone when it was basically standing alone against Germany.

It decided to attack the Soviet Union, one of the two great industrial powers in the world besides itself.

While preparing to attack the Soviet Union, it diverted resources to side shows like Greece, Yugoslavia, Crete, and Libya.

So, having already been late in launching their attack, Germany decided to change its mind about which way to attack half way to Moscow, dividing its rapidly diminishing resources into not one front, but three, only for the main front to be stuck in front of Moscow.

When it got stuck in front of Moscow by a heroic defence, it decided to declare war on the other great industrial power, the United States.

So, with a war now with the largest empire in the world and the two greatest industrial powers in the world, Germany decided to fight its way out of this situation by launching yet another deep attack into Ukraine, with the enemy main force on its increasingly long and vulnerable flanks, with lesser troops than its enemies.

And while one of its armies lay besieged in Stalingrad, where it was engaged in a titanic struggle with its greatest land foe, Germany decided to reinforce ... Africa, the sideshow.

And it decided to invade Vichy France to spread out its troops even more thinly.

And then it decided to attack yet again against a heavily fortified objective with an enemy that was becoming stronger every day with an army that was losing its strength steadily, at Kursk.

Then the Allies stormed ashore in Normandy, where only a small part of its strength in France faced them, because Germany believed that the Allies would be coming at Pas de Calais, having been tricked by a strategic deception. Oh, and the Germans failed to notice the Soviet Union assembling an attack that destroyed their Army Group Center as well.

So while German troops were busy holding back the tide on both ends, the German generals decided - finally and far too late in the day - that Hitler was crazy and he should be killed, and with typical German efficiency, blew up only his pants to leave him alive to decimate the German high command.

And so Germany decided to retrieve the situation by attacking again. In the West, its attack towards Mortain was so successful that it got many of its troops trapped or killed in the Falaise pocket because - once again - it attacked so deeply that its flanks were exposed.

So, finally when Germany was faced with inplacable enemies on both sides, with the largest armies ever assembled, what did it decide to do? Yes. It decided to attack again. In fact, it decided to throw its last reserves away in the attack in the West, while hoping that the Soviet Union won't choose the same time to attack in the East, which of course the Russians did not oblige.

Germany won in only those battles where its enemies were either ill-equipped (eg the British at Crete), ill-experienced (eg France), ill-prepared (eg Russia), or just plain small (eg Greece). When it fought proper enemies who are prepared, it usually lost.

[ClydeFrog]

Just because I don't buy into the myths so treasured by Germans mean that I am anti-German.

Having said that, I do find it discomforting that Germans (and other West Europeans) are so obsessed by such myths. It seems to indicate a reluctance to face the facts and one's history.

One of the myths I've been addressing here is that Germany was not really defeated in WW1. It was, and decisively so.

Another myth that I want to look at is the idea that Germany was an efficient , almost super human, military nation that could only be defeated by superior numbers. The reality, to me, seems to be that Germany was a country that consistently made military mistakes - and the same mistakes over and over again - that led to its defeat. Its obsession with the offensive is one of these.

Indeed, Germany not only made many mistakes on the military arena, it even proved to be more disasterous in the political arena. For short term gains, it helped created a greater threat or a worse situation. Lenin and the Bolshevik revolution is one obvious example. Germany's treatment of the people of the conquered nations was another.

Let's take a look at what some of the successful German offensives are in WW2:

The invasion of Poland (against a much smaller nation)
The invasion of Norway (against a much smaller nation)
The invasion of Belgium (against a much smaller nation)
The invasion of Holland (against a much smaller nation)
The invasion of Denmark (against a much smaller nation)
The invasion of Greece (against a much smaller nation)
The invasion of Yugoslavia (against a much smaller nation)

I wouldn't class the above as attacks that historians rave about, would you?

So that leaves the invasion of France. Not surprisingly, most historians focused on the Battle of France as it seems the two sides are more evenly matched. But of course, the France was already in a defeatist mood when the battle began. If the French had had the mellow of the Russians or the British, Germany would have had a much tougher time.

Of course, Germany - as usual - let their early successes get to their head, and they came to believe that they could defeat anybody.

This typical arrogance led it to several bad mistakes:

It decided to leave Britain alone when it was basically standing alone against Germany.

It decided to attack the Soviet Union, one of the two great industrial powers in the world besides itself.

While preparing to attack the Soviet Union, it diverted resources to side shows like Greece, Yugoslavia, Crete, and Libya.

So, having already been late in launching their attack, Germany decided to change its mind about which way to attack half way to Moscow, dividing its rapidly diminishing resources into not one front, but three, only for the main front to be stuck in front of Moscow.

When it got stuck in front of Moscow by a heroic defence, it decided to declare war on the other great industrial power, the United States.

So, with a war now with the largest empire in the world and the two greatest industrial powers in the world, Germany decided to fight its way out of this situation by launching yet another deep attack into Ukraine, with the enemy main force on its increasingly long and vulnerable flanks, with lesser troops than its enemies.

And while one of its armies lay besieged in Stalingrad, where it was engaged in a titanic struggle with its greatest land foe, Germany decided to reinforce ... Africa, the sideshow.

And it decided to invade Vichy France to spread out its troops even more thinly.

And then it decided to attack yet again against a heavily fortified objective with an enemy that was becoming stronger every day with an army that was losing its strength steadily, at Kursk.

Then the Allies stormed ashore in Normandy, where only a small part of its strength in France faced them, because Germany believed that the Allies would be coming at Pas de Calais, having been tricked by a strategic deception. Oh, and the Germans failed to notice the Soviet Union assembling an attack that destroyed their Army Group Center as well.

So while German troops were busy holding back the tide on both ends, the German generals decided - finally and far too late in the day - that Hitler was crazy and he should be killed, and with typical German efficiency, blew up only his pants to leave him alive to decimate the German high command.

And so Germany decided to retrieve the situation by attacking again. In the West, its attack towards Mortain was so successful that it got many of its troops trapped or killed in the Falaise pocket because - once again - it attacked so deeply that its flanks were exposed.

So, finally when Germany was faced with inplacable enemies on both sides, with the largest armies ever assembled, what did it decide to do? Yes. It decided to attack again. In fact, it decided to throw its last reserves away in the attack in the West, while hoping that the Soviet Union won't choose the same time to attack in the East, which of course the Russians did not oblige.

Germany won in only those battles where its enemies were either ill-equipped (eg the British at Crete), ill-experienced (eg France), ill-prepared (eg Russia), or just plain small (eg Greece). When it fought proper enemies who are prepared, it usually lost.
You want to tell me you are not anti-German biased?

What's with the British expeditionary army that was in France at the time the Germans invaded? You forgot those it seems.. but then that is your usual going: You pick the parts that suit you most and ignore the rest, even though this rest might put a different light on the issue. Yugoslavia, Greece... well it seems Mussolini had quite some difficulties with these oh-so-small nations, didn't he? There must be something Germany did much better than the Italians there, right? Considering it took them less than three weeks to achieve what the Mussolini couldn't in half a year and simultaneously conquering the two countries. BTW: Vietnam could be considered a "much smaller nation" when compared to the US or France but that didn't help the latter ones that much. but i'm talking to a wall here and it's not really worth the effort.

[Vorian]

Let's take a look at what some of the successful German offensives are in WW2:

Maybe Hitler was a lunatic but you can't say that the Germans were not succesfull. In WW1 they fought practically alone(Austria's economy was based on agriculture) and they outlasted the Russians, invaded twice France and fought off French and English at the same time. In WW2, the german war machine was instoppable. Which nation could hold almost all Europe and fight US, Soviet Union and England at the same time?

Don't get me wrong I am not a Nazi-fun but I admire Germany's military structure.

[ogukuo72]

If by "bias", you mean that I challenge the myths that Germans hold dear, then, yes, I am guilty as charged.

Indeed, I think we should all be "biased" in rigourously challenging myths, ideas and concepts.

I see that the people of Old Europe - in particular France and Germany - are very good at challenging other countries around the world when it comes to this respect. What they are not so good at is questioning their own myths.

I'm going to challenge one more myth here: that of supposed Germany superior fighting ability and British inferiority on the Western Front.

Here's a crumpet of fact:

In WW1, on all fronts, the Commonwealth lost 702,410 troops were killed. Sounds high? Well, the Germans lost 1,950,000. That is almost two million.

Now, I know some of you would say, that's not quite fair. The Commonwealth had less troops engaged. True. The Commonwealth mobilised 8,375,000 men on all fronts. Germany mobilised a whooping 13,250,000 men.

Of the Commonwealth troops, 8% were killed. Of the Germans, 15% were killed.

Consider this also: the population of the Commonwealth (not counting the colonies) was 45,750,000. The German population was 60,300,000. The Commonwealth lost 1.53% of their population. Germany lost 3.23%.

When you look at these figures, you have to ask yourselves whether the idea that the British commanders were singularly inept, and the German commanders brilliant, would hold up, especially given that the Germans were on the defensive for most of the war, and the British were on the attack.

If I lose more men while manning fortification against troops that have to attack over exposed terrain, then you have a right to call me incompetent.

Can we call the German commanders in WW1 incompetent too?

[Kitsune]

@ogukuo72:

Well, with "bias" I just referred to your constant attitude that everything German is almostautomatically inferior to anything non German in your view. Generally, I did not want to offend you. I for myself didn't want to sound too offended either. I respect your opinion. It's just that I think that many of your conclusions are simply wrong.
Your last post is just another example for it. Take your comparision of German and Coomonwealth losses during WWI: you seem to forget that Germany fought not only "Commonwealth forces" but also French and Russians (among others). And both lost more soldiers each than the British Commonwealth. Add them together and you see that Germanys enemies lost significantly more soldier than the Germans. (Of course the Germans had Allies like Austria and Turkey. But remember that for example Italy and the USA fought on the side of the Commonwealth forces). In any case your comparision or the statement that the British lost a lower percentage of its forces does not prove any German inferiority in combat.

Thing is: everyone may believe what he wants, of course. So do you. But you are touching an interesting topic: the somewhat persistent myth of German superiority in arms.

I know very well that there are a lot of books out there who try to show that the German military was not so great. Or that the American one would have been better. And Hollywood is constantly at work, depicting German soldiers as ugly, cowardly morons who are no match for their good looking, competent and heroic American (or sometimes British) counterparts. The respecitve tendencies get worse over time by the way. (And of course there are some Russian movies who do the same with respect to the Eastern front). And after one is done with the Germans of WWII, one gives those Krauts of WWI their treatment. Officially they may not have been Nazis at the time, but that does not stop various movies to depict them as just the same bunch of arrogant and incompetent bastards.

But there is something different. Underlying it all there is something else. The myth of an alleged German superiority. One sometimes reads sentences like for example: "The German army of June 1941 was the best it had ever been or was ever going to be." (Source: Lokos ;-)) There are many comments like these in a myriad of history books, most actually by people who are not German or not overly fond of them otherwise. Out of some reasons the German military forces are referred to, again and again, as overwhelming. Superior. Efficient. Or even as : the best. Why? How? They lost all the time didn't they?

So, where is this coming from? From us Germans? Have we somehow managed to sneakily infect those who had beaten us with the meme of our German superiority in arms? Without any bases in facts at that? (If that would be so, it would be something we could be proud of. Quite a trick.)
Or is it why we constantly celebrating our victories over here? Polishing up the notion that we would have not really lost WWI for example?
I have to disappoint you, ogukuo72. We do not. No parades here. No big heroe's cult. (And certainly nothing what compares to what Americans or Russians do).

That the Germans believe in the myth not to have been defeated in WWI...that is a myth. And one one hears all the time. Where do you guys get this from, I wonder. The real story goes like this: After the successful Allied offensive in 1918 the German military situation on the Western front got difficult. The American President Wilson then announced a offer of peace, based upon the so called "14 points" to which France and Britain vaguely voiced their content. This would mean that Germany had to give up, but, after having read the contents of Wilsons offer, one assumed in Germany that the Reich would be fairly treated. The German generals advised the new democratic German government to accept the terms given the military situation. Which they dis, they agreed to demobilize the German army rendering Germany helpless. And, as it looked form the German point of view, this was the moment were any fairness stopped on the Allied side. German or Austrian negotiators were excluded from the peace talks and the resulting "peace treaty" was immensly harsh. The German population felt cheated by Wilson and the Allies. (Of course France and Britain made the point that they hadn't specifically agreed to anything. And the Germans had nothing in writing anyway).
Because of this the (not entirely unjust) accusation is made against the German government that they had the Reichswehr demobilized too early, leaving Germany completely at the mercy at the victors. Right wingers went even further: they accused the German social democratic government of conspiring with the victors, of selling out their homecountry for being accepted in charge of Germany. This became known as the "Dolchstosslegende" (and is indeed a myth, the German democrats were as shocked about the contents of the Versailles treaty as anybody else).
But not even the rightwing extremists claimed that Germany would have actually won WWI. The notion that one had to crush Germany in WWII utterly to prove something is simply crap. A myth of the Allied side, believed by persons like FDR. Nothing more.

But I digress. So, what about the legend of qualitative German superiority. Where does it come from? Well, ok I do have a admission to make. While the defeats if WWI and WWII are and never were disputed over here, it is indeed a quite common belief with German veterans of either WWI and WWII that the German military was at least as good or even better than their opponents. That th main reason for defeat was mainly the quantitative superiority of their enemies.
This belief in German superior combat effectiveness is probably the best example for collective delusion with which the loosers want to compensate their defeat. The German equivalent of "We almost won in Vietnam" if you will. But just a myth of course.

Or is it? In any case it is, as said, a very infectious one. It even seems to have gotten hold of some military experts of great reknown like for example Trevor N. Dupuy, a Colonel (ret.) of the US Army (who, as a non German, should be more resistant to something like it, should he not?)
He has analysed 78 engagements on the Western front of WWII and tried to assess and compare the performance and effectiveness of the Western Allied troops with the one of Wehrmacht/Waffen SS. To do that, he developed a fairly complicated mathematical model of battle taking into account factors like numbers involved on both sides, arms used, terrain, posture and the effect of air power if present. The result: the actual outcome of the battle could only be predicted if one assumes that the German unitss were between 20% and 30% as effective as their Allied counterparts.

Dupuy also used a less complicated way of determining the combat effectiveness of both sides: He compared the losses inflicted upon one another from the start to the end of the combat engagement and used simple factors to compensate for things like attacking, defending, defending from fortified positions and so forth. The result with this method: a generic unit of 100 German soldiers on the Western front of WWII fought as effectively as about 150 Western Allied soldiers.
Martin van Creveld, who concurs with Trevor N. Dupuys findings (another infected military expert it seems...although he as an Israeli should be downright immune to the myth of any German superiority, shouldn't he?) quotes him in his book "Fighting Power" like this:

[The] record shows that the Germans consistently outfought the far more numerous Allied armies that eventually defeated them....On a man for man basis the German ground soldiers consistently inflicted casualties at about a 50 percent higher rate than they incurred from the opposing British and American troops under all circumstances. This was true when they were attacking and when they were defending, when they had local superiority and when, as was usually the case, they were outnumbered, when they had air superiority and when they did not, when they won and when they lost.
By the way: comparisions like these have been made by other military experts about the Eastern front and also about WWI. And, out of some reason, they usually come to the conclusion that the German troops are more combat effective than their opponents. Investigations like these are one of the primary breeding grounds for the infection.

Now it is not so that there wouldn't be those who actively resist. Books have been written to show that German troops are not better than their opponents. Others try to prove that American armed forces are generally superior to everyone. Some directly attacked the infected like Dupuy and van Creveld and tried to prove that their findings are wrong. But the infected shot back: they wrote books and essays to show that many of the "unbelievers" used faulty logic and doubtful methods to make their case. And so the battle raged. It's still going on. And you can still join. (Good place to start: http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/armies/default.aspx)

(Indeed the matter is complicated. It's not so that there weren't aspects of the German military organisations that were not effective at all. This is accepted even by the heretics who defend the notion of the superior performance of German units in the field. Examples are the procurement system or the overcomplicated ranking system.
But there seem to be other oddities in favor of the Germans. Take for example typical military rules of thumb like:
"An attacker must be about three times superior in strength to the defender to conduct an successful offensive". Only a rule, no cut-and-dry law of course, but it holds quite well for ALL Allies wether West or East...only the German forces seem bend to ignore it again and again. This starts a bit in Poland, goes on in Norway, really kicks in in France 1940, holds true for greece and Crete and even more so in the Sovietunion in 41/42, and so on.
Or take another military rule of thumb: "For a military unit, losses of about 25% are acceptable. Higher losses severly reduce combat effectiveness of the respective unit. If losses of around 50% or more are sustained, the unit is in immediate danger of disintegrating". Once again, that holds by and large true for the Allies in WWII...but German units continued to be cohesive and able to fight after having incurred losses of 60%, 70%, 80% even nearly 90%! Another myth? John Keegan affirms a similiar German resiliance for WWI in his book "The Face of Battle"...and explains it with the repeated victories the Germans enjoyed over all of WWI while the Allies had none. Martin van Creveld directly compares the Wehrmacht and the US Army of WWII in "Fighting Power" and seems to have come to the conclusion that their is something more to it than just that. But he may be wrong...)

In the end, I return to what I said at the beginning: Everyone may believe what he wants. That includes ogukuo72, of course.
In any case, the myth of superior German combat effectiveness during WWI and WWII is under fire, but still out there, alive and kicking.

If it is a myth.

[Kitsune]

@Lokos:


I appreciate your pride in German accomplishments. Don't overstate them, though.

Did I? Sorry didn't mean, to. I must have been carried away I guess. p-)



Some points:

1) "The Soviet invasion in summer 1941". I would not refer to Rezun. Or Suvorov for that matter. I point to Werner Maser's "Der Wortbruch" instead. He makes quite good a case.

2) You are accusing me of deceiving the public. Hmmm. But you say for yourself that the German forces numbered "3,050,000 + 650,000 Finns/Romanians". (May I add: the Finns dropped out of the invasion quite soon -none of them ever came even near to Moscow or Stalingrad) while the overall Soviet Forces were "5,550,000 overall, but we're only judging the forces actually arrayed".
So who is superior to whom? The Soviets could (and did) shuffle troops couldn't they? And that only 2.6 million "were arrayed"...was good for the Soviets. This positioning was perfect for the Wehrmacht (and good for a hypothecal Soviet offensive). If the whole Red Army had stood in those far Western postions the Soviets may have lost it.

Besides. You are quoting a lot of head-count numbers. But how about the numbers in tanks, artillery pieces and planes of all kind? In Summer 1941 the Soviet numerical superiority in tanks over the invading German forces was a smashing 7 to 1 (25.000 soviet ones compared to 3500 German tanks...and the Soviet tanks were by no means technologically inferior...on the contrary). As far as artillery and fighting planes were concerned the Soviets had 4 to 5 times as many (with planes it could have even been nearly 10 times as much as the war began).
My statments were:
a) The Soviet army was the largest land force the world had ever seen. True statement.
b) Barbarossa was simply amazing. Well, the colossal Soviet army of 41 was all but destroyed. Practically none of those tanks, guns, figthers and bombers survived to see Berlin in springtime four years later. Nor did most of the soldiers. This IS simply mazing, considering the odds. And cosidering that, according to the usual military wisdom, the attacker should have much more or much superior equipment (or both) than the defender and not the other way round. I don't think that I am deceiving anyone if I call Barbarossa amazing.

So how was it done? Was there a trick? Yes, in a manner of speaking. It was the German Deep Penetration Tactic, commonly known as "Blitzkrieg". Much simplified it goes like this: Air Forces and Paras/Commando units attack numerous targets far behind the enemy front. Especially those that have to do with the flow of supplies and information. Bridges, supply depots, command posts etc. Then tank units smash through the enemy frontline at various points COMPLETELY IGNORING their flanks (which is absolutely against the rules of conventional military wisdom) and also deepy penetrate into the enemy hinterlands, usually on somewhat curved, sweeping paths cutting off the enemy frontline troops from their supply and infromation lines even more. After the Tanks come lighter units and infantery.
If done correctly this can result in reducing the enemy from a coherent, inter-connected, front-faced military system to a number of separated, cut off and deeply confused units who are wondering what is going on, why the HQ doesn't answer the phone and wether the tanks attacking from behind are Germans or some guys of the own side who have drunken too much and what the hell is generally going on here.
That is "the trick". Needs a lot of practice, though.;)

This worked well in France, but thing is that the Red Army forces arrayed at the Western Soviet front in 1941 were even more susceptible to fall for this method.

Because:
a) They were simply surprised. The Soviet leadership had information about the German preparations, but left their troops about much of it in the dark. When the attack came it came as surprise. Stalin's early orders added to that.
b) They were trained with mostly an offensive in mind. Something like "Attaque a outrance" had been standard Soviet doctrin since the late thirties. Stalins's orders. As a result things like "orderly withdrawals" had not been trained much, if at all. One did not expect to need it. On top of this: a "orderly withdrawal" is regarded as one the most difficult of military maneuvers.
c) They were arrayed. Yeah. Close to the border at that. Perfect postioning...for the Germans.
d) General inflexibility. While knowing the word "initiative" in principle and using it in their doctrine now and then, the Soviet milititary discouraged this characteristic in its soldiers to the best of abilites. Strict didciplin and to-the letter-following-of orders is emphasized instead and enforced with draconic disciplinary measures. Any soldier from bottom to the middle ranks learned that if anything went wrong and the hunt for "those wo are responsible for the failure" began, he would very fastly been shot if he could not say that he had not followed the orders precisly as they had been given.
This made the Soviet army the most inflexible one of all major combatants...in contrast to the German army who was the most flexible one. The Wehrmacht heavily emphasized initiative with its soldiers and used more decentralized command structures than anyone else. It was a sort of necessity: after penetrating the enemy frontline and maneuvering about in enemy territory it was simply essential for "Blitzkrieg" to keep on top of things and not become confused as the enemy hopefully would get (or if then significantly less confused than he is). And indeed, the German forces adapted to the flow of battle faster than any other. Perhaps their most oustanding characteristic.

All this contributed to make the great German sucesses of 1941 possible...despite massive Soviet superiority in numbers and material. There is no question: the Soviets could have done better. Item d) is the most difficult to change (and seems to have stayed a problem of the Soviet forces long after Stalin's death, that at least, is the suspiscion in the West. Luckily we never had to find out). Points a) to c), however could have been changed in comparatively short notice. And in that case a German attack might have met a wall. Similiar: had the Soviets attacked (let's say in 1942 for peace sake) and not bungled things big style somehow...Nazi Germany would have been done for. The war would not have lasted long in that case.

[Lokos]

There are many comments like these in a myriad of history books, most actually by people who are not German or not overly fond of them otherwise. Out of some reasons the German military forces are referred to, again and again, as overwhelming. Superior. Efficient. Or even as : the best. Why? How? They lost all the time didn't they?


Don't get me wrong, the passage you quoted reflects my belief that, in terms of the Wehrmacht and German armies generally, the June 1941 circa Wehrmacht was the best. There has never before and never since been a German military institution as capable in comparison to other major power armies. Yet I consider the Soviet army of 1944-1945 to be superior to the Wehrmacht of the same period.


I have to disappoint you, ogukuo72. We do not. No parades here. No big heroe's cult. (And certainly nothing what compares to what Americans or Russians do).

That possibly has more to do with an anti-Nazi historical discourse and tradition in Germany, than it has to do with 'no big heroes' cult'. The Russians and Americans take great pride in their WW2 victory. That's only fair enough. Had Germany won, you can probably be sure that they would have held military parades just as grand. And 'no big heroes' cult' might be an overstatement. Rommel was a superstar for the German public in WW2. So were a few other successful military personnel...


and the resulting "peace treaty" was immensly harsh

Considering that, since the 1960's, the general consensus in German historiography lays the blame for WWI on the shoulders of the Imperial government, and that most Western historians agree, it's hardly surprising.


The German population felt cheated by Wilson and the Allies.

Not until the Nazis gained prominence. And even then, it was an imagined belief in being 'cheated', stirred by the worldwide economic depression, moreso than anything else.


The notion that one had to crush Germany in WWII utterly to prove something is simply crap.

After 1942 the Soviets, at least, would have accepted nothing else. Especially not after the news of treatment of Slavs in the Ukraine and Belarus got out.


it is indeed a quite common belief with German veterans of either WWI and WWII that the German military was at least as good or even better than their opponents.

I'd put a battle-ready Soviet 1945 force against anything Germany could muster, and I know where my bet would lie.


for example Trevor N. Dupuy, a Colonel (ret.) of the US Army (who, as a non German, should be more resistant to something like it, should he not?)

With all due respect to Mr. Dupuy, assigning combat effectiveness values based on kill rates on foes who were a) doctrinally different b) materially different and c) under the effects of variables he never touched upon, seems a little disingenious to me, at least.


To do that, he developed a fairly complicated mathematical model of battle taking into account factors like numbers involved on both sides, arms used, terrain, posture and the effect of air power if present.

Wonderful. This kind of model works for computer games, where every engagement - with the same contextual settings - comes out the same way, no matter how many times you play it out, unless there is a wild-card modifier thrown in to simulate 'battle chaos'. It doesn't work for real-life.


The result: the actual outcome of the battle could only be predicted if one assumes that the German unitss were between 20% and 30% as effective as their Allied counterparts.

You mean to say 'if the attacking side garnered the traditionally required 3:1 superiority in personnel and combat materiel'. That's news only to Mr. Dupuy.


Dupuy also used a less complicated way of determining the combat effectiveness of both sides: He compared the losses inflicted upon one another from the start to the end of the combat engagement and used simple factors to compensate for things like attacking, defending, defending from fortified positions and so forth.

Possibly the single stupidest way of comparing WW2 belligerents anyone ever came up with.


100 German soldiers on the Western front of WWII fought as effectively as about 150 Western Allied soldiers.

Yeah, maybe on the defensive. Maybe.


And, out of some reason, they usually come to the conclusion that the German troops are more combat effective than their opponents.

We could get into a real debate regarding what measuring sticks are used to jugde this 'German combat superiority'. I don't think I'll do a whole spiel on this at the moment, I'm a little drunk. But we'll come back to this, at some point. You'll hear all about my theories, such as the 'degenerative effect on combat efficiency stemming from Rapid Force Generation and Deployment (RFGD)'.


...only the German forces seem bend to ignore it again and again.

Not really. Not when one considers German doctrine. They didn't outnumber their opponents by 3:1 in breakthrough corridors. It was more like 10:1. Overall force equivalence is useless if the attacker breaks through operationally using superior force concentration on the tactical level, and thus begins an exploitation that renders the defending forces' combat means useless.


and even more so in the Sovietunion in 41/42, and so on.

You must have skimmed my earlier post on the Soviet Union circa '41. I don't see a rebuttal of the numbers I offered, though. And they show NO Soviet superiority in anything. Except for tanks and aircraft, which the Soviet military couldn't technically and logistically support, rendering them combat ineffective.


"For a military unit, losses of about 25% are acceptable. Higher losses severly reduce combat effectiveness of the respective unit. If losses of around 50% or more are sustained, the unit is in immediate danger of disintegrating".

A Soviet first echelon regiment would routinely (not sometimes, but just about EVERY time) sustain losses of 50% in offensive operations. This did not render the unit combat ineffective, and it could usually resume operations within two weeks.


...but German units continued to be cohesive and able to fight after having incurred losses of 60%, 70%, 80% even nearly 90%

That's not really that impressive...

The 187th Rifle Division moved into Stalingrad in October. Three days following the deployment 90% of the division were dead or missing (not simply casualties, but actual dead or missing). The 95th Rifle Division moved into Stalingrad in late September, strength on 8 October 3,075 (from an initial strength of 7,000). Evacuated 14 October with approximately 500 men left. The 112th Rifle Division, present at the start of the battle, had an initial strength of 7,000; strength on 29 September, 250 men organized into a composite battalion. The 193rd Rifle Division arrived on the night of 27-28 September with 5,000 men; strength on 8 October, 350 men. The 37th Guards Rifle Division arrived on the night of 2-3 October with 7,000 men; fought at the Tractor Factory; evacuated 15 October with 250 men. The 13th Guards Rifle Division arrived on the night of 15-16 September with over 10,000 men; strength on 15 October, ~300.

All of these units remained cohesive, even in the face of such losses.


Or Suvorov for that matter. I point to Werner Maser's "Der Wortbruch" instead. He makes quite good a case.

No, not really. The general consensus remains quite effective in 'defending' the fact that no offensive was even to be considered before the summer of 1942. The 1941 circa RKKA was undergoing a massive reorganization effort. No military leadership in its right mind would consider taking the offensive against a capable enemy. That's the simplest argument there is for 'no attack planned', and in the end the only one that matters.


But you say for yourself that the German forces numbered "3,050,000 + 650,000 Finns/Romanians". (May I add: the Finns dropped out of the invasion quite soon -none of them ever came even near to Moscow or Stalingrad) while the overall Soviet Forces were "5,550,000 overall, but we're only judging the forces actually arrayed".

There were Soviet forces opposing the Finns at all points during the war, and if you don't want to count the Finns, then don't count Soviet forces in the Caucaus, in the Far East, in Northern Russia. The Soviets did not drain the Northern Front in favour of the Central. Thus, the ratio remains roughly the same.


And that only 2.6 million "were arrayed"...was good for the Soviets.

In what way?


If the whole Red Army had stood in those far Western postions the Soviets may have lost it.

90% of the 1941 Red Army was destroyed in the first four months of the war. The level of training and combat efficiency lost in those four months was not recovered until 1945. The reserve Armies facing Guderian in September were composed solely of cadre divisions. In other words, the whole Red Army WAS destroyed. The problem was that the Soviet military institution had planned for regenerating the entire armed forces every six months...


But how about the numbers in tanks, artillery pieces and planes of all kind? In Summer 1941 the Soviet numerical superiority in tanks over the invading German forces was a smashing 7 to 1 (25.000 soviet ones compared to 3500 German tanks...

1) 18,000 Soviet tanks to 3,500 German tanks - there was a total of 21,000 Soviet tanks, and over 3,000 were in the Far East MD and the Caucaus.

2) Like I said, without logistical and technical support Soviet armored superiority fell in three months and turned into a 2:1 inferiority in favour of the Germans. Most tanks were abandoned, having no ammo or fuel.


...and the Soviet tanks were by no means technologically inferior...on the contrary)

? Apart from the Pz I + II, 95% of Soviet armored forces WERE quite inferior to German tanks (Pz III + IV). The BT-5, BT-7, T-60 and the T-26 were no technological marvels.


As far as artillery and fighting planes were concerned the Soviets had 4 to 5 times as many (with planes it could have even been nearly 10 times as much as the war began).

The Soviets had 8,000 aircraft. Twenty five percent of that total was destroyed in the first two days of the war (mostly on the ground, too). The aerial superiority was NOWHERE near ten fold. The same leadership and technical issues that plagued the RKKA also plagued the VVS.


a) The Soviet army was the largest land force the world had ever seen. True statement.

And it would have been ready to crush Germany in 1942, if left alone. True statement. The plans for that military institution drew a magnificent picture of military prowess. Unfortunately, Hitler, in one of his most cognitive moments, decided to invade at the worst possible time for the Soviets - and at the exact time when his own military was the best it was ever going to get.


This IS simply mazing, considering the odds.

Not to anyone who's actually studied the RKKA...


And cosidering that, according to the usual military wisdom, the attacker should have much more or much superior equipment (or both) than the defender and not the other way round.

I've dealt with this previously in this post.


I don't think that I am deceiving anyone if I call Barbarossa amazing.

No, you're just repeating a well construed myth.


It was the German Deep Penetration Tactic, commonly known as "Blitzkrieg".

The Russians called it Deep Battle (glubokiiy boii), and had it before the Germans. Big deal. And, much like the Germans, the Russians had not developed their defensive doctrines since 1918...


Much simplified it goes like this: Air Forces and Paras/Commando units attack numerous targets far behind the enemy front. Especially those that have to do with the flow of supplies and information. Bridges, supply depots, command posts etc. Then tank units smash through the enemy frontline at various points COMPLETELY IGNORING their flanks (which is absolutely against the rules of conventional military wisdom) and also deepy penetrate into the enemy hinterlands, usually on somewhat curved, sweeping paths cutting off the enemy frontline troops from their supply and infromation lines even more. After the Tanks come lighter units and infantery.

Thank you for the lesson in doctrine, but I'm well aware of what constituted German tactical and operational doctrine during WW2. Most of my history major went towards the military history of the RKKA during WW2 (and its opponents).

Like I said, the Russians had the exact same offensive doctrine in place. In 1942, a revival of that doctrine was attempted. But it was only properly executed in 1944. In August 1945, against the Japanese, the finest military operation of all time was executed through unimaginably difficult terrain. Read up on it. August Storm, it was called. Desert Storm was named after it, at Ft. Leavenworth - where American war planners modeled the offensive on the Soviet 1945 effort.

NATO, to put it colloquially, was quite pertrubed by the thought of being subjected to such a carefully calculated and tailored offensive.


but thing is that the Red Army forces arrayed at the Western Soviet front in 1941 were even more susceptible to fall for this method.

Not as much as you'd think. The Mechanized Corps' (read: the offensive power of the army), the heart of the RKKA, were well removed from the border. But they were strung out over thousands of kilometres of poorly roaded terrain, and thus committed to battle piecemeal. Lack of fuel and ammo resulted in their destruction-in-detail.


While knowing the word "initiative" in principle and using it in their doctrine now and then, the Soviet milititary discouraged this characteristic in its soldiers to the best of abilites.

In 1941, and only in 1941, I would tend to agree.


Any soldier from bottom to the middle ranks learned that if anything went wrong and the hunt for "those wo are responsible for the failure" began, he would very fastly been shot if he could not say that he had not followed the orders precisly as they had been given.

Vast, vast overstatment, and only even partially applicable to the desperate months of July, August and September of 1941.


...in contrast to the German army who was the most flexible one. The Wehrmacht heavily emphasized initiative with its soldiers and used more decentralized command structures than anyone else.

I am well aware of Auftragstaktik. Please, you don't have to talk to me as if you were explaining what I don't already know.


b) They were trained with mostly an offensive in mind. Something like "Attaque a outrance" had been standard Soviet doctrin since the late thirties. Stalins's orders. As a result things like "orderly withdrawals" had not been trained much, if at all. One did not expect to need it. On top of this: a "orderly withdrawal" is regarded as one the most difficult of military maneuvers.

I would agree with this.


a) They were simply surprised. The Soviet leadership had information about the German preparations, but left their troops about much of it in the dark. When the attack came it came as surprise. Stalin's early orders added to that.

It was no surprise to the border troops. Kirponos even put the men under his command on the proper wartime footing. A quiet mobilization began in early June. But Stalin's insistence on not 'provoking' the Germans into war put paid to any effort at organizing a defensive campaign.

***

Well, that was a long post.

Lokos

[ClydeFrog]

If by "bias", you mean that I challenge the myths that Germans hold dear, then, yes, I am guilty as charged.

Indeed, I think we should all be "biased" in rigourously challenging myths, ideas and concepts.

I see that the people of Old Europe - in particular France and Germany - are very good at challenging other countries around the world when it comes to this respect. What they are not so good at is questioning their own myths.

I'm going to challenge one more myth here: that of supposed Germany superior fighting ability and British inferiority on the Western Front.

Here's a crumpet of fact:

In WW1, on all fronts, the Commonwealth lost 702,410 troops were killed. Sounds high? Well, the Germans lost 1,950,000. That is almost two million.

Now, I know some of you would say, that's not quite fair. The Commonwealth had less troops engaged. True. The Commonwealth mobilised 8,375,000 men on all fronts. Germany mobilised a whooping 13,250,000 men.

Of the Commonwealth troops, 8% were killed. Of the Germans, 15% were killed.

Consider this also: the population of the Commonwealth (not counting the colonies) was 45,750,000. The German population was 60,300,000. The Commonwealth lost 1.53% of their population. Germany lost 3.23%.

When you look at these figures, you have to ask yourselves whether the idea that the British commanders were singularly inept, and the German commanders brilliant, would hold up, especially given that the Germans were on the defensive for most of the war, and the British were on the attack.

If I lose more men while manning fortification against troops that have to attack over exposed terrain, then you have a right to call me incompetent.

Can we call the German commanders in WW1 incompetent too?
Again you are picking the numbers that suit you most and ignore the rest. Last i heard Germany wasn't fighting the Commonwealth alone in WW1. What about the Russians? What about France? Russia lost about 1.7 million men in the war, i don't remember the exact numbers of France but i think it was some 1.4 million. The overall military death toll were some 5 million for the entente and about 3 million for the central powers. How does that sound to you?
Here's a nice graph from the (english) Wikipedia site:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/WorldWarI-DeathsByAlliance-Piechart.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:WorldWarI-DeathsByAlliance-Piechart.png
That aside I dislike the "this or that country lost xx percentage of their population", because this has little to do with winning or losing a war. The US lost a lot less men in Vietnam than the NVA or the Vietcong, but still lost. The Soviets lost a lot less men in Afghanistan than the Afghans, but still lost.

[Atlantic Friend]

In WWII this was even worse: once again France and Britain declared war because they believed that they could solve the "German problem" militarily with certainty. They were wrong. And even if they in the end could claim to be among the victors once again, WWII effectively marks the end of France's and Britain's Great Power status.

I don't think anyone could say that France and Great Britain joyously declared war on Germany in 1939 with the certainty to solve the German question militarily. That sounds somwhat "revisionist", and flies against the fact that in 1938, both nations found it necessary to appease Germany at the Munich peace conference because they felt the 1938 Germany was already too strong to defeat.

France and Great Britain declared war on Nazi Germany because they had to, being allied to attacked Poland, and because the last round of peaceful negociations with germany had cost them Czechoslowakia and allowed Germany to swoon Rumania and some factions of the Yugoslavian government.

Reneging on the last ally they had in Europe would have dealt a lethal blow to their stature in the continent even without a war, so war was, at that point, totally inevitable.

[ViktorNavorski]

Damn, the French and some others certainly got a big chip on their shoulder.

[Atlantic Friend]

Damn, the French and some others certainly got a big chip on their shoulder.

What do you mean, Viktor ?

[ViktorNavorski]

What do you mean, Viktor ?

Oh, just that some go into the most minute details or something like "400 years ago, this land was ours..........." just to prove a point.

Anyway, I see the discussion move up to World War II, so turning point for World War I or who won it or if "French victory was stolen" seem all irrelevent.

[Ericsson]

the one thing that is good about
petain is that he made sure the best possible french instructors
the surviving french alpine troops
taught the Americans the usefulness of grenades
while the british exhorted new recruits to use the bayonets ??
the french having learned the hard way that the bayonet
and the rifle were of little use..
Over a third of the british so called officers sent there to asist in the training
of the americans were specialists ?? in Bayonets and riflery while three fifths of the french instructors were specialists in artillery , hand grenades
and small-unit tactics.

and once again ??// tanks ?????
were not contributing to the defeat of Germany -->wake UP ??
wilson , pershing and the american expeditionary force did...
------------------------------------------------------

[Atlantic Friend]

Oh, just that some go into the most minute details or something like "400 years ago, this land was ours..........." just to prove a point.

You don't say ! ;) "Well, historically all the beer in your fridge has always belonged to me, so pass me a long neck NOW ! " :)


Anyway, I see the discussion move up to World War II, so turning point for World War I or who won it or if "French victory was stolen" seem all irrelevent.

It still gives surprising results, though. National myths die hard, I guess.

[Violet Fashion by Mindy]

http://www.richthofen.com/scheer/

Read that for anyone who wants the German opinion of WW1.

[roland]

and once again ??// tanks ?????
were not contributing to the defeat of Germany -->wake UP ??
wilson , pershing and the american expeditionary force did...
------------------------------------------------------

That's the second time you repeat it.
Despite you didn't give any arguments both time, may be if you repeat it 100,000 more time, that could convince me.
Or find logical and rational arguments that would be shorter and must be easy if you're right.

My arguments are (I repeat):

1) if the tank was useless, the generals and troops wouldn't had asked for it. In 1918 NO offensive was planed without heavy use of tank, the french built 4000 in 1918 (source: http://www.firstworldwar.com/weaponry/tanks.htm ) and planned 12,000 for 1919.
Either they were completly stupid, either they knew better than you.

2) the tank was the perfect tool to defeat the two most efficient defensive weapons of WWI: the barbed wires and the machine gun.
It crushed the barbed wires and the infantry could walk behind and it could resist machine gun shots and destroy machine gun nests rolling over it or with its gun and it also protected the infantry that was in cover behind.

That's my main arguments. What are yours ?

I'm affraid all you have is only conviction that comes from Nazi propaganda that made the German people believe that Germany was not defeated but was backstabbed by a Communist plot. If Germany had been properly beaten, at least those BS wouldn't have had any credibility.
The best lies are based in some truth. The truth here is that the first use of tanks were far from successfull: lot of mecanical problems and the tactic wasn't ready. That's normal, when something is new, there is some mistake at first. But after that, the allies were more and more efficient and the tank became really a war winning weapon in the 4 last months of the war when the allies had more success than in the first 4 years.

[ogukuo72]

I don't think the pie chart that was presented by Clyde actually refute what I had said. I was comparing the Commonwealth military to the German military only. I did not include the French, the Russians or the Americans in the comparison. Comparing only the Commonwealth military with the German military, and using only casualty figures as percentages of men engaged, the fact remained that - despite the "reputation" of poor British generalship - a Commonwealth soldier was less likely to be killed than a German soldier.

If British Generals were butchers, then German generals must have been worse. If the generals or the militaries of other Allied countries were not as good as the British, it did not overturn my case about the Commonwealth.

Let me question yet another German myth - to further add to my reputation as being biased against all things German - that the Germans were defeated by superior numbers alone.

This is a favourite myth of the Germans, with the unstated assumption that if the Germans had superior numbers or equal numbers instead, they would have won the war, for surely the German military had superior fighting power. Well, the Germans did enjoy periods where they had superior military strength in both war worlds.

During WW1, the Germans pocessed superior numbers between the Russian Revolution and Operation Michael (during which American divisons had not arrived in superior numbers). During WW2, Britain was fighting alone against Germany for almost a year.

Yet, strangely, Germany went on to lose both wars. Surely this should lead us to speculate if Germany in both world wars actually knew how to win a war.

If we are not looking at figures on the national level, but compare figures on the battlefield, again, there are instances in which the Germans possessed superior numbers, but failed to win. The classic case had to be Stalingrad, where the defenders were outnumbered in facing the German Sixth Army. Yet, try as they might, the Germans failed to root out the heroic defenders of Stalingrad. The death of these heroes allowed the Soviet Union to assemble massive forces on either flanks of the Axis armies.

The Germans had air superiority, artillery superiority and armoured superiority. And yet they failed to crush men who were fighting by the edge of the teeth.

If the Germans were great fighting men, doesn't it made the Soviet soldiers even better? If the Germans could not win under such circumstances, it is unlikely they could ever be able to win under any other circumstances. Indeed, events were to show that they could not.

The fighting quality of the German forces has always been over-rated, and that of the Allied fighting men under-rated. The Allied infantrymen, the Allied tankees, the Allied artillery men and so on had nothing to be ashamed of when they were stacked up against their German counterparts.

From the Americans defending Bastogne and Mortain against overwhelming German strength with no air cover, to the British defending Tobruk, to the Russians defending Stalingrad, they had proved to be as good as, if not better than their German counterparts.

[ClydeFrog]

I don't think the pie chart that was presented by Clyde actually refute what I had said.
It does exactly that.

Comparing only the Commonwealth military with the German military, and using only casualty figures as percentages of men engaged, the fact remained that - despite the "reputation" of poor British generalship - a Commonwealth soldier was less likely to be killed than a German soldier.

If British Generals were butchers, then German generals must have been worse. If the generals or the militaries of other Allied countries were not as good as the British, it did not overturn my case about the Commonwealth.
Your argumentation is fundamentally flawed ogukuo. You are presenting numbers of WW1 overall casualties, which, concerning Germany, include casualties suffered on the Eastern Front and casualties suffered against other Western entente powers on the Western Front. If you want to make any statement about the effectiveness of German or British officers you have to take the numbers of casualties Germans and British lost in battles against each other only.

Even then the conclusions drawn would be "fishy" to say the least, as they still neglect many other factors, such as troop experience, nutrition, material, the element of surprise, the terrain etc...

The pie chart above however allows me to make the following statement:

Germany inflicted more casualties in WW1 than it suffered.

That still didn't win the war.

Now, your Stalingard example: Let's at first get the facts straight right?

Germany/their allies(6th Army, 4th Tank Army, Romanian 3rd and 4th Army, Ungarian 2nd Army, Italian 8th Army):
Men: 1.011.500
Artillery: 10.290
Tanks: 675
Planes: 1.216

Red Army
Men: 1.000.500
Artillery: 13.541
Tanks: 894
Planes: 1.115

So that is your "outnumbering"? Looks more like "evenly matched" to me. Add to this the fact that the soviets were dug in pretty well, knew the terrain, were better equipped for winter war, fought for their homeland, had a steady flow of supplies and so on... Nothing here that in any way throws a bad light on the capabilities of the German soldiers. That is not to say Stalingard had not been a complete defeat, but to blame it on the German soldiers is just arrogant and wrong and badmouths a lot of men who were braver than you or me. That goes for both sides involved.

I could start stating defeats of US, Russian, French, British or whatever nation you want that fought in the two wars, and put the blame on the relevant soldiers, but i don't do that. I don't think anyone here is qualified to make such a statement.

[Lokos]

Add to this the fact that the soviets were dug in pretty well

Not really.


knew the terrain,

In a way.


were better equipped for winter war

The Germans were no longer ill-equipped for winter warfare by the winter of 1942.


fought for their homeland

And what were the Germans fighting for?


had a steady flow of supplies

I'm sorry, but the Soviets weren't interdicting German supply lines - it was the other way around. Resupplying Stalingrad meant ferrying those supplies across the Volga. The riverfront was well within the range of German artillery and aviation. Furthermore, available Soviet supplies were often stockpiled (selling short the 62nd Army and subordinate elements under Chuikov) - rather than sent across the river - for Operations Uranus, Saturn, Little Saturn and Ring.

Lastly, in regards to Stalingrad, you are using misleading figures. The 6th Army and subordinate elements included some 25 understrength divisions - yet they were faced by only 8 Soviet divisions (in the 62nd Army) in September. That this force ratio eventually reflected what you describe above does not change the fact that the Germans initially heavily outnumbered the Soviets, and that they were not able to translate that force superiority into victory - only getting within about 600 ft from the riverside.

Lokos

[ClydeFrog]

The numbers stand. They represent the strength of both armies at the very beginning of the battle of Stalingrad. The Soviet and German designation of "division" are different. There was no outnumbering. Period. Fell free to post different numbers if you like, but as far as that i stick to my source.

The Soviets knew the terrain, afterall it was their country. And Germany wasn't defending its own soil, it was conquering. That's a difference. The German supplies were pretty much null, when they got surrounded. But they still they kept on fighting. The interdiction of the Soviet supplies was a goal that was never really accomplished.

[foxtrot023]

Rezun is not healthy for you. His writings are trash. The EARLIEST Stalin would have considered offensive action against the GGR was summer of 1942.



Uhh, you're misleading the public quite heinously.

On June 22 1941 the balance of forces was as follows:

Soviets - 2,680,000 in the Western MD's (5,550,000 overall, but we're only judging the forces actually arrayed)

Germans - 3,050,000 + 650,000 Finns/Romanians

Correlation: Soviet 1:1.4 German

German tactical and operational superiority often exceeded 10:1 and was conducive to sharp, victorious engagements with covering forces as the Soviets attempted (and failed) to concentrate.

On September 11 1941 the balance of forces was as follows:

Soviets - 3,464,000 (at the front)

Germans - 3,315,000 + 650,000 Finns/Romanians

Correlation: Soviet 1:1.16 German

Whilst German superiority had fallen significantly, it still remained decisive. Especially in armoured forces - the Soviets were outnumbered by between 2 and 3 to 1 in tanks and SPGs. The Soviets lost 20,000 tanks and SPGs in the first six months of the war. The vast majority were lost to logistical malfunctions (running out of ammo and fuel and being abandoned), not to enemy action.

On November 1 1941 the balance of forces was as follows:

Soviets - 2,200,000 (front)

Germans - 2,800,000 + 650,000 Finns/Romanians + 67,000 in northern Norway

Correlation: Soviet 1:1.9 German

This was the high noon of German superiority on the ground. Whilst the Soviets achieved a 1.23:1 superiority by December, they never went above 1.74:1 at any point in 1942 (staying at ~1.5:1 for most of the year).

***

Now, considering the difficulties the Soviet forces faced in 1941 (logistical, leadership, strategic blundering, confusion etc), it doesn't strike me as strange at all that the Germans were able to triumph so quickly at the onset. The German army of June 1941 was the best it had ever been or was ever going to be. It was composed almost solely of veterans of numerous other conflicts, was fully battle ready, was well supplied (initially), had clear chains of command and experienced leaders, was motivated and fully battle ready (as opposed to many Soviet cadre divisions that faced the Wehrmacht during the first two weeks of the war).

I appreciate your pride in German accomplishments. Don't overstate them, though.

Lokos

Hummm, Lokos those numbers are just too cut up and dry, if you know what I mean. Remember that by November 1941, several million soviet soldiers were POW, ergo the soviets had over 4 million men engaged in the west during the period of June to Nov. 1941. During 1941 the soviets were losing men more rapidly that they could replace them. Practically all men that faced the germans at June 1941 were lost. Of course the ability of the soviets to raise new formations was incredible, and of course, while the soviets had manpower to spare (at that time) the same cann´t be said of the germans.

[foxtrot023]

Lastly, in regards to Stalingrad, you are using misleading figures. The 6th Army and subordinate elements included some 25 understrength divisions - yet they were faced by only 8 Soviet divisions (in the 62nd Army) in September. That this force ratio eventually reflected what you describe above does not change the fact that the Germans initially heavily outnumbered the Soviets, and that they were not able to translate that force superiority into victory - only getting within about 600 ft from the riverside.

Lokos

remember that not all german divisions were inside Stalingrad. Several were at the volga bend.

cheers,

[Lokos]

The numbers stand. They represent the strength of both armies at the very beginning of the battle of Stalingrad.

That is just it, they do NOT. They reflect the numbers at the beginning of Operation Uranus on 19 November 1942. The battle for Stalingrad began 23 August 1942.


The Soviet and German designation of "division" are different. There was no outnumbering. Period. Fell free to post different numbers if you like, but as far as that i stick to my source.

What the hell? If anything, a Soviet division in 1942, with an average of 7,000 men, was SIGNIFICANTLY smaller than a German one (average strength 10,000-14,000). There was EXTREME outnumbering in August and September. The fact that you do not wish to see this is not my problem, or history's, but your own imagination's. By the end of the war, as it happens, the average Soviet division was composed of 2,500 men.


And Germany wasn't defending its own soil, it was conquering.

Of course, the Soviets were motivated. So were the Germans. I have seen nothing to indicate otherwise.


The German supplies were pretty much null, when they got surrounded

You know, there was this little two month period before Uranus when the Germans heavily outnumbered AND outgunned their opponents, during which they couldn't take the city.


Hummm, Lokos those numbers are just too cut up and dry, if you know what I mean. Remember that by November 1941, several million soviet soldiers were POW, ergo the soviets had over 4 million men engaged in the west during the period of June to Nov. 1941. During 1941 the soviets were losing men more rapidly that they could replace them. Practically all men that faced the germans at June 1941 were lost. Of course the ability of the soviets to raise new formations was incredible, and of course, while the soviets had manpower to spare (at that time) the same cann´t be said of the germans

They're not too cut and dry for my purposes. Nowhere have I denied that the Soviet Union was possessed of a superior manpower base. All I am showing is that the number of men under arms was in the favour of the Axis until December 1941. Looking at the factual dispositions, this statement is irrefutable.


remember that not all german divisions were inside Stalingrad. Several were at the volga bend.

That's largely irrelevant. They still had superior numbers until the very end of the German offensive phase. At which point STAVKA strategic reserves were brought into play for Uranus.

Lokos

[Kitsune]

@ogukuo72

ogukuo72 wrote:

I was comparing the Commonwealth military to the German military only. I did not include the French, the Russians or the Americans in the comparison. Comparing only the Commonwealth military with the German military, and using only casualty figures as percentages of men engaged, the fact remained that - despite the "reputation" of poor British generalship - a Commonwealth soldier was less likely to be killed than a German soldier.

Britain was not threatened or attacked in WWI. In contrast to Germany it had just intervened into a war on the continent out of what it perceived as its strategic interests. The losses the British forces suffered with respect to their overall population are therefore not really comparable to the German ones.
And in WWII Britain did NOT really fight solely against the Germans for one year. The German attempts against Britain were actually quite halfhearted, a quickshot without any longer preparations. Hitler hoped that the pressure of the Luftwaffe and the threat of an invasion could bring the British to make peace (and he actually did only demand the ceasing of hostilities, not a surrender of any kind since he wasn't really interested in fighting the English), which failed. But in fact he had become afraid of the Sovietunion immediately after France had been defeated (and with good reason, Stalin had no reason to accept the resulting situation). Planning for Barbararossa began in late July 1940.
Had the Sovietunion not existed and Germany prepared for "Sealion" in the same manner as Barbarossa things would have been quite different.

ogukuo72 wrote:

The fighting quality of the German forces has always been over-rated, and that of the Allied fighting men under-rated. The Allied infantrymen, the Allied tankees, the Allied artillery men and so on had nothing to be ashamed of when they were stacked up against their German counterparts.
You don't mean to say you have heard about it as well, don't you? ;)
In any case, nobody said anything about Allied soldiers having to be ashamed. I certainly did not.


ogukuo72 wrote:

From the Americans defending Bastogne and Mortain against overwhelming German strength with no air cover, to the British defending Tobruk, to the Russians defending Stalingrad, they had proved to be as good as, if not better than their German counterparts.
Not according to quite a lot of illustrious military experts. Bastogne is among the 78 combat engagements which Trevor N. Dupuy examined by the way. Have I really to repeat his final conclusion?
Ah, why not. Enjoy. ;)

[The] record shows that the Germans consistently outfought the far more numerous Allied armies that eventually defeated them....On a man for man basis the German ground soldiers consistently inflicted casualties at about a 50 percent higher rate than they incurred from the opposing British and American troops under all circumstances. This was true when they were attacking and when they were defending, when they had local superiority and when, as was usually the case, they were outnumbered, when they had air superiority and when they did not, when they won and when they lost.


ogukuo72 wrote:

If we are not looking at figures on the national level, but compare figures on the battlefield, again, there are instances in which the Germans possessed superior numbers, but failed to win. The classic case had to be Stalingrad, where the defenders were outnumbered in facing the German Sixth Army. Yet, try as they might, the Germans failed to root out the heroic defenders of Stalingrad. The death of these heroes allowed the Soviet Union to assemble massive forces on either flanks of the Axis armies.
That there were "instances in which the Germans possessed superior numbers, but failed to win" does not prove much. Except that even the Germans have a bad day now and then. ;)
But I indulge you:
At the beginning of the Stalingrad battle the Germans outnumbered the Soviet defenders indeed. But later that changed, and at the end the Germans were massively outnumbered by the Red Army. In any case: Stalingrad was almost completely conquered at one time. And while the German 6th Army was destroyed in the end, overall Soviet permanent losses of the battle were 480.000 soldiers (according to Krivosheev, who certainly cannot be accused of overexaggerating Soviet losses)...quite a bit more than the Wehrmacht suffered itself. This is especially interesting since a good part of the battle was cruel house to house fighting - a kind of combat that offsets advantages like artillery or air support as strongly like no other.
Actually, even the battle at Stalingrad, while being the most famous German defeat, does not disprove the thesis of the high German fighting power at all.

But you just take out one battle of the war that suits you (well, not really as said ;)). But why only consider Stalingrad? Why not take the Soviet operation "Mars" happening at about the same time? It failed, and the losses the Red Army suffered were even larger than the size of the German sixth army (the whole thing was kept secret by the Soviets for decades so that their victory at Stalingrad was not diluted by it).
Or what about the battle of Kiev in September 1941? Overall Soviet losses amountet to more than one million men, the POW's captured by the German forces numbered about six and a half times as many as the Soviets would take in Stalingrad. (Without the Wehrmacht losing anywhere near 480.000 men at that).

You arrive at your conclusions through your usual use of faulty logic. There are numerous battles and engagements which support the idea of the Wehrmacht being the best army of its time. (Some to such an degree that one could even make start to believe in the notion of German soldiers being Übermenschen ;)). So, why consider not only those?
Answer: because that would be selective awareness (a concept that otherwise seems to be well known to you).
To arrive at any meaningful assessment at all, one has to take into account a larger number of battles, or even the numbers of losses on the national level. And these do support the idea of the German armed forces doing well in terms of combat effectiveness, I am afraid. In both worldwars.

[Lokos]

And while the German 6th Army was destroyed in the end, overall Soviet permanent losses of the battle were 480.000 soldiers (according to Krivosheev, who certainly cannot be accused of overexaggerating Soviet losses)...quite a bit more than the Wehrmacht suffered itself.

1) That's the total number of soldiers counted as permanent losses from 17 July 1942 until 2 Feb 1943.

2) What about the Romanians' Third Army? Or do they not count? What about the relief effort forces? The losses of XXXXVIII Pz Korps? The losses of LVII Pz Korps? What about the losses of the Eighth Italian Army?

Here, I'll count for you: 241,000 permanent German losses + 300,000 Romanians, Italians and Hungarians to ~480,000 Soviet permanent losses.

There's some selective counting going on here. Last, but not least, Luftwaffe losses were not counded by OKW/OKH, whilst VVS losses are included in the Soviet totals.


Actually, even the battle at Stalingrad, while being the most famous German defeat, does not disprove the thesis of the high German fighting power at all.

Does it have to? Who said it did? Regardless of their 'fighting power' (what a strange, strange term), the Wehrmacht failed at Stalingrad. The cream of said force was annihilated by initially inferior Soviet forces. Make of that what you will.


Why not take the Soviet operation "Mars" happening at about the same time? It failed, and the losses the Red Army suffered were even larger than the size of the German sixth army (the whole thing was kept secret by the Soviets for decades so that their victory at Stalingrad was not diluted by it).

... Why bring up Mars, again?


Or what about the battle of Kiev in September 1941? Overall Soviet losses amountet to more than one million men, the POW's captured by the German forces numbered about six and a half times as many as the Soviets would take in Stalingrad. (Without the Wehrmacht losing anywhere near 480.000 men at that).

This sounds an awful lot like you're making excuses, Kitsune. By this token, the most successful operation of the entire war was the Soviet investment of Berlin. It resulted in over one and a half million German POWs (across the entire front), and the losses were skewed very much so in the favor of the Soviets (on the order of six or seven times as many German losses).

If we're discussing Stalingrad, discuss Stalingrad. Don't discuss Kiev. Or Mars.


There are numerous battles and engagements which support the idea of the Wehrmacht being the best army of its time.

Which ones, after 1943?


(Some to such an degree that one could even make start to believe in the notion of German soldiers being Übermenschen ).

Not at all.


And these do support the idea of the German armed forces doing well in terms of combat effectiveness, I am afraid.

I haven't seen ogukuo claim once that the Germans did not 'fight well'. That's not the issue at stake, here, and I think you probably know this.


which Trevor N. Dupuy examined by the way. Have I really to repeat his final conclusion?
Ah, why not. Enjoy.

You still haven't shown me why Trevor Dupuy is worth a grain of salt when it comes to judging the combat efficiency of any given WW2 belligerent?

Also, when you have the time, respond to my later post. It took a long time to compile.

Lokos

[foxtrot023]

They're not too cut and dry for my purposes. Nowhere have I denied that the Soviet Union was possessed of a superior manpower base. All I am showing is that the number of men under arms was in the favour of the Axis until December 1941. Looking at the factual dispositions, this statement is irrefutable.



That's largely irrelevant. They still had superior numbers until the very end of the German offensive phase. At which point STAVKA strategic reserves were brought into play for Uranus.

Lokos

hmmm, my reference was more into the area that the soviets kept raising new units to place at the front, which in turn were defeated, and that the progession of soviet soldiers was not (per example) 3 million in June, 2.5 in Ag. and 2 in Oct. since it hardly takes into consideration the horrendous amounts of soldiers captured by the germans in the first 5 months of Op. Barbarrosa.

and you are correct that the defenders of Stalingrad were outnumbered by germans. It was the german HQ folly that let the 6th army be embroiled into a urban warfare situation, while it is completely to the STAVKA credit that they managed to tie the germans to Stalingrad, and then surrounded them.

[Lokos]

hmmm, my reference was more into the area that the soviets kept raising new units to place at the front, which in turn were defeated, and that the progession of soviet soldiers was not (per example) 3 million in June, 2.5 in Ag. and 2 in Oct. since it hardly takes into consideration the horrendous amounts of soldiers captured by the germans in the first 5 months of Op. Barbarrosa.

Indeed, indeed, I am not equating German and Soviet losses in the least. Yet the actual level of personnel at the front, under arms, remained in the favour of the Germans until December 1941. That this was because of atrocious Soviet losses doesn't really matter for what I'm getting at, though.

Lokos

[Kitsune]

Lokos,

the problem I have with your posts is that you are referring to every sentence to my posts. And, to be frank, I usually do not agree with what you say. To be even more frank: most of you say is completely wrong or doesn't make much sense at all. And if I now refer to every sentence of your post, starting to quoting me quoting you...well imagine your answer with quoting you quoting me quoting you and refering to every sentence in which I referred to every of your sentences. No thanks. I prefer to agree to disagree.

But before you accusing me of ignoring completely what you said, take these compilation of typical examples taken from your last post:
1)
What about the Romanians' Third Army? Or do they not count? What about the relief effort forces? The losses of XXXXVIII Pz Korps? The losses of LVII Pz Korps? What about the losses of the Eighth Italian Army?
2)

Does it have to? Who said it did? Regardless of their 'fighting power' (what a strange, strange term), the Wehrmacht failed at Stalingrad. The cream of said force was annihilated by initially inferior Soviet forces. Make of that what you will.
3)
This sounds an awful lot like you're making excuses, Kitsune. By this token, the most successful operation of the entire war was the Soviet investment of Berlin. It resulted in over one and a half million German POWs (across the entire front), and the losses were skewed very much so in the favor of the Soviets (on the order of six or seven times as many German losses).

If we're discussing Stalingrad, discuss Stalingrad. Don't discuss Kiev. Or Mars.

See the problem? The topic we were discussing by now was the hypothetical high German fighting power, or wether it could even be that the German forces were qualitatively better than their opponents. (And referring to "I haven't seen ogukuo claim once that the Germans did not 'fight well'"...just FYI: ogukuo explicitely stated numerous times that the German forces were inferior in every regard to the Allied forces, be it in WWI or WWII, be it western front or eastern, be it the ability of the common soldiers to fight, the ability of the officers to lead or the effectiveness of the weapons they fought with. Refer to his various posts). This comparision of the German combat effectiveness compared to their counterparts was the topic, well, not of the thread, admittedly, but of my last posts. Mea culpa.

Assuming you wanted to refer to that, now look at the quotes from your last post. Take number one for example. Romanians? Italians? It should be obvious even to you that any performance of these has nothing lost in a analysis of German combat efficency - save that for discussing Romanian or Italian combat efficency. Which makes your reasoning meaningless, unless you want to say that Stalingrad is not an fitting example to shed light on the matter of comparative German/Soviet combat effectiveness. Well and what do you know? It was brought up by ogukuo and I did indeed voice my doubts about it: "Why Stalingrad?"

Which leads to your quotes two and three. Has anywhere denied that the Sixth Army was annihilated? Or that Berlin was conquered by the Red Army? Or even that WWII was lost by the Germans for that matter? Well, I haven't. What does your statement contribute to the discussion of combat effectiveness at all? Or do you want to come up with the schoolboy reasoning that winning a war proves that the victor is qualitatively superior? Have I really to explain to you that this isn't necessarily so? (Take the Spartans vs Persians at Thermopylae or the Americans vs Mexicans at Alamo, to name only two admittedly radical examples. Or for a whole war take the American secession war...the North won, but one really can't say that this side fought more skillfully or more brave than the South. If you never have heard about it, take it at face value: It is possible to fight better and still to loose).

The German army broke down in the end of WWII. Yes. In 1945 they had only very degraded forces at their disposal. Many of them old men or children. The Soviet army attacked with total superiority, typical comparative strength in respective engagements were often like this: 5 times as many men as the German defenders, 10 times as many tanks, 20 times as many artillery. Countless Soviet transport vehicles (courtesy of America). And possibly even the western Allied forces threw bombs on top of the matter. In that last act of the war the Soviets were superior, even in quality. Over a battered German army which suffered terrible losses. Whatever that proves. And yet: They never had it easy. Not even in these last weeks of the war.
But from summer 1941 to summer/autumn 1944 the German Wehrmacht/ Waffen SS was the superior forces in terms of combat effectiveness. With very few exceptions they fought -unit for unit - more effectively than their opponents. The losses they inflicted on their enemy were significantly higher than those they suffered.
Surprisingly many things in history and especially WII turn out to be myths when one gets to the bottom of it. This, however, isn't one of them, I am afraid.






Some last remarks.
1) The term "fighting power" that you found strange. That term was coined by Martin van Creveld. I quote out of the preface of his book, ehem, well, "Fighting Power":
Within the limits set by its size, an army's worth as a military instrument equals the quality and quantity of its equipment multiplied by what, in the present study will be termed its "Fighting Power". The latter rests on mental, intellectual, and organizational foundations; its manifestations, in one combination or another, are discipline and cohesion, morale and initiative, courage and toughness, the willingness to fight and the readiness, if necessary, to die. "Fighting Power", in brief, is defined as the sum of mental qualities that make armies fight.

2) Trevor N. Dupuis. You were very fast to disregard him, basically you called him an utter fool (and basically all who concur with him as well. Phew).
Well, most experts seem to be at least a bit more hesitant to rip him apart that way.
I did not and will not prove to you "why he is worth a grain of salt when it comes to judging the combat efficiency of any given WW2 belligerent". His detailed analysis of the comparative combat performance rests on itself. It can be attacked or doubted of course. For example someone claimed that the 78 combat encounters chosen by him would not consitute an acceptable average, that Dupuy would compared mostly better than average German units gainst normal American/British ones (someone else tried to disprove that claim as wrong).
Or another, perhaps better reasoning against it was: Dupuy's findings that the German forces would be 1.5 times as effective as their Western Allied contrahents would ignore that the Germans had combat experience while the Allies had mostly not. But if one takes the forty-one combat engagments of 44, the relation in performance is still 1.45 to 1 in the German favor.
In any case, your line of attack against T.N.Dupuy was simply: "that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard, one cannot compare this!" That's it. No further reason given. (And actually, why can't one? They were fighting against each other which is a form of competing/comparing against each other, isn't it? And losses inflicted on the respective other side seem to be a good measure of combat effectiveness, are they not? And if they aren't - what is?)
So if that is your contribution to the discussion, by all means go ahead.
But I see too little substance to argue against.



Regards,

Kitsune

[Lokos]

the problem I have with your posts is that you are referring to every sentence to my posts. And, to be frank, I usually do not agree with what you say. To be even more frank: most of you say is completely wrong or doesn't make much sense at all. And if I now refer to every sentence of your post, starting to quoting me quoting you...well imagine your answer with quoting you quoting me quoting you and refering to every sentence in which I referred to every of your sentences. No thanks. I prefer to agree to disagree.

Whatever. If you're going to hit and run, let me know next time. I don't cherry pick your posts for tiny little portions I feel I can deal with in a short period of time, I canvas them and go over every pertinent point. The fact that you're not willing to do so bothers me only in the sense that I've wasted significant amounts of time on this debate already.


ogukuo explicitely stated numerous times that the German forces were inferior in every regard to the Allied forces

Quote him.


be it the ability of the common soldiers to fight,

Quote him.


Romanians? Italians? It should be obvious even to you that any performance of these has nothing lost in a analysis of German combat efficency

Do not be foolish. If you're judging Wehrmacht effectiveness by the kill ratio they achieved (something Dupuy does, too), it would be insane to take the losses of the Soviets at Stalingrad as a WHOLE (both offensive and defensive phases of the Stalingrad operations), whilst ONLY counting the WEHRMACHT losses sustained in the kessel itself. The Romanians, Italians, Hungarians and the two relieving Panzer Korps were also inflicting Soviet casualties, which you've got included in that Soviet total. Therefore, it is entirely pertinent to point these things out.


What does your statement contribute to the discussion of combat effectiveness at all?

My point entirely. What do Kiev and Mars have to do with a discussion on Stalingrad between you and I?


Or do you want to come up with the schoolboy reasoning that winning a war proves that the victor is qualitatively superior?

You're cherry picking criteria of superiority. The RKKA was DEFINITELY superior to the Wehrmacht from 1943 onward. By 1944 the only time a Soviet offensive stopped was when it got too far away from railheads and the logistics network. In only one or two instances in the last year and a half of the war did German resistance halt a Soviet offensive for any period of time. What conclusion would YOU draw from that?

Superior in numbers, superior in firepower, superior in logistics (in the overarching sense), superior in the air, superior in resources, superior geopolitically... How many superiorities must one achieve to overcome the tactical advantage of the Germans and thus be rendered 'superior'?


..the North won, but one really can't say that this side fought more skillfully or more brave than the South.

Kitsune, I am developing the belief that you don't really understand warfighting and military institutions. You seem to be placing tactical skills on a very high pedestal. Far too high, considering the realities of warfare. The Union, for example, mobilized far greater resources than the South effectively and decisively to achieve victory. The Union continued generating forces when the South was no longer able to. So what if the Southerners had absorbed much of the officer talent of the armed forces during the first months of the war? So what if they were able to achieve initial victories? In the end, they were smashed. And since the aim of every war is WINNING it, doing so with less flair than the other side demonstrated is hardly a crime.


In 1945 they had only very degraded forces at their disposal. Many of them old men or children

People like to point this out. What they generally enjoy less pointing out is the fact that the Soviets were in a very similar boat in 1941. Yet, somehow, Barbarossa was a 'spectacular feat', whilst Soviet Third Period of War offensives somehow lose this quality because the Soviets still had a military institution that works.

But consider: the Soviets rebuilt this military institution DURING the war. They reformed their tactical, operational and strategic doctrines AMIDST the fighting. The fact that they were able to do so whilst being assaulted by the admittedly best military on the planet at the time (1941-1942) is testament to the skill and tenacity of STAVKA and the upper echelons of the RKKA. Of COURSE the Germans were better trained in terms of infantry. Recruitment in waves has its advantages. Only at the very end did the Volkssturm make its appearance. The Soviets, on the other hand, often simply emptied a village of its men, gave them weapons, assigned them to units, and their training was thus complete...

Let me try to put this simply: the destruction of virtually the entire trained Red Army forces during the first six months of warfare introduced a vicious cycle - newly formed units had to be committed to the fighting before their training was even nearly complete, so as to stave off defeat on the front. These units, having little training and, initially, few heavy weapons, were subsequently destroyed by high quality German formations. But each of these units also took a toll on the Germans. Thus, newly generated forces were fed to the meatgrinder in order to buy time for the generator by wearing out said meatgrinder.

Do you understand?


The Soviet army attacked with total superiority, typical comparative strength in respective engagements were often like this: 5 times as many men as the German defenders, 10 times as many tanks, 20 times as many artillery.

If the Soviet commander was skillful, the manpower superiority was even larger. Concentrating forces for a breakthrough was nothing new for the Soviets OR the Germans.


Countless Soviet transport vehicles (courtesy of America).

Regardless of the sheer number of motorized vehicles, the RKKA of 1944 as a whole was still less motorized than the Wehrmacht. Surprised?


But from summer 1941 to summer/autumn 1944 the German Wehrmacht/ Waffen SS was the superior forces in terms of combat effectiveness. With very few exceptions they fought -unit for unit - more effectively than their opponents. The losses they inflicted on their enemy were significantly higher than those they suffered.
Surprisingly many things in history and especially WII turn out to be myths when one gets to the bottom of it. This, however, isn't one of them, I am afraid.

I might even be inclined to agree with this.


1) The term "fighting power" that you found strange. That term was coined by Martin van Creveld. I quote out of the preface of his book, ehem, well, "Fighting Power":

I appreciate the definition. 'Fighting Power' seems akin to Dupuy's CEVs... It generalizes military institutions to a degree that I find unacceptable.


Well, most experts seem to be at least a bit more hesitant to rip him apart that way.

Like, who?


His detailed analysis of the comparative combat performance rests on itself.

What it rests on is presumption.


No further reason given

I would think that 'one cannot compare the two, as they are inherently incomparable' is a reason, but hey, whatever.


(And actually, why can't one? They were fighting against each other which is a form of competing/comparing against each other, isn't it? And losses inflicted on the respective other side seem to be a good measure of combat effectiveness, are they not? And if they aren't - what is?)

Don't be simplistic. There IS no valid way of measuring combat effectiveness. Someone once said 'There is no substitute for victory'. As much as I dislike that individual, I can't help but agree. A military institution's effectiveness is the result of the sum of its parts - not tactical, operational or strategic brilliance alone. Mr. Dupuy's analysis would have us believe that, all other things being equal, a German unit will inherently inflict 1.5 times the casualties that it sustains (and 2.5 on the Soviets, IIRC). I can name dozens of engagements where this 'rule' was proven wrong. The most obvious one seems to be Bagration, wherein the first two weeks of fighting saw ten German permanent losses for EACH Soviet. This ratio was only degraded in the subsequent five weeks because of the wear and tear on mobile formations and the increasing distance from logistical networks, as well as shifting German reserves, as the Soviet offensive carried over into Poland.

Or the Oder operation, wherein the same thing happened initially. Or Lake Balaton? Or Budapest? Or Iassy?

So what is Mr. Dupuy's point? That the Germans could, on the defensive in 1944, inflict greater losses on the WAs attacking them? This seems to be a relatively traditional 'rule'. Could they do so on the offensive, though? Ardennes, anyone?


So if that is your contribution to the discussion, by all means go ahead.
But I see too little substance to argue against.


You're being intensely selective about the arguments of mine you actually choose to take issue with. For example, the longest post I've ever written on this forum has gone entirely unnoticed by you. And the parts you deigned fit to 'deal with' in this last post were all from a latter post of mine. So, in fact, you DID entirely ignore what I said not to ignore.

That's fine. If that's your style of debate, whatever.

Lokos

[Kitsune]

Lokos,


Kitsune wrote:
But from summer 1941 to summer/autumn 1944 the German Wehrmacht/ Waffen SS was the superior forces in terms of combat effectiveness. With very few exceptions they fought -unit for unit - more effectively than their opponents. The losses they inflicted on their enemy were significantly higher than those they suffered.
Surprisingly many things in history and especially WII turn out to be myths when one gets to the bottom of it. This, however, isn't one of them, I am afraid.
Lokos wrote:
I might even be inclined to agree with this.
If that is so, I see no larger disagreement. That was my basic point, I didn't want to convince anybody that Germany won WWII. Believe that or not.

I also agree with large other parts of this last post of yours. (Though not with all of it, mind you :P)
And to answer your question: Yes, I understand. I think.

Since we have deviated from the original topic of this thread very badly, I intent to call it a day as far as the current discussion is concerned - I do not wish to risk divine retribution after all. (Although it could very well be that no moderator or administrator with a sane mind ever works himself through all the lead desert behind us...)

By the way, I have sent you a mail in which I answer your longest post. If you have as much fun reading it as I had writing it, you can consider yourself duely punished.

As far as ogukuo is concerned, I intend to leave him to his delusions. Inhuman as it may be.


Regards,

Kitsune

[Lokos]

It was hell responding to that beast of a PM. And by that, I mean it was huge. I hope you have fun with my response(s). :D

Look, I'm sorry, again, about being confrontational. I don't mean to be. I just lose patience sometimes, because it feels like I've said these things a thousand times, and there's always someone who hasn't heard them.

It was a grand debate, to be sure. Thank you.

Lokos

[Kitsune]

Lokos wrote:
It was hell responding to that beast of a PM. And by that, I mean it was huge. I hope you have fun with my response(s).
You...you...have answered it? :|



Lokos wrote
Look, I'm sorry, again, about being confrontational. I don't mean to be. I just lose patience sometimes, because it feels like I've said these things a thousand times, and there's always someone who hasn't heard them. I think, I know what that feels like. In any case, you have done nothing what I haven't done twice as bad.:D


It was a grand debate, to be sure. Thank you.
Thank you as well. Anytime again. (After some R&R that is...)



Kitsune

[ogukuo72]

As far as ogukuo is concerned, I intend to leave him to his delusions. Inhuman as it may be.

:) Thanks, but I don't happen to think that they are delusions. The German failure to win any wars that it initiated in the 20th Century is quite self-evident.

At the end of both WW1 and WW2, the myth was put forward by Germans that their armies were not really defeated, that German military prowess remained superior to its enemies'.

After WW1, this took the form of the "Stab in the Back" myth. This was partly because the Allies failed to occupy Germany and show the German people that they had been truly defeated.

After WW2, this myth could not stand as the occupation of foreign troops were all too obvious. A modified form of the myth was used then.

First, it took the form of the myth that Germany had been pounded to the ground by superior numbers. This is a variation of the old Germanic myth of the doomed but noble warrior overcome by horde of barbarian enemies, stretching back to the Teutonic knights.

Second, it took the form of the myth of Hitler, that German defeat was as a result of a madman's constant interference with rational military policies.

Both myths allowed Germans to feel better about their defeat - that their defeat was a result not of their own individual failures, or - worse - the failure of German culture. German honour had not been soiled, because defeat was a result of either unfair advantage or of a mad man.

To this end, Germans had to emphasise aspects of the war that point to their own superiority. Part of this was to point to the technical superiority of their weapons: the Tiger tanks, the MG-42, the Me-262 and the V-2. As such, questioning whether such weapons are actually superior would elicit great anger and cries of heresy. For if German weapons are not truly superior, what does the Germans have out of all that mess that was WW2?

Similarly, questioning the quality of the German soldiers, their bravery, their fighting skills, and so on, had the same effect. If the fighting quality and bravery of their soldiers were not superior to that of their enemies, what does Germany have?

But the elements of the grand myth of German invincibility is obviously self-contradictory. Afterall, if Germany was invincible, why was it always defeated? If Germany did not have itself to blame, why did it meet with disaster under two different sets of leaders, one more atrocious than the other?

If the German soldiers were truly of superior fighting quality, why did they achieve victory only against unprepared enemies, and meet with defeat against well trained and equipped enemies?

If German weapons were truly superior, why did they not allow Germany to achieve victory in crucial battles, such as that for air superiority, the Battle of the Atlantic, or the Battle of Stalingrad? Surely something must be wrong if one fights with superior weapon and yet loses. Either one's fighting quality is poor or the weapons were not that superior.

If Germany was faced with too many powerful enemies, why did it make them in the first place?

If Germany was led by a mad man, why did Germans not recognise this from the beginning?

If the Germans recognised this, why did they continue to support him?

Why did most German generals continue to serve Hitler?

The grand myth will only stand if we take each individual element of the myth and look only at it, like blind men examining an elephant. If we bring together all the elements of the myth, we see the internal contradictions.

It would be difficult for any nation to admit to itself that it had engaged in foolhardy wars that led to the deaths of tens of millions of others, and each time to its own defeat and destruction. Perhaps this is why Germany tries so hard to discredit the US both in Vietnam and now in Iraq, for its image of the US is a reflection of its own unconscious guilt and self-loathing for its own failures.

[foxtrot023]

Germany lost WW2 because it was outmanned and outproduced. It had a shoddy strategic direction of the war, and it was only due to its top notch weapons and tactical level handling that they managed to delay the inevitable (which to give it a birth date it was June 22 1941) defeat.

[Kitsune]

@ogukuo72:

How come that the Germans lost the war when they fought better on average? Well, its possible to fight better and still to loose. War is no fair match, no mystery there.

How come that Germany did only win against unprepared enemies?
Well they didn't.
For one, Germany wasn't prepared itself when the war began.
Second, its enemies were not that unprepared. France certainly wasn't so unprepared.
Even against Poland the superiority of the German material wasn't so overwhelming: 80% of the German tanks were Pz I and II's who were better suited for training than for actual fighting. Asides that the Polish troops had the advantage of defense which had proven a tremendous boodn in WWI. No one could foresee that this would count so little anymore in 1939. Why do you think the Poles entered the war so self conscious?
In the Norway campaign the Germans were outnumbered. They still won with a lightning fast operation prepared in only very short time. (Actually a completely brazen and daring operation, that one...)
In Crete the British knew about the German attack. They had assembled 35.000 troops and had themselves dug in to wait for the German Paratroopers - the whole thing was meant to be deathtrap for them. They still lost. Even Churchill was quite impressed.
In Africa the Wehrmacht was faced with a war theater with which they had no or only outdated experience. And they were nearly constantly outgunned by the Commonwealth forces. They still frustrated one British General after the other.
In Russia a hastly assembled army of Germany and its Allies that consisted of 3.6 million men, 3.500 tanks and 2000 planes and that was not even prepared for winter time neutralized (captured, killed asf) 4.5 million Soviet soldiers, 18.000 tanks and nearly 8000 military planes within half a year. When was something similiar done ?

If you discount the successes of all these campaigns as phoney victories you are difficult to impress, I must say.

The myth that all military decision that turned out to be right were made by the generals and all wrong ones by Hitler is indeed a myth. Hitler has made not only wrong calls but also some downright uncanny right ones.

However, the myth that the German military was qualitatively superior to any of its enmies - barring the very end of the war when it degraded - is none as it seems. And, as I pointed out, it's not only put forward by Germans (perhaps least of all by Germans nowadays) but by a lot of non Germans as well. The two I mentioned for example: Trevor Dupuy is American, ex US Army. Martin van Creveld is Israeli.

As for you saying that Germans do not have anything else to be proud of concerning the worldwars other than the combat effectiveness of their military - you're damn right. That's my point. But if it is the truth why let this been taken away as well? Don't take Americans pride in the fact that their boys fought bravely in Korea - despite being pushed back to the demarcation line by the Chinese? Or that they won every battle in Vietnam - before their government opted out and called it even? Or that during the incident in Somalia in 93 far more Somalis were killed than American soldiers? Don't the French think similiar about their war in Indochina, the Russians about Afghanistan?
And don't they have a right to remember that? There isn't much else, isn't there?