Trench Warfare

Recent reading of Ziemke (where else but HyperWar) has answered my question of how the Germans -- and probably the Soviets too -- could find the troops to dig miles of trenches.

"Work on the PANTHER position would require 400,000 civilian laborers."


Also, I discovered in my boxes of books "to be read" a small pile of translated German memoirs, including Armin
Scheiderbauer's, under the English title "Adventures in My Youth". It has a number of battles for the trenches and even a period of supervising the construction of trenches for Infanterie-Division 252.

 

And in some cases the peasants did not get rations...or fed at all unless they dug.