Was the Wehrmacht overrated?

Your remark is quite close to brig. T. Ivor Moore from Tunis 1943.

A final point to clinch this argument is that to get the best out of any army, it has to be led in accordance with its national characteristics. The GERMAN is at his best when fighting according to well known and practiced drills, but when his plan is upset he finds it difficult to adapt himself to the changed conditions. We BRITISH, on the other hand, are better at doing what seems to us right according to the circumstances of a particular case. Our tactical handling of tanks or any other arm should, therefore, be based on (the) psychologiacal fact that we are best 'taking the bowling as it comes'

This is the result of the General Staffs ideas in the 20ies.

The autocratic command system the British army adapted originated from a scientific approach to battle.

Battle was chaos. And the only way to have the commander lay out a masterplan to be followed slavishly.

According to FSR 1935
The subordinates were required to do as they were told, not to act according to their own judgement according to the immediate situation facing them. Such insubordination to the master plan would bring chaos to the battlefield.

The Germans had a different approach to battle.
War was chaos, and the only way to work through it was to use mission command. The subordinates were given an objective but were free to solve it as they saw fit.

Back to your opening statement

I have never come across one single event where the germans have done this. Not once. The German army only had one sin. Inaction. The Germans were told that it was better to do the wrong thing than nothing at all. This is linked with the OODA loop, or as the Prussians put it "all war is a struggle for time".

The British fared worse in the early years because they did not have battledrills. The Autocratic command system enhanced the problem, since they were supposed to wait for orders. The guards (notoriously concervative) stopping during market garden even though they felt that they should push on.

The image of germans as helplessly wed to orders can be attributed to the Prussians before 1807 when they were mauled by Napoleon. When the dust settled over Jena Gneisnau started to ponder where it all went wrong, and found it linked to the need to wait for orders. This was remedied once and for all.

Ask anyone who was part of the revolutions in the NATO armies in the 70-80-90ies and they will tell of endless sessions of analysis of mission command and reading Achtung Panzer, The art of the indirect approach and similar works.

The SOP's that you scorn as set pieces is to quote Alexander "learning the basic strokes, a tactical crutch"
The SOP's are in every army of the world now. It is critical to ensure a common understanding of how to solve a problem. Fire and manouvre, handling ambushes every possible task.

This allows us to build task forces with mixed units, because we all know how to play the game.

 

IMHO, that's utter tosh. The German system was basically to teach everyone down to squaddie and NCO level the basic 'toolkit' of how to engage in combat in attack, retreat, reconnaisance, etc. Then they told them to use that toolkit to achieve objective X in whatever way seemed best to them at the time, and let them get on with it. This meant that every german squad knew roughly what they needed to get done, how to do it, and what the squads around them would do. This is pretty much what modern armies do nowadays.
The British (and French) approach was to teach everyone to do exactly what they were ordered to do, and if there was any deviation from plan at the tactical level, ask a superior for instructions. The result was usually disastrous.

The fact that some random British reporter bought into an outdated national stereotype has no bearing - any idiot can write a book pandering to their audience, tbh.

Which sums up why the British handling of tanks was usually characterised by staggering levels of ineptitude. And that was written in 1943!!!! The mind boggles.

 

(I apologize if this has been discussed already. Feel free to delete if so.)

The German military accomplished much in 1939-42. They conquered most of Western Europe as well as battered the Allies all across the ETO.

But in having said that, I cannot fail to note that each country they whipped was either ill prepared(England, Russia) or much too small to seriously threaten the Germans. (Granted, the Germans themselves were not fully prepared themselves. The lack of a surface fleet that could contend with the Royal Navy as well as long range bombers point to a nation that was at one level weaker than it was in 1914 when they did have a respectable fleet.)

From my reading I have gotten the impression that the Germans benefitted as much from the lack of preparation by the English and Russians as from their technical and tactical superiority. Could one argue that any professional army ought to have been able to achieve what the Wehrmacht did?

Please do not hesitate to take a 88 to this post if it's contents are found to be too ludicrous.

 

Thanks! Mods please delete.

 

Hell, if he just remember Napoleon he would have been alright.

 

The Wehrmacht by 1941 certainly 'believed in its own press cuttings' as the expression goes. The beguilingly-easy defeat of France gave Germany and the Wehrmacht a feeling of invincibility. It's certainly illuminating to watch the interview with a 6th Army survivor on the 'War Of The Century' DVD, dexcribing the march on Stalingrad, where he proudly states that 'we felt that the Wehrmacht could successfully achieve whatever it set out to do...'

 

What we see and read in the available sources on WWII is predominantly written or supported by former Nazi generals who wanted to picture themselves as competent people who did not know anything about the planned killing of millions. Furthermore, German view on the WWII was politically supported by western Allies during the Cold War. Therefore, the view on Wehrmacht and its role is quite distorted.

It is possible to rate, and eventually over-rate the Wehrmacht from two points of view.

1. Moral Integrity
Wermacht generals have accepted and executed orders aimed to exterminate Jews and Slavs in the Central and Eastern Europe. In this department they were and are hugely over-rated. Their participation in war crimes is, modestly speaking, shameful – from the top to the very bottom of that military body. They, as dishonest soldiers, have created a huge precedence in the history of the warfare.

2. Professional ability
In this sector they were far better, at least initially: well equipped, well trained and utterly indoctrinated, they have been proven as very able warriors. However, historical sources have documented much better the first third of their participation in the war, i. e. the period when Wehrmacht was overwhelmingly better than their opponents. After Stalingrad excuse was: everything was Führer's fault. I don't believe that was so. Even though Hitler was too much involved with military issues, German generals and German soldiers were those who were utterly defeated by »sub-humans« in two thirds of their engagement in the war. Indeed, Wehrmacht was slightly over-rated wile German generals have created the myth of Russian numerical superiority. This is still to be re-evaluated.

 

Gotta love propaganda. Goebbels was spouting about how superior the German army was, about how they steamrolled the Polish forces in something like three weeks. Yet, when all the world was laughing at how outdated the Polish forces were (WW1-era biplanes up against modern ME-109's, cavalry tactics against armored/mobile infantry, etc etc), the Polish forces DID hold out against the Wehrmacht for something like three weeks. And managed to exfiltrate a good portion of their Air Force pilots/ground crews, and Army units to "friendly" countries (who then had no idea how to make use of experienced troops who were badass enough to hold out against the "invincible" German forces...sad, that we Allies believed Hitler's propaganda.). Yeah, I have respect for the Wehrmacht as a fighting unit, but overrated? Just a bit, yes.

 

Gonna quible a little here RA, I believe the primary Polish fighter was a Parasol monowing so it would be more accurate to say a late 1920's airforce rather than a WWI era Biplane. Still a heavy advantage for Germany. Secondly Poland had a horrible position to defend both because of terrain and political considerations. Generally flat open ground, Ideal for tanks. Attacked from West and North (and East). The desire to defend Polish corridor and Danzig (Indefensable).

It is also fair to state that many senior German Army/Army Group/OKH commanders looked on Panzers in the same way they did Cavalry, and not all togather differently than Polish commanders. Germany's advantage lay in the Panzer Division/Corps commanders who did know how best to employ their Panzers.

 

When talking about strategy vs. inovation, I recently read that the Jerrycan was a major improvement for the German army. It is estimated that 1/3 of destroyed French tanks were just out of petrol (and not all could be sabotaged by their crews on time) . This not only forced the French to destroy some of their own vehicles , but when taken intact it provided the Germans with dozens of tanks to recycle for other offensives. No wonder the British adopted the German Jerry can in 1943 , same for the Americans.

 

Why not just merge the two threads, so that there aren't two of the same thing?

 

To me the Wehrmacht wasn´t overrated for a longer time, but in autmn 1942 it was to see that they are on their way down. Problem to me was that the allies forgot to rate them down into the right level for a time. And as they did they began to have bigger success against them.

 

It took the industrialized might of five nations several years to defeat Germany. After Kursk it still took the Russians two more years to reach Berlin with the help of American logistics. The Germans also had very little air support after Kursk. The Germans did have some bad units especially some of the Waffen SS units that were thrown together. Still it took many nations to defeat them. That says something. We also adopted many of their tactics. This also gives you something to think about.

 

Pretty much the same distance it took the Germans to not reach Kursk with the aid of French, Czech and any other persons logistics that they had seized. The Russians had very little air support until Kursk.

As Tamino said up until 42 the Generals are all keen to point out how good they were, once it starts going downhill it's everyone elses fault, Hitler, their Allies, the lack of air power. The German High Command were all happy with Hitler until they lost then they were very keen to prove their worth against the Russians in the post war world.

 

Of course they had to utilize the resources of other nations. Germany had shortcomings and recognized them and adjusted accordingly. They are a intelligent people. Let me ask you this? Were those generals wrong? You know as well those factors played a role in their demise. Funny it took so much effort from so many to take down that small nation. I'm not supportive of National Socialism but I certainly can appreciate the skill of the German soldier.

 

There are people who can see.
There are people who are blind and cannot see.
There are people who have healthy eyes but refuse to see.

You can still talk to a blind man and he will »see« but those who refuse to see will remain blind forever.

The truth is so obvious that it doesn't have to be explained but let me add few lines more on this subject. 13 million civilians were murdered under German occupation of the USSR. During this period, Hitler maintained a force of almost 4 million German and other Axis troops in the East fighting. In average every Axis soldier murdered 3.25 civilians, including children. If just every second Axis soldier was involved in murders then those who have been involved in killing killed 6.5 civilians in average. We can go further with this calculation but the conclusion is the same:

Far too many Axis soldiers were involved in the murder of far too many civilians. Period.

All we can learn from them is what should be prevented from reccurrence.

 

Quite much so, during my time as an Waffen-SS soldier in the American Legion (which very few americans joined.), I saw many of the wehrmacht soldiers retreating.

 

Tamino, you should use such calculations with caution. For by those standards you could as easily state that the two crews of Enola Gay and Bock's Car were the greatest collection of mass murderer's of all time, 22+men killed between 150,000 and 245,000 people over the course of two afternoon's. That works out to 6,800 to 11,000 deaths per man. If you include the observation/weather planes also it is still a respectable 2,200 to 3,700 per man. Kind of makes the averge landser look like a rank amature does it not?