What Are You Reading?

Sounds good. I don't quite remember what he wrote. It is a while back and unfortunatley I don't have the e-mails anymore. He was happy for me to get the book, thanked me for my interest and hoped it would give an insight into the life of a German soldier in WW2. As far as I remember he didn't discuss is wartime career in great detail, as that was not necessary as that was all in the book.

 

As a liitle 'light relief', I'm reading the second book in the '633 Squadron' series by Frederick E. Smith ( 'Operation Rhine Maiden' ).

OK, OK, it's not Tolstoy...but it's quite a good light read !

 

But that is fiction right!?

I am about to finish Tale Of Two Bridges by Pine-Coffin. Very good read. I hope they turn the rest of Col. PC's diary into books too. Still have some veteran books waiting, but as of monday, it is back to uni again...

 

Yep - it's fiction, but then some people think a lot of history books are, too !

 

I have got Neillands 'Eighth Army' on the go. As i mentioned in another thread it is ok but has some stupid detail mistakes. something that i have found common in his other works.

 

Reading the biography of Otto-Wille Kuusinen
( head of the Finnish government by Stalin in Winter war if Finland had lost )

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/kuusin.htm



Kuusinen to the right

And the "Long Nose"

 

I recently bought (much to my now regret) a book titled The Blitzkreig Myth by John Mosier. I really cannot fanthom how anyone could pack so much misinterpetation of historical fact into one volume. I cannot even begin to try and give even a few examples of just how badly misinformed this author is. Whole chapters come to wrong conclusions. Just awful.

 

T.A., Who is the publisher of this trollop of a book?

I wonder why books like this see the light of day through a publisher (a big one, perhaps, without a decent history editor??) and some great books (written by vets or serious researchers) remain unpublished....

Maybe one should enage in a career of publishing anyway...

Later:

Oh dear, this man is a Professor and a former Pulitzer-prize (in history) nominee (for his book on the Myth of the Great War)

[...]The Blitzkrieg Myth clarifies this misconception by tracking through the major campaigns in Europe. Mosier emphasizes that the Polish campaign in the fall of 1939 and the fall of France in spring 1940 were not blitzkrieg victories. He also explains how Rommel's North African campaigns, D-Day, the Normandy campaign, Hitler's final frantic breakthrough attempt into Antwerp in the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, and other actions do not support the blitzkrieg myth. Actually, Mosier says, strategic airfare in Europe was almost a failure. The warfare of World War II really represented only an advance in technology, not strategy.

Mosier affirms that the allies won due to a combination of numbers and the democracies of the United States and Great Britain. The Germans' handicap, Mosier confirms, was that they eventually became locked into Hitler's master plan, and furthermore, their victories were a result of luck.

"They think the title is going to sell the book," says Mosier about publisher HarperCollins (the biggest publisher in America); people are still oblivious that the blitzkrieg myth is actually a myth. Mosier trusts his 80-year-old editor at HarperCollins, who is a military history expert and who suggested the title[...]

http://www.loyno.edu/newsandcalendars/loyolatoday/2003/11/mosier.html

[ 15. February 2005, 01:45 AM: Message edited by: Stevin ]

 

Sounds positively hilarious, in some twisted sort of way. I wonder what his definition of blitzkrieg is?

And what the heck is this passage about? First talks about ground offensives and from this draws the conclusion that strategic "airfare" failed...

 

Indeed....And they seem to lump together all these kind of battles, without distinction. Offensive battles and defensive battles all thrown together. How can you compare the Blitzkrieg in Poland with the battle for Antwerp? You can, but you won't come up with anything sensible about the Blitzkrieg...

This is from a review or something from his own university. I also wonder about his military history editor....

Mind you, I haven't read the book, but I think I have read enough.....

 

It's worse than that. Although I really had not intended to talk at lenght on this book here are some pieces quoted from it. Make up your own mind:

From Chapter 1 War as Pseudoscience: 1920-1939

To say that Fuller's (Major J F C Fuller) idea took hold is an understatement. By the summer of 1940, after Poland and the fall of France it had the status of sacred doctrine. (This in a discussion of Douhet and Fuller and their impact on strategy and tactics, in this case witht the Allies subsequent to 1940)
pg 16

From Chapter 3 The Tank Production Myths:

...one of the most successful German designs of the war, the Hetzer tank destroyer, a slab-sided turretless vehicle mounting a potent long-barreled 75-millimeter gun.
pg 51

...the FT (French FT 17) weighed only seven tons, had a two-man crew, and mounted a low-velocity 37-millimeter gun in its rotating turret....But the 22 millimeters of armor...and 37-millimeter gun was considerably more potent than the two machine guns of the Mark I (Pzkpfw I) or the 20-millimeter weapon of the Mark 2 (Pz II).
pg 52

Germany entered the war totally dependent on an obsolete transport (the Ju 52) plane for its air drops. It had been unable to develop a strategic bomber.
pg 58

Chapter 4 Lessons Mislearned; Poland and the Winter Wars

In 1940 all of its (Germany's) opponets were more heavily mechanized than were the Germans themselves, and as late as 1944 it was still the least mechanized (or motorized) army in combat.
pg 75

The mine and the tank trap rendered most ideas of armored warfare moot.
pg 77

Chapter 5 The Germans and the Allies Prepare for War

By May 1940 the French, as we have seen, had twelve armored divisions, comprising literally thousands of tanks, together with twenty-eight independent battalins of R35 and H35 tanks.
(I assume he means 3 DLM, 4 DCR, and 5 DLC)
pg 109

By the same point the British had managed to assemble one armored division...
pg 109

There was however one clear area where the Allied air forces were greatly inferior to the German. In German doctrine the air mission was totally subordinated to the ground campaign.
(italics mine)
pg 111

Chapter 7 The Uses and Misuses of Armor

Like all professional German officers, Rommel had been trained to pay close attention to logistics... His opponents, like almost all professional British officers, had not been.
pg 158

Armed with a high-velocity 75-millimeter gun, by 1943 the obsolete German Mark 4 tank was still a formidable weapon: Its wide tracks gave it better performance on rough terrain than the Sherman...
pg 177

Chapter 8 The Failure of Strategic Airpower: 1940 - 1944

...all of these planes were tactical aircraft developed almost exclusively for ground-support missions. (In a discussion of the German Ju 88, He 111 and Do 17).
pg 194

Chapter 9 Normandy and the Breakout at Saint-Lo

This curious blindness could of course be traced to the backgrounds of the American commanders and their staffs. The last great maneuvers of the US Army had taken place mostly in north and central Louisiana ....Or perhaps the American commanders were simply inexperianced and overconfident. (In a discussion of the breakout after D-Day and the hedgerow problem).
pg 222

It was inconceivable to the American commanders that once ashore, their tanks would be unable to operate in accordance with their theories....Moreover the Americans believed that the absolute air superiority the Allies would enjoy over the battlefield would cancel out any problems.
(italics mine)
pg 223

Chapter 10 The Breakthrough Failures

However, some of Dietrich's Sixth Army's tanks had thrust all the way to Celles, about 10 kilometers from the Meuse at Dinant, and were still largely intact....
pg 268

I could go on but, I really need a vomit break right now.....

 

Perennial Publishing a division of HarperCollins, NY, NY.

Its really too bad I can't send this putz an e-mail personally. In my 30+ years of studying history I have not come across such a piece of tripe as this particular work. Even the amateurish Hitler's Army: The Evolution and Sturcture of Germans Forces, 1933 - 1945 (Edited by Command Magazine, Combined Books, PA)was nowhere near as bad as Mosier's work.

 

Mosier, John F. ( jmosier@loyno.edu )
Title: Professor
Department: English
Office: BO 344
Phone: (504)865-2296
Campus PO Box: 050




Funny, that he is in the Loyola University's English Department. You would think History....Then again, maybe it is a work of fiction??

 

Well, actually quite amusing statements....one could make some kinda WW2 joke book out of them...I guess the Blitzkrieg was at its best when the Germans were retreating, actually...no wonder it did not work in the end...somebody should have told Hitler!

 

I think he should get together with Suvorov and write something, perhaps throw Dan Brown into the mix as well for some public appeal.

The Myth of the Icebreaker Code? It's a blockbuster for sure! Read how our hero reveals the false blitzkrieg theories written by Stalin for an assault on Germany, hidden within the Dead Sea scrolls!

 

I am actually sitting down long enough to read something......German Raiders in the Pacific.
Covers in brief the ops of the Hilfkreuzers Komet, Pinguin and the Orion.

here is a pic of Orions Kommandeur

 

Here's a few for you especially Kai, about Finland and the winter war:

"Thus one mine, properly laid, could immobilize an armored column. The problem for the Finns was how to destroy the rest of it."

"Although Finnish soldiers were mostly equipped with Finnish built....versions of the Russian Moisin-Nagant bolt-action rifle, they had two extremely potent weapons that in 1939 had no equal in any other army in the world."
[These were] the Automaatikvaari Lahti-Saloranta Malli 26 [and]the other was the koompistolet generally known outside Finland as the Suomi.

Now, I don't know about you, but I thought most armies had some sort of automatic rifle and many had one variety or another of 9mm SMG....

"The Suomi was in fact a sort of super-Tommy gun..."

Sure, leaps over tall buildings in a single bound...faster than a speeding bullet....

"In retrospect weapons like the two Finnish guns were the only sensible solution to the changing realities of infantry combat."

Of course, the MG 34 of the Germans was nothing. And no one had thought to give their infantry squads a BAR, Bren Gun, FAS or some other automatic rifle....And nobody had even thought of giving a Thompson, Barretta or, MP 38 9mm or 45 cal SMG to their squad leaders in 1939.....

Moiser then waxes poetic about the Finns using Molotov cocktails and showing the way to the future for infantry hunting tanks....

Of course, no one had developed a rifle grenade heaven forbid or magnetic hollow charge anti-tank mines like Japan or Germany or, even anti-tank grenades. How silly of all those other countries.

Or here's another good couple of quotes:

(With regard to the Christie tanks): But his basic suspension design, easily identified by the four to six large wheels on each track, was the basis for alll successful postwar tank suspension systems. [italics mine].

Must be a surprise to tank designers that torsion bar suspensions were unsuccessful in all those post war tank designs.....

...the Hetzer was the best antitank vehicle of the war....

!!!! Must come as good news to all those Hetzer crews that have commented that the vehicle was more a death trap than a tank destroyer....

 

Thanx T.A.!

Ok, it´s nice to hear good things about Finland but too much is too much really...

 

I've just bought Arnhem by Major General R. E. Urquhart CB, DSO.

I bet Martin and Stevin have read it. How is it?

 

I sent this to Dr. Mosier today. It will be interesting to see if I get a response.....

Dr. Mosier:

I recently purchased a copy of your book The Blitzkrieg Myth. Let me preface what follows by saying I value academic, professional and, knowledgeable discussions and that it is in this vein I write you. Now for the unpleasant part. In my 35 or so years of studying military history professionally, academically and, as a hobbyist and enthusiast I have not come across a single volume so rife with misinformation and incorrect data as in The Blitzkrieg Myth.
With that said, what follows is a discussion of a single topic of the many your book covers. I feel that it is important that rather than make such a sweeping indictment without at least some proof is unfair and dishonest. So, I will discuss, briefly, the topic of French armor and some of the egregious mistakes your book postulates.
First, you discuss in very general terms French armored formations and organization in chapters three and five. In chapter five you conclude: “By May 1940 the French, as we have seen, had twelve armored-divisions, comprising literally thousands of tanks, together with twenty-eight independent battalions of R35 and H35 tanks.” In May 1940 the French had three DLMs, four DCRs (three plus one in formation) and, five DLCs. I assume that these are the units to which you attribute the French having “twelve armored-divisions.” If this is the case, as it appears it is, then, your claim is simply, flatly, untrue.
Of these, the five DLCs (Division Legere de Cavalerie) certainly cannot be accurately described as “armored-divisions.” These units each possess a just 17 H35 tanks in their Regiment Auto-mitrailleuse Mechanique (RAM) and another twenty machine-gun armed AMR tankettes in the Brigade de Dragons Porte (BDP). The DLC itself can best be described as a large regiment or brigade in size but it is in no way a division-sized unit as the term is generally understood.
For infantry the DLC has just two battalion sized regiments of cavalry and an additional two small battalions of dragons porte each of which has a single company of infantry in it. Each of these two latter battalions also contains two additional companies one with support weapons, the other ten AMRs and a handful of motorcycle combinations. But, this hardly constitutes an adequate infantry support force. For anti-tank guns these ‘divisions’ had twelve 25 mm and 8 47 mm guns total. In artillery one battalion of the ubiquitous 75 mm M1898 guns and one of 105 mm howitzers was assigned. By any reasonable standard, the DLC cannot be compared to an armored-division of any other combatant during the World War II period.
The DCRs available are more collections of tank battalions than balanced combined arms formations, as were German panzer-divisions. The DCR is particularly imbalanced. It possesses a single battalion of dragons porte giving it, essentially, a single company of infantry to support an entire division’s worth of armor! As the name implies, the Division Cuirasse Reserve was more a collection of armored battalions for supporting other infantry formations in the breakthrough and attack than a unit intended for employment on its own. And, in this role it is highly likely that it would not be employed intact but, rather, be broken up into separate battalions.
As for the DLM, it likewise had the equivalent of one battalion of infantry assigned to it. This is why at Hannut / the Gembloux Gap in Belgium General Prioux had to quit the field even though he had won a pyrrhuic victory over the German panzers. The Corps de Cavalarie simply lacked anything with which to hold the field! The three DLMs of the Corps could have barely scrapped together a weak regiment of infantry between them.

Therein lies the value and utility of the panzer-division. It was a balanced combined arms formation and, it is unlike anything the British or French possessed in 1940.
As for tank design, the French made a number of serious mistakes you fail to acknowledge or, even mention. This isn’t to say that the Germans were did not make any serious mistakes in their contemporary designs but, unlike the French, they got more right than wrong and far more right where it really counted. Tanks are considerably more than just a measure of their gun, mobility and, protection. They are a complex system in which the crew must operate efficiently as a team.
For the French the one-man turret was a severe liability. As any book on armor will attest, a tank that is “buttoned up” is virtually blind. With a one-man turret the commander must, by necessity, be ‘buttoned up’ in order to operate the tank’s weapons. French designs reflect this reality. There is no hatch on French turret cupolas. The tank commander cannot put his head outside the turret without opening the entry hatch on the rear of the turret and then exiting it. This is a big disadvantage.
With a one-man turret rate-of-fire, target acquisition, maneuver, and battlefield awareness are reduced dramatically. The Panzer II with its two-man turret has a dedicated gunner. The commander has only to intermittently load a fresh ten round magazine onto the automatic 20mm cannon making this arrangement not highly disadvantaged over the more common three-man turret.
With the Char B1 and B1 bis the epitome of French tank design is revealed. This vehicle is more a mobile pillbox or self-propelled artillery piece than a battle tank. The fixed 75 mm L17 howitzer in the hull is fixed in traverse requiring the whole vehicle to be moved for aiming. As such, this weapon is useless except as an artillery piece; something reflected by it being supplied exclusively with high explosive ammunition.
Moreover, the driver acts as the gunner for this cannon and is provided a binocular prismatic sight to aim the gun. The commander, alone in the turret, is the only other crewmember provided with vision devices. He is there primarily to designate targets for the 75 mm gun and, only secondarily, to provide all-round defense while the tank engages targets with high explosive fire.
These are massive design philosophy differences from what the Germans envisioned. The Char B1 is intended as a support vehicle to assist the infantry in the attack.
The Somua S35, likewise, was designed as an armored vehicle with a very specific role to fulfill rather than as a general purpose armored fighting vehicle like the German machines were. In the Somua S35's case it was designed to perform battlefield reconnaissance. The three-man crew was better provided with vision devices than in the Char B1. A dedicated radio operator was provided. His sole duty was to operate the tank’s two radio sets. Officially the S35 was designated an Autos-mitrailleuse de Combat / Char de Cavalerie a designation reflecting its intended role of battlefield reconnaissance.
The French had a completely different view of what the tank was for than that of the Germans. French armor organization and vehicle design reflects this. The DLM was a cavalry unit intended for reconnaissance, screening and, other traditional cavalry missions, as was the DLC on a smaller scale. The DCR was simply a means of centralizing armor battalions for control rather than a unit intended for deployment on its own. None of these units was equivalent in intended employment to a German panzer-division. Nor were any of them armored-divisions in the sense that that term has come to mean. It is notable that the Germans converted their four Leichte Divisions that were intended for a role similar to that of the DLM into full panzer-divisions after the conquest of Poland due to their relative ineffectiveness.
I would counter your claim that the French had twelve armored-divisions and state that the French really had no armored-divisions in May 1940. What they did have were three mechanized cavalry divisions, five mechanized-horse cavalry regiments (called divisions) and, four armored headquarters groups with four tank battalions each.

Shifting gears a bit, the French defeat hinges on a combination of their lethargic and plodding pace of operations and poor doctrinal and organizational philosophies. Bean counting tanks or reciting their technical specifications in the vacuum of just their armor thickness, gun size and, top speed has little or nothing to do with the causes of the French defeat or German success. This briefly is just one of a multitude of topics your book discusses, all of which have similar problems.

Thank you for your time and patience.

Terry A. Gardner