Mythos revisited:
American Historians and German Fighting Power in the Second World War
by Thomas E. Nutter
Introduction
This work endeavors to explore the historiography surrounding a controversial
and emotionally charged subject, namely the comparative combat performance of
the United States and German armies in the European Theatre in World War II.
While the subject has been of interest to soldiers and military historians for
over fifty years, and hence would seem to be a likely candidate for reasoned
debate, nevertheless it continues to incite strong interest among partisans on
both sides. Indeed, in recent years the topic has generated some rather heated
work, particularly from those who advocate the view that the United States Army
was more than a match for the Wehrmacht in that elusive quality known
as "fighting power". One reading the literature on the subject published within
the last ten years or so is in fact struck by the aggressively adversarial tone
adopted by the authors. One might reasonably inquire why such a stridently
partisan tenor has asserted itself in this area of military history.
The answer to this question lies, it may be reasonably argued, not with the
performance of the U.S. Army in World War II, but with its experience in the
Vietnam War. Anyone who experienced firsthand the passage of the United States
through the long period during which that conflict progressed cannot fail to be
aware of its profound effect upon nearly every aspect of American life and
culture. Although it obviously was not the only historical force at work in the
period, nonetheless it can be said to have contributed mightily to a number of
significant negative phenomena with which Americans continue to struggle. These
include such things as the diminution in value of higher education through
grade inflation; the more or less permanent distortion of the American economy
resulting from the consistent policies of succeeding presidential
administrations in following a "guns and butter" economic policy throughout the
course of the conflict; the degradation of moral authority in sexual and social
relationships; and, not least of all, disrespect for and suspicion of all
things governmental.
Perhaps nowhere were the pernicious effects of the Vietnam War felt more
profoundly than in the U.S. military establishment. This can be observed not
only in personal memory and the literature devoted to the subject, but also in
the experiences of those who served. Delve into the subject with any officer or
enlisted man who went through this crucible. You will find not only the
horrific recollections common to those who have experienced combat, but also a
litany of other horrors not previously associated with military service in the
American experience. The examples are many and diverse. In perhaps the ultimate
form of military disrespect, American soldiers "fragged" their officers in the
combat zone. American soldiers perceived themselves as being pilloried by the
American news media. Returning soldiers in uniform were humiliated by their
fellow citizens. In the aftermath of the war, indeed even to the time of this
writing, so-called "veterans" have debased the experiences of those who
actually served by bogus claims not only to veteran status itself, but also to
battle honors.
Chapters 1-7
Few subjects have captured the interest of historians and the general public
more completely than the history of the conflict in Western Europe between June
1944 and May 1945. In the popular press, in professional journals and on the
shelves of bookstores and libraries, stories, articles and books on the subject
have proliferated in the last half- century. Nearly every aspect of the last
year of war between Nazi Germany and its western enemies has been examined and
reexamined, from the commanders and private soldiers who fought, to the
weapons, vehicles and aircraft they employed, and the clothes and equipment
they wore. There are many reasons why this should be so; for many of the
survivors of that war, both civilian and military, it was the defining moment
in their lives. Similarly, the descendants and other surviving relatives of
those Americans and western Europeans who shared the struggle live with its
effects still. World War II captivates the interest of yet another group of
persons, namely those whose personal connection with it is tenuous, but whose
imagination and desire to know compel them to study its every aspect.
The initiation and course of the campaign in Western Europe in the last year of
World War II owed much to the influence of the United States, whose entry into
the conflict in December 1941 changed the balance of power in favor of the
Allies. In spite of the outrage of the American public against Japan for its
surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the country's political and military
leadership agreed with their new British allies that Germany represented the
greater threat. Although there was agreement on this point, however, there
remained serious controversy between the two English-speaking nations over
where and when to best strike against Germany. The United States favored an
early direct assault at the enemy heartland through Western Europe, while the
British advocated a more deliberate and indirect approach through Italy and
Southern Europe.
Britain's caution about a premature direct confrontation on land with Germany
in Western Europe stemmed from a number of factors, not least of which were a
healthy respect for the capacity of the enemy to resist, and a disinclination
to become involved in a slugging match that might give rise to casualties on a
scale comparable to those suffered in the First World War. Events, as well as
English persistence, conspired to favor the pursuit of the indirect approach.
The venue in which Britain most directly confronted the power of the German Wehrmacht
was North Africa. This area was critical to the survival of the British Empire,
not only because of the presence of the Suez Canal, vital to the ability of
Britain to supply its home island and maneuver its navy, but also because of
its proximity to rich reserves of petroleum in the Middle East. Here the
British, Italians and Germans had struggled throughout most of 1941 in a seesaw
battle ranging over hundreds of miles of desolate landscape. By early 1942,
however, Britain had gained the upper hand and was forcing the Axis troops back
into Tunisia. At the prodding of Winston Churchill, who urged that the United
States must attack the Germans somewhere in 1942, American forces invaded North
Africa in November of that year. By May the western Allies had driven all Axis
forces from the continent of Africa.
Chapters 8-9
Peter Mansoor lumps together John Keegan, Max Hastings and John Ellis,
contending that they "round out the field of authors who praise the combat
effectiveness of the Wehrmacht at the expense of the victors of World
War II." Mansoor asserts that Ellis, like his two fellow Englishmen, has
swallowed uncritically the alleged contentions of Russell Weigley and Martin
van Creveld that the German army was more competent and combat effective than
those of its opposition. While Ellis apparently remains unknown to Bonn, Brown
and Doubler, nevertheless it is worth dealing, however briefly, with Mansoor's
charge.
John Ellis is neither a soldier nor an academic historian, thus differentiating
him from the authors whose work is the principal focus of this work. He is,
nevertheless, an accomplished author whose works include, among others, The
Sharp End of War, a paean to the individual fighting man. As the title
Brute Force suggests, however, the book of which Mansoor is so
critical takes a broader view of war (in this instance, the Second World War),
focusing on the relative ability of the opposing forces to marshal military
resources and apply them to their respective foes. As he indicates in his
preface, his first major theme is that the stupendous collective industrial
potential of the Allies gave them such a preponderance of the means for
warmaking---weapons and soldiers---that it was incumbent upon the Axis to force
a quick negotiated peace in their favor, and when they did not, their
inevitable defeat was assured by the "prosaic arithmetic of natural resources,
generating capacity, industrial plant and productivity." His second theme is
that in applying this overwhelming force, "American, Russian and British
commanders made considerably less than optimum use of the resources at their
disposal and in almost every theatre serious mistakes were made." The result
was that Allied "commanders seemed unable to impose their will upon the enemy
except by slowly and persistently battering him to death with a blunt
instrument." These are the lines of argument of which Mansoor is so directly
critical, a criticism shared by Bonn, Brown and Doubler, though in the case of
the latter three, the criticism is not particularized to Ellis.[88]
It should be observed, as Mansoor does not, that Ellis does not take the view
that the Allied victory over the Axis was simply a numbers game. Ellis makes
this clear in the preface to his work.
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This book, then, is highly critical of Allied operations throughout the war,
but I would like to make it quite clear that there is absolutely no intention
of casting a slur upon the bravery (or competence) of millions of ordinary men
and women, in uniform and out, who gave mightily that Western democracy might
survive. If it is easy for me, comfortable at my desk, to pontificate about
eventual victory being certain, about such and such an Army moving
unconscionably slowly, this Fleet being in the wrong place at the wrong time,
that aircrew dying in vain, I do not mean to minimize the suffering or in any
way demean the memory of those who perished amidst the nightmare of Huertgen
Forest, Cassino, Stalingrad, Okinawa or Imphal, who burnt to death in the skies
above Germany, or choked in oil in the freezing Atlantic.
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When this commentary is taken into account, along with the fact that Ellis has
devoted an entire work to the sacrifices of the ordinary soldier in wartime, it
must be plain that Mansoor's complaint is ill founded.[89]
Chapter 10
At the time Michael Doubler published Closing with the Enemy: How GIs Fought
the War in Europe, 1944-1945, in 1994, he was a serving Lieutenant
Colonel in the United States Army. Doubler characterized his book as having a
purpose similar to that of Infantry in Battle , a volume published by
the U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia in 1934 for the purpose
of reintroducing the experience of battle to an officer corps then suffering
from a steady decline in active duty veterans of the First World War. Referring
to the "drawdown" of the American armed forces in the aftermath of the Cold
War, the author draws the reader's attention to the evidently incompatible
facts that while soldiers with combat experience would be disappearing from the
armed services as a result of the "drawdown", threats from regional powers to
the national security of the United States would remain. Doubler's stated
purpose, then, is to use military history to stimulate "disciplined thinking"
about the challenges of the future battlefield, while promoting "the viewpoint
of the veteran" among officers trained in peacetime.(168]
While at some level Doubler may have had in mind the didactic purpose discussed
above when he wrote Closing with the Enemy , it is clear that he had
another and perhaps more significant motive. This can be seen literally from
the very beginning of the book, in the third page of the Introduction, in which
Doubler comments as follows:
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"The notion that the American army achieved victory in World War II only
because of its employment of overwhelming numbers of lavishly supplied troops
against an exhausted Wehrmacht is untrue. American combat power had definite
limits imposed by constraints on resources and time. The decision to limit the
size of the army to ninety divisions, the soldier replacement system, and the
organization of some combat formations reduced the army's effectiveness.
Inexperience blunted the fighting ability of many units, and some commands had
much more difficulty than others in making the transition from novice to
veteran. Senior American commanders were adept at operational maneuver and
concentrating firepower, but inadequate numbers of combat formations and
occasional manpower and logistical shortages hampered operations."
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It is no exaggeration, in fact, to say that these themes, much more than
"lessons learned", lie at the core of Doubler's work.[169]
Chapters 11-12
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A fashionable argument in the past two decades has been that the Allies won
World War II only through the sheer weight of materiel they threw at the
Wehrmacht in a relatively unskilled manner. This argument is actually a
restatement of the theory put forward by German officers to explain their
defeat, as evidenced by wartime interrogations and postwar manuscripts prepared
by the defeated.[222]
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So begins Peter Mansoor's The GI Offensive in Europe. The Triumph of
American Infantry Divisions, 1941-1945. The sympathies expressed in
this passage infuse Mansoor's work; indeed, it is not too much to say that the
evisceration of the "fashionable argument" is the raison d'etre of The
GI Offensive in Europe . The present study has already dealt at some
length with Mansoor's "analysis" of the purveyors of the "fashionable argument"
and their respective works. His "Introduction" lays waste, in a bare two and a
half pages, the reputations of S. L. A. Marshall, Trevor N. Dupuy, Russell
Weigley, Martin van Creveld, John Keegan, Max Hastings and John Ellis, whom he
collectively characterizes as "revisionist historians" [223]
The "Introduction" to Mansoor's work is so informative of the author's thesis
that it is worth considering it in some detail. Commenting favorably upon John
Sloan Brown's "critique" of Trevor Dupuy and his work, Mansoor highlights
Brown's contention that Dupuy's selection of engagements to study "is skewed
toward those battles in which the more elite German panzer and panzer grenadier
divisions, which constituted only a small percentage of the Wehrmacht,
participated. Dupuy thus compared the American army against the cream of the
Wehrmacht." Brown's opinion in this regard, which Mansoor obviously shares,
raises two interesting questions. First, Brown and Mansoor both take the view
that the American GI was qualitatively superior to the German landser; this
being the case, it should matter not one whit which German unit (elite or
otherwise) is compared to which American unit. Conversely, if Mansoor and Brown
believe that the U.S. army is unfairly prejudiced by Dupuy's comparison of it
with "elite" German units, then how is it that neither of them takes into
account the decrepit condition of the "run of the mill" German formations most
often encountered by the Allies in Western Europe in 1944-1945? Similarly, in
his brief commentary on Keith Bonn's When the Odds Were Even, Mansoor
emphasizes the author's contention that the U.S. Seventh Army prevailed in the
Vosges Mountains in the absence of its customary advantages in logistics and
close air support "and in terrain and weather conditions that clearly favored a
defensive stand by the numerically superior German forces." (emphasis
added). Yet, an essential element of the thesis advanced by Mansoor, Bonn, et
al is that numerical advantages (whether in terms of
ammunition, guns, trucks, tanks or aircraft) were irrelevant to the success of
the U.S. army in Western Europe.[224]
Copyright © 2004 Thomas E. Nutter.
Written by Thomas E. Nutter. If you have questions or comments on this
article, please contact Thomas E. Nutter at:
tenutter@gmail.com.
About the author:
Tom Nutter is in his 25th year of practicing domestic and international patent,
copyright and trademark law, and is the Managing Partner of an intellectual
property law practice in St. Louis, Missouri. He holds the Masters and
Doctorate degrees in diplomatic/military history from the University of
Missouri. His interests include railroad history as well as European and
American military history in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. He lives
in St. Louis with his wife, three children and two German Shepherd dogs, Caesar
and Cleopatra.
Last Modified on: 12/03/2006.
* Views expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent
those of MHO.
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