Mythos revisited: American Historians and German
Fighting Power in WWII
by Thomas E. Nutter
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Chapter Eleven - Part II
PETER R. MANSOOR
THE GI OFFENSIVE IN EUROPE
The notion that the German army was not prepared for war when it reoccupied the
Rhineland without French resistance in 1936 is not a new one. The Germans
themselves, including Hitler, knew at the time that the undertaking was filled
with risk. According to the testimony of former German officers given after the
war, the status of the German army at the time in question was such that armed
resistance by the French would likely have led to an ignominious German rout
and the elimination of Hitler and the Nazis as a political force in Germany.
These facts were well known long before Williamson Murray, according to
Mansoor, vouchsafed to edify us with them.
It is and has been equally well known that the other bloodless conquests of the
Nazi era, namely the Austrian anschluss and the incorporation of the
Sudetenland (and later the remainder of the Czech republic) into the Reich,
both of which occurred in 1938, also were undertaken by a German army that was
unprepared for a general war. Mansoor's attempt, however, to compare the German
army of the pre-war era with the United States army of 1944 (or even of 1943)
is inapposite. For while Mansoor's intent is obviously to cast the German army
in a negative light, the fact of the matter is that while the United States
army, with all of its advantages, struggled mightily to bring down a severely
depleted foe, the early record of the German army was one of nearly unmitigated
success against a number of different enemies, all of whom enjoyed the
"advantage" (as Mansoor, Bonn, et al are wont to describe the situation) of
being on the defensive, and none of whom had suffered the ill effects of years
of warfare.
It is also manifest that the comparison promoted by Mansoor involves facts that
are not amenable to the usage he attempts to make of them. Put another way, it
is pointless to suggest, as does Mansoor, that the German army would not have
stood up to the French army in the Rhineland in 1936 (or alternatively, to the
French and British combined in 1938), thereby implying that the United States
army was "better" than its German counterpart because it went to battle after a
shorter period of rearmament. This is so because of the patently obvious fact
that not only had the us war economy been growing rapidly during 1940, and
would quickly surpass the industrial capacity of Germany once the war actually
came, but the German war economy was not ready for war in 1936, 1938, 1939 or
even in 1941 and 1942, when the war was literally going full blast, and not
ready for war even in 1944, after the Nazi regime had declared "total war".
The entire line of argument that the German army enjoyed a "luxurious" period
of rearmament, as compared with shorter period available to the United States
army, bears closer examination. To begin with, Mansoor's work takes the view
that German rearmament began on January 30, 1933, the date on which Hitler and
the Nazis assumed power over the German state. This is not true. In fact, both
Hitler and the officers commanding the German army realized that a policy of
rapid rearmament would not be feasible, in light of the precarious position of
the German state, both domestically and internationally, in 1933.(245) A plan
for the expansion of the peacetime army was not enunciated until December 1933.
The army was to expand to a force of twenty-one divisions totaling 300,000 men
by the end of 1938. The plan promulgated by the army high command, however,
dealt only with personnel matters, and even in this regard was inadequate to
the task. For example, the chief of the Truppenamt (predecessor to the
general staff), General Ludwig beck, was of the opinion that the
build-up of the peacetime army could be conducted with an officer corps
totaling only three percent of the force. Yet even these 9000 officers were not
available during the period 1934-1935, the first phase of rearmament.(246)
If for no other reason than political reality, General Beck and his
colleagues realized quite clearly that the pace and even the purpose of German
rearmament must be regarded as tentative. This is reflected in the position
espoused by the Truppenamt on the question of the aim of the wartime
army, which was pronounced to be the conduct of "a defensive war on several
fronts with some prospects of success ." (Emphasis added).(247) In
this statement can be seen the caution created by the fact that at the time in
question, Germany was the master of neither the Rhine valley nor the Ruhr, both
of which were recognized to be essential to the defense of Germany. The
tentative nature of German rearmament after 1933 was the product of a
persistent tension between the ability of the army to satisfy its personnel
requirements (which were satisfied first through voluntarism and then via
conscription) and its inability to adequately equip the troops so
inducted.(248)
German rearmament policy was also affected by a fundamental conflict among the
very officers who were to formulate and carry out the means for realizing the
policy. General Beck favored a long-term, public policy of rearmament, one that
was based on solid fundamental training for both officers and men, training
that would take as its standard the exigencies of actual warfare. Beck and his
supporters in the Truppenamt lobbied for the reintroduction of general
conscription as soon as possible. In contrast to this view, a group of officers
centered on Oberst Fromm considered that all twenty-one divisions of
the new peacetime army should be deployed, at least in a basic organizational
sense, by the autumn of 1934. It was the opinion of this group that the
expansion of the army could be managed much more efficiently by thus
establishing the essential framework, into which troops and their officers
could be funneled as quickly as might be desired.(249)
While there was thus disagreement at the apex of the German officer corps over
the speed and manner of personnel expansion, there was an apparent unanimity of
ignorance as to the economics of such expansion. On may 9, 1934, Generalmajor
Liese, chief of the Heereswaffenamt (army ordnance office) informed
the commanders of the Reichswehr that within six months' time the best
that the army of twenty-one divisions could expect in terms of essential
equipment (including ammunition) would be an initial issue and six weeks worth
of replacement stocks. After that period, material replacements would be
totally inadequate, with ammunition supplies equaling only a tiny percentage of
what would be required. Should the army be expanded still further, for example
to the level of sixty-three divisions then being proposed, it would be 1938
before similar provisions of material (i.e., an initial issue and six weeks of
replacement stocks) could be made available. The prognostication proffered by
Liese did not even address the issue of fuel supplies, and furthermore was
based on an assumption that the Reich's production capabilities would be fully
utilized and would be unfettered by either financial considerations or the
availability of raw materials.(250) Liese's admonitions, however, were ignored,
and henceforth there was in fact "no co-ordination among the organizers of
material rearmament, the personnel build-up, and the plans to actually use the
army…".(251)
On March 16, 1935 Hitler declared the restoration of German military
sovereignty. The strength of the army was set at thirty-six divisions, and it
was announced that general conscription with a one-year period of service would
be introduced on October 1 of that year. The proposition that the army should
be established at thirty-six divisions was easier made than implemented. In
fact, it was almost immediately decided by the Truppenamt that the
October deadline would only permit the organizational formation of twenty-four
infantry divisions. Even this reduced number of formations was in jeopardy from
the beginning; although in March 1935 there were twenty-one infantry divisions
in organizational existence, of the 189 infantry battalions to be encompassed
by these divisions, only 109 had actually been formed. It was anticipated that
the remaining 80 battalions could not be formed and trained before the spring
of 1938. This situation was addressed by the simple expedient of absorbing into
the Reichswehr 56,000 men of the landespolizei quartered in
barracks in Baden, Bavaria, Hamburg, Prussia, Saxony and Wurttemberg, a step
that was formally concluded on August 1, 1935. This raised the strength of the
army to a force of 400,000 men in twenty-four infantry, three armored and two
cavalry divisions, one cavalry and one mountain brigade.(252)
In June and July 1935, the Reichswehr became redesignated as the Wehrmacht,
and the Truppenamt assumed the denomination "general staff". The
general staff began to formulate new plans for expansion that assumed the
establishment of a wartime army of thirty-five divisions in 1937, forty-two in
1938, forty-nine in 1939, fifty-six in 1940 and sixty-three by 1941. This was
in contrast to the planning which had occurred in December 1933, when the
wartime army of sixty-three divisions was contemplated for completion by the
spring of 1938. The formulation of these new plans, however, was undertaken
without consultation with the army ordnance office. Moreover, the plans for
expansion immediately confronted a very real problem with regard to the
availability of suitable personnel. The head of the army personnel office, General
von Schwedler, categorically rejected any notion of further expansion of the
army during 1936, on the ground that there could "no longer be any talk of an
officer corps in the true sense of the word." Schwedler's view was that the
expansion of the army which had heretofore occurred, based as it was upon the
use of non-commissioned, inactive reserve, and police officers, had resulted in
a decline in the quality of the officer corps of such a magnitude that its
effect upon the troops had gone beyond the point of acceptability. On this
point Schwedler was undoubtedly correct. In December 1933 General Beck
had opined that the officer corps should constitute not less than 7 percent of
the army's strength, but had been willing to accept a level of 3 percent during
the first phase of expansion. By the autumn of 1935, however, the level of
active officers had fallen to 1.7 percent, a figure that could be raised only
to 2.4 percent if supplementary reserve officers were included in the
equation.(253)
The successful reoccupation of the Rhineland in March 1936 completely altered
German plans for rearmament. This event not only provided the Reich with
an additional and substantial reserve of manpower, but also gave it a tangible
security for its industrial base that it had not possessed since 1919. In
consequence of these developments, the general staff began to formulate plans
for the expansion of the army that were, measured against the standards set in
1933, little short of fantastic. In June 1936 the general staff submitted a
plan for the establishment of both a peace-time and a wartime army. According
to this plan, the wartime army, which would be considered to be fully mobilized
by 1940-1941, would include a total strength of 3,612,673 men in seventy-two
infantry, three armored, three light and twenty-one militia divisions, as well
as one cavalry and two mountain brigades. It was now accepted that the
proportion of officers to enlisted men in the wartime army would remain at the
levels pertaining in 1936, namely 1.7 percent, raised to 2.6 percent with the
inclusion of supplementary reserve officers.
The fact that such expansive plans were enunciated, however, did not mean that
their realization was a matter of routine. The nature of the task may be may be
at least partially understood by considering that in 1914 the strength of the
German army, which was the culmination of four decades of growth, stood at
eighty-seven divisions and forty-four militia brigades, with a total manpower
of 2,147,000, a number now to be exceeded by 1,500,000 men in 1940.(254) With
regard to the officer corps, such unprecedented expansion would mean that its
authorized strength in 1941 would be 33,950 officers, while the actual
effective strength was now calculated to be 20,800, with the assumption that
there would be no discharges. The shortfall of 13,150 officers would be
rectified only by 1950. The general staff therefore began to think in terms of
addressing this problem by four means, namely promoting more NCOs to officer
rank, substantially increasing the yearly quota of officer cadets, recalling to
active duty more reserve officers, and reactivating more retired officers.(255)
The inevitable degrading of the quality of the officer corps that would result
from these measures was only one of the problems engendered by the
extraordinary plans for expansion of the army now contemplated. For example,
the problem of equipping such a large force, apart from the strains that it
would place upon the German economy, would require substantial amounts of
foreign exchange and raw materials. Of these considerations the general staff
seems, for reasons that are not apparent, to have been blissfully unaware. More
fundamentally, the vision of a dramatically expanded army immediately came
adrift on the issue of available manpower. The most expedient solution to this
difficulty was expressed in Hitler's decision of August 24, 1936, increasing
the service period under general conscription from one to two years. The fifty
percent increase in the number of infantry divisions, from twenty-four to
thirty-six, along with the strains attendant upon the mechanization of a
portion of the force, were the ostensible reasons for the Fuhrer's decision. In
fact, however, it was the decline in the quality of the army, rather than the
necessity for greater numbers of men to fill the ranks, that motivated the
change in the service period. Much like the United States army during its
period of great expansion after Pearl Harbor, the German army simply could not
grow so rapidly without a precipitous decline in quality.(256)
In fact, the difficulties alluded to above, and particularly the lack of
adequate supplies of raw materials, slowed the pace of rearmament in 1937. It
was not until 1938, with the Austrian anschluss and the occupation of
Czechoslovakia, and the resulting expansion of both the manpower pool and the
Reich's industrial base, that German rearmament achieved a more solid
footing. The substantive benefits to the German army derived from these foreign
policy successes, viz., the integration of the Austrian army and
co-option of Czech industry into the German war economy, were nevertheless
illusory. Continuing shortages of essential raw materials meant that supplies
of steel and iron had to be allocated among the various services. The army
persistently suffered from such allocations. For example, on April 15, 1939, as
a result of the diversion of raw materials to the Luftwaffe and for
the construction of the Westwall, "the field army was without supplies of
weapons and equipment, thirty-four infantry divisions were only partially
provided with necessary weapons and equipment, the replacement army had only 10
percent of the necessary rifles and machine-guns, and total stocks of
ammunition fell to a level sufficient for fifteen days of fighting." The net
result of these manpower and industrial problems was that on the very eve of
war, the German army was hardly in a condition to fight it.
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The infantry divisions in the field army were divided into four different
categories ("waves", Wellen). The thirty-five divisions of the first
category had in peacetime 78 per cent active-duty personnel and very few
reservists. In contrast, the sixteen divisions of the second category had only
6 per cent active-duty personnel; 83 per cent of their soldiers were Wehrmacht
reservists with at least nine months of training. The twenty divisions
of the third category were composed primarily of reservists from the
supplementary reserve units of the army and of men required to serve in the
militia, some of whom had completed their training before 1918.
Finally, the fourteen divisions of the fourth category had 21 per cent Wehrmacht
reservists, but contained primarily supplementary units and reservists from
such units. (Emphasis added).(257)
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The foregoing makes clear that Mansoor's effort to draw an invidious comparison
between the capabilities of the United States army, which went to war after
(according to Mansoor) only two and a half years of rearmament, and the German
army which did not go to war after three and a half years of
rearmament, is not only speculative but simply nonsensical. Mansoor, be it
remembered, wonders "how the German army would have fared if forced into combat
against the French in the Rhineland in 1936 under similar circumstances
. (Emphasis added) The fact of the matter, as we have seen, is that the
prevailing circumstances in the respective cases were anything but similar. Can
Mansoor demonstrate, for example, that German industry had already begun to
produce, or gear up to produce, large quantities of weapons and ammunition in
1932, as U.S. industry did in 1940? Would he suggest that the full-scale
rearmament that began in the U.S. after December 7, 1941 was impeded in any way
by the exigencies of international politics, as was German rearmament until at
least 1935, or that American rearmament plans and policy had to overcome the
fact that a foreign power occupied the nation's most significant industrial
center, in a manner analogous to the problem presented to the Germans by
foreign occupation of the Ruhr valley? Could Mansoor show that rearmament in
the U.S. was hindered during its first two and a half years by an inability to
draw upon all of the nation's manpower resources, in a manner comparable to
Germany's inability to make use of the manpower available in the Rhineland
until after 1936?
No responsible historian would suggest that armed French resistance to the
reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936 would have had other than catastrophic
results for the German army. Such a circumstance, however, whether speculative
or real, would say nothing about the capacity of the U.S. army to make war in
1943 or later. The German army was not prepared for war in 1936, or indeed in
1939, as we have seen. This situation was the result, however, of demographic,
political, industrial and economic reasons that had no parallel in the United
States as that nation prepared for war. And once the war began, those same
factors worked inexorably against Germany and in favor of the Allies. In light
of these facts, the really meaningful historical inquiry concerns the roots of
the German army's offensive and defensive success in the Second World War, not
the comparatively poor performance of the United States army in that conflict.
As noted above, one of the final points that Mansoor makes in his introduction
is that "a more balanced comparison" of the forces in question would be one in
which the German army of June, 1941 is compared with the U.S. army of April,
1945. This comment is telling, since it serves as an acknowledgement that
Mansoor's own work is skewed by a false comparison, in much the same way that
Trevor Dupuy is alleged by Mansoor, Brown, Bonn and Doubler to have unfairly
compared "ordinary" American units with "elite" German units. For it is just
such a "more balanced comparison" that Mansoor does not make, for the very good
reason that the making of such a comparison would be impossible in any case.
What one would like to see, given that the comparison of which Mansoor speaks
cannot in truth be made, is a comparison that at least takes into account the
shredding of the German army that occurred at the hands of the Red Army between
1941 and 1944. It is regrettable that Mansoor and those who share his views
have not made such a comparison.
Two final comments concerning Mansoor's introduction are in order, bearing in
mind that the views expressed in it so inform the rest of the work. Mansoor
opines that if the idealized comparison between the U.S. army of April 1945 and
the German army of June 1941 were made, there would be little to choose between
the two forces with regard to "technical or tactical proficiency at the
division level." The veracity of this statement cannot be doubted, and indeed
the authors of whom Mansoor, Bonn, Brown and Doubler are so critical are at one
with him on the point. On the other hand, Mansoor states that the United States
"produced an army of citizen soldiers" in contrast to the (for lack of a better
word) "militarist" German army, which had its problems with rearmament "eased"
by the fact that German culture included a "tradition of compulsory military
service and obedience to the state." In a similar vein, Mansoor asserts that
the U.S. army achieved all that it did without the "extensive ideological
indoctrination and fear-based discipline that infused many German units with
their will to fight."
With regard to Mansoor's argument that culture favored the German soldier over
his American counterpart, one is reminded of a passage in George Orwell's 1984
in which the novel's protagonist, Winston Smith, reflects upon the convoluted
political theories and doctrines promulgated by the Party in defense of its
existence and power. Among the incongruities most confounding to Smith is that
the same argument is often used by both the Party and the resistance for their
own particular ends; each side recognizes that the same argument is made by its
opponent, and yet each praises the argument when made by itself, and condemns
it when made by its opponent. Something of the same thing goes on with
Mansoor's work. If a culture that favored compulsory military service and
obedience to the state is to be passed off as the explanation for German
military success in the Second World War, and the absence of such a culture
seized upon as the reason why the United States army did not perform with
greater proficiency, then what is to be said about the military performance of
Britain and France, especially early in the war? The cultural impact of a
military tradition in Germany must be viewed as pitifully small when compared
with the impact of the military tradition in Great Britain. The latter country
had at the time of the Second World War, and still has, the most illustrious
military history of any nation on the planet. In 1940 that history stretched
back for at least 250 years, and was responsible, in large part, for the
creation of the greatest empire in world history. The French as well had an
illustrious military past, rivaling that of Britain. French soldiers had
conquered all of Europe under Napoleon Bonaparte, and would have extended their
conquests further but for those self same Britons. Compared with such military
traditions, those of Germany paled, as indeed they must have done, since the
German state itself had existed for but seventy years in 1940.
The idea that the will to combat of German units derived from "extensive
ideological indoctrination and fear-based discipline" while that of American
units did not, and that this helps to explain the disparate performance of the
two armies, is one that also smacks of Orwellian "doublespeak". It may be
stated with some degree of certitude that no meaningful and successful military
force has ever existed that has not based its discipline upon fear. Indeed,
during the Second World War, the United States army also based its system of
discipline upon a fear of retribution. This is demonstrated by the provisions
of federal statutes in effect during wartime, as detailed in the 1943 edition
of The Officer's Guide: A Ready Reference on Customs and Correct Procedures
Which Pertain to Commissioned Officers of the Army of the United States:(258)
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Desertion from the Army is punishable by death in time of war.
Advising, persuading or assisting desertion from the Army in time of war is
punishable by death. Misbehavior before the enemy is punishable by death.
Compelling commander to surrender is punishable by death.
Forcing a safeguard in time of war is punishable by death.
Betraying a countersign in time of war is punishable by death.
Aiding the enemy is punishable by death.
Acting as a spy in time of war is punishable by death.
Sentinels found drunk or sleeping on post or leaving their posts in time of war
shall be punished by death.
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The rejoinder to this sort of data, at least the one given by Gerhard Weinberg
and others who have made a career criticizing the German army, is that the
Germans alone were guilty of executing their own soldiers in great numbers,
evidently in an attempt to enforce discipline. This argument rests on very
shaky ground, since it fails to take into account not only the avowed policies
of the Allies, including in particular the United States, but also the fact
that no accurate data on military executions is available from one of the
principal Allied combatants, namely the former Soviet Union. Both the Red Army
and the German army were in the hands of criminal regimes, each of whose
principal aim in life was self-preservation. This was manifestly not the case
with regard to other Allied combatants. Neither were the western Allies faced
with national annihilation, as were both the Soviet Union and Germany at
different stages of the war. It also will not do to suggest that only the
Germans subjected their troops to "extensive ideological indoctrination" in a
manner unparalleled in the Allied camp. During the Second World War, the
American cinema industry produced not only the "Why we Fight" film series, but
a steady stream of pro-war propaganda films as well. Tb imply that these films
did not have a didactic purpose, or that they were not intended for both troops
in service and the general population, would be a gross misrepresentation of
fact. Finally, as to the suggestion that the German will to fight was a
function of harsh discipline and propaganda, such an assertion fails to take
into account the stream of German military victories between the autumn of 1939
and the end of 1941. During this period, harsh discipline (as reflected in
military executions) was not practiced on the scale that would be in effect in
the latter half of 1944.
Mansoor's first substantive chapter after his introduction, entitled The
Mobilization of the Army, lays the groundwork for his argument that the
U.S. army triumphed over the Wehrmacht in spite of innumerable
disadvantages by detailing the manifold problems created by rapid expansion and
mismanagement. Under the War Department's Mobilization Training Program, each
new division was to be combat ready within ten to twelve months of activation.
After two weeks of organizational activity, the new division would spend
seventeen weeks in basic and advanced individual training, culminating in
testing conducting by army or army corps staffs. The division would then spend
the next thirteen weeks in unit training, with training moving progressively
from company to battalion to regimental levels. The following fourteen weeks
would be spent in combined-arms training, with large-scale exercises for
regimental combat teams and the division itself. After additional testing, the
last eight weeks of training would focus on coordinated operations with
aircraft and mechanized forces. If the level of training for a particular area
of concentration were found wanting, that training was repeated. The final
step, after a year of training, was for the division to participate in
multi-division maneuvers, after which it would be certified as combat
ready.(259)
Training of the kind just described would have been the envy of any general
officer commanding a German division during the second half of the Second World
War, and as we have seen, was unheard of among the German divisions confronting
the U.S. army in Western Europe in 1944-1945. Mansoor, however, moves quickly
to dispel any notion that American soldiers subjected to such training were
thereby prepared to face their country's enemies. As a general proposition,
Mansoor says, "[D]ivisions rarely met the optimistic timetable of the
Mobilization Training Program…". Large scale exercises "focused on training
senior leaders and their staffs at the expense of the combat soldier." The U.S.
army was inept at training small units, so that the individual soldier lacked
"an appreciation for small-unit tactics and the disastrous consequences that
awaited those who failed to master them." The American training system lacked
"a highly trained opposing force to replicate the enemy, dedicated
observer-controllers to facilitate training and conduct after-action reviews,
and an instrumentation system capable of simulating combat outcomes."(260)
Lamentable as these conditions were, they were not the only, or even the worst,
negative influences upon the preparation of the U.S. army for war. At least
until 1943, insufficient supplies of equipment and ammunition frustrated
adequate training. Shortages of ammunition were especially significant, because
they limited live-fire training. But by far the most insidious element
affecting the training of American soldiers was the army's ill-conceived
personnel policy. That policy, as Mansoor characterizes it, was to have
divisional organizations, rather than replacement centers, train draftees in
basic skills. Among other things, this meant, again according to Mansoor, that
the best of the new recruits were invariably siphoned off in the middle of the
division's training cycle to attend special schools, transfer to the Army Air
Force, or become officer candidates. The consequences of this pattern were
egregious. The affected division lost its primary source of noncommissioned
officers; new recruits arrived spasmodically or not at all; divisions deployed
for action "with a significant percentage of men who had not trained with their
comrades, who did not recognize their leaders, and who did not identify with
their new unit."(261)
Other and equally serious problems beset the U.S. army as it readied itself for
its confrontation with the Wehrmacht . Mansoor seems to concede to the
much despised S.L.A. Marshall ("[T]he assault on the reputation of the American
army began early and came from an unexpected source") the point that "some
American infantrymen lacked initiative in combat or failed to execute
aggressive fire-and-maneuver when faced with opposition in battle." He
attributes this malady to the "problem of personnel turnover" described above,
which led to the matriculation of recruits who were ignorant of tactics and
unaccustomed to firearms. Another factor that led to the "lack of
aggressiveness in American infantrymen" was that there simply were not enough
American combat formations. This was the result of incautious planning,
ultimately leading to an army without strategic reserves.
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Divisions were so scarce that American commanders routinely employed them at
the front long after they should have been withdrawn to retain and integrate
new replacements. The lack of divisions meant that units had to accomplish
these tasks at or near the front, which resulted in a high rate of casualties
among the new personnel. Some divisions literally fought themselves out in
constant operations; even the best American divisions, such as the 1st and 9th
Infantry Divisions, experienced collective exhaustion when they had been in the
line too long.(262)
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As a practical matter, all of this meant that by the time the Allies did invade
Western Europe, they did so, according to Mansoor, with only a 1:1 ratio of
combat divisions vis-a-vis the German army. In fact, Mansoor points out, the
War Department resorted to the expedient of reducing the authorized strength of
divisions in order to multiply their number. Because of the shortfall in
manpower, the infantry divisions "needed many attachments to function
effectively in combat." American infantry divisions were forced to make do with
non-divisional tank battalions, tank-destroyer battalions, artillery battalions
and the like. In the end, however, it was the U.S. army's flawed replacement
system that placed it at such a disadvantage with regard to its German foes.
According to Mansoor, the American divisions that fought in Western Europe in
1944-1945 were populated by a "very much picked-over lot" of men who amounted
to little else than "warm bodies" scraped together to fill the ranks. These
replacements, who by the time of the Normandy invasion were receiving a minimum
of seventeen weeks of basic and specialized training, often lost their fighting
edge while waiting to be posted to a fighting unit. Such men, in consequence,
often quickly became casualties.
The Mobilization of the Army contains one passage particularly worthy
of remark, since it places Mansoor into a position that is the polar opposite
to that of Michael Doubler on the same subject, viz., trucks. It will be
recalled that Doubler, who opines (on the dust cover of The GI Offensive in
Europe ) that "Mansoor provides compelling arguments, supported by
exceptional research and analysis, for the ultimate superiority of American
infantry divisions in World War II", has the following to say about trucks:
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Historians and military analysts have put too much emphasis on the army's
mobility…Trucks did give the army operational mobility, but motorized movement
had no influence on the battlefield…In reality, the army's means of logistical
and operational mobility had no direct influence on combat.
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In contrast, Mansoor states the following:
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The large number of vehicles enabled American infantry divisions to dispense
with horses, which the German army still used in great numbers. American
infantry divisions could conduct rapid, mobile operations when necessary
through the attachment of only six truck companies. Even without attachments,
infantry divisions could move quickly by shuttling their infantry forward in
trucks taken from within the division organization (usually from the
artillery).(263)
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The reader will appreciate that in spite of what is doubtless regarded in
certain quarters as a regrettable lapse by Mansoor (what was he thinking), he
and Doubler are of one mind on the relative merits of the United States and
German armies in the Second World War. Both of them suffer, however, from the
same malady, namely an apparently irrepressible urge to "have it both ways".
Put another way, each of them is at considerable pains to bring to light the
manifold difficulties that undermined the ability of the United States army to
prosecute the war in Europe more effectively, while at the same time completely
ignoring the effect that similar difficulties had upon the capacity of the
German army to resist. A perfect example of this tendency is Mansoor's long
discourse, previously discussed herein, on the twelve-month long training cycle
that the American infantry division had to complete in order to be certified as
combat ready. Mansoor's "exceptional research and analysis" on this point, so
gushingly praised by Doubler, unaccountably fails to acknowledge (for reasons
about which we may only speculate) that virtually none of the German divisions
encountered by the U.S. army in Africa, Sicily, Italy and Western Europe had
benefited from such a training cycle, to say nothing of the multi-division
training also undergone by American formations after their initial training.
In the same vein, the litany of problems advanced by Mansoor in an effort to
discount the extent and quality of training afforded American infantry
divisions totally ignores the fact that German infantry divisions suffered from
the same sorts of problems. The training of the combat soldier, Mansoor tells
us, was rendered little short of retrograde by large scale exercises that
benefited only commanders and their staffs, and a palpable ineptitude at
educating soldiers in the vital skills necessary for successful small-unit
actions, the latter difficulty arising from such shortcomings as the absence of
"a highly trained opposing force to replicate the enemy" and "an
instrumentation system capable of simulating combat outcomes." It has been
mentioned here before, but it bears repeating, that from about 1942 onwards
there were virtually no large-scale training exercises conducted by the German
army; while Mansoor might, and probably would, contend that such a state of
affairs actually benefited the German army, since it avoided the evident
negative effects that such training had on the U.S. army, no serious student
would accept such an argument. As to the subject of small-unit actions, the
most sophisticated "instrumentation systems" available to the German army for
"simulating combat outcomes" were the sand table and the map. Similarly, at
what point during the German soldier's four to six weeks of training was he
exposed to "a highly trained opposing force" replicating the enemy?
German forces in training also lacked equipment and live ammunition, such items
being deemed, under the circumstances, more useful at the front than at
training stations. Mansoor avers that because of the War Department's
ill-considered personnel policies, American divisions lost untold numbers of
non-commissioned officers as likely candidates for such ranks transferred to
specialty schools, became officer candidates, or otherwise disappeared from the
ranks. Ultimately, of course, the U.S. army had ample numbers of competent and
well-trained NCOs, else the field force would never have fared so well against
the Wehrmacht as Mansoor claims that it did. As we have previously
seen, however, the German army in extremis was repeatedly compelled to rely
upon redundant NCOs from the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine to
fill out the ranks of non-commissioned officers in new divisions cobbled
together to confront the Allies in Western Europe. Still on the subject of the
iniquitous American personnel system, Mansoor bemoans the fact that many
American divisions considered ready for deployment were populated by men who
had not trained with the other men in the unit, did not recognize their
leaders, and were not mentally and emotionally identified with the unit to
which they belonged. Such circumstances call to mind the innumerable German
units in which the identical problems were present. Consider, for example,
whether many of the German divisions engaged against the Allies in Western
Europe (described in detail in the section of the present work devoted to
Michael Doubler) could be described as more favored than their American
counterparts, composed as they were of German draftees, volksdeutsche impressed
into service from places like Czechoslovakia, Romania and Hungary, as well as a
hodgepodge of foreign "volunteers" from, among other places, Armenia,
Turkestan, Ukraine and Croatia. Is it likely that such men, many of whom could
not speak or understand German, recognized their leaders or identified with
either their units or the cause for which they were fighting?
Mansoor makes much of the pernicious effects of the so-called "90-division
gamble", asserting that this policy resulted in divisions being left too long
at the front, so that they "fought themselves out" to "collective exhaustion".
The "gamble" also compelled the U.S. army to resort to the expedient of
reducing the authorized manpower of divisions in order to increase their
number.(264) As we have seen, the German army faced precisely the same
problems, a situation about which Mansoor (and Doubler, Bonn and Brown) is
either unaware or reticent to discuss. The list of German divisions that were
left in the front line too long, thereby rendered divisions in name only, would
fill this page. Likewise, as has been previously discussed herein, the German
army repeatedly reduced the authorized strength of its divisional formations in
order to have more of them. Mansoor also complains that American divisions,
once in action, were compelled to rely upon "attachments" (i.e., independent
tank and artillery units or other specialized formations, seconded to a
particular division for a certain purpose) in order to perform their allotted
tasks, as if to suggest that the American divisions were, by their very nature,
inadequately equipped. In fact, however, independent or specialized units, such
as panzer and artillery battalions, nebelwerfer abteilungen , "storm brigades"
and other such formations were routinely "attached" to German divisions as a
means of bolstering them on the eve of any new undertaking. Finally, with
regard to Mansoor's lamentations about the poor quality of the men who filled
out the ranks of American infantry divisions (the aforesaid "picked over"
soldiers, little more than "warm bodies"), it seems reasonable to ask whether
Mansoor would, could he have done so, exchanged these men for the rabble of
overage men and underage boys, volksdeutsche , invalids, recuperating
wounded and foreigners who composed so many German divisions in 1944.
The argument that the U.S. army was seriously disadvantaged, vis-à-vis the
German army, by its personnel policies, must be viewed with considerable
skepticism. It is ironic indeed that Mansoor and others should make this
argument, since it mimics in its essentials the position taken by the apostate
Martin van Creveld, so much maligned by Bonn, Mansoor, Brown and Doubler for
having allegedly misled the historical profession and the public in general
into the heretical view that the German army might have done something right.
Creveld, it will be recalled, was imprudent enough to suggest that the German
system, in which battalions, regiments and divisions, the essential building
blocks of the larger army, as well as the conscripts that made up and
replenished these units, were created and administered on a local basis under
the various Wehrkreise into which the Reich was divided,
seemed to be more well-adapted to fostering cohesive fighting units than the
American system, which placed no such emphasis upon the maintenance of local
connections for its soldiers. As we have seen, Mansoor is perhaps the harshest
critic of Creveld among the authors considered in the present work. Mansoor
concludes that Creveld is an extremist; Creveld's critical view of the American
personnel system is essential to that conclusion. More ironic still is the fact
that the more recent scholarship of Robert Sterling Rush, in his Hell in
Huertgen Forest , suggests a very different conclusion about the
effectiveness of the American personnel system, showing as it does that in this
battle, perhaps the bloodiest in the Western Allies' experience in the European
theatre, the personnel system of which Mansoor is so critical succeeded in
maintaining the battleworthiness of the American formations there engaged.
The GI Offensive in Europe, as the foregoing indicates, is a mass of
contradictions. Nowhere is this more evident than in its final chapter, The
Combat Effectiveness of Infantry Divisions . For here, after two
hundred-fifty pages in which the flawed American personnel system is
continuously held up to the reader as the handicap so gloriously overcome by
the valor and self-sacrifice of the American infantryman, Mansoor tells us that
the system not so bad after all.
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The United States was the only nation able to maintain its fighting forces near
full strength throughout the war, a fact that greatly impressed German
commanders. The individual replacement system had its flaws, but these flaws
stemmed from poor administration of the system rather than an inherent flaw in
the concept. Given the determination to limit the number of divisions
mobilized, the decision to keep them at full strength through the infusion of
individual replacements was the correct one . The task for division
commanders was to take these replacements and integrate them in such a manner
as to maintain the combat effectiveness of their organizations. By doing so,
American commanders were able to maintain the combat effectiveness of their
organizations even as the Wehrmacht slowly disintegrated. (Emphasis
added).(265)
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Should the serious student of military history accept Mansoor's contention that
the American personnel system that exacted a price in blood from the American
soldier "from Italy to Normandy, across France, along the West Wall, through
the Ardennes, and into Germany", and therefore explains any shortcomings in the
effectiveness of the U.S. army in Western Europe, was at the same time without
"an inherent flaw" and "the correct" personnel policy? Surely Mansoor's desire
to "have it both ways" must be troubling to someone in the historical
profession? From ought that appears in any of the work that has succeeded
Mansoor's, however, this does not seem the case.
Alas, one cannot reasonably expect the situation to be otherwise. In all of the
work that has heretofore appeared on the subject of the U.S. army in World War
II, there is only one of which the present writer is aware in which the author
cares to look at the condition of both the American and German forces that
encountered each other on the European continent after the Normandy invasion.
Instead, Mansoor and his colleagues consider the U.S. army as though it fought
in a vacuum. In his final chapter, for example, Mansoor returns to his
criticism of Russell Weigley, who argued, according to Mansoor, that "the Army
of the United States in World War II formed divisions with too little staying
power for the battles of attrition in France and Germany in 1944 and 1945."
Mansoor dismisses Weigley's argument as "attractive but superficial", going on
to point out that "American infantry divisions in World War II routinely
operated with numerous attachments in combat—to include artillery, tank, tank
destroyer, engineer, and antiaircraft units—which gave them much greater power
than one would surmise from a look at their tables of organization."(266) In so
delivering his coup de grace to Weigley, Mansoor for the first time indicates
that it is useful to go beyond the table of organization of a formation---but
only for the purpose of striking down a rival, not for the purpose of analysis.
It is manifest why Mansoor avoids studiously any consideration in depth of the
opposing forces about which he writes, for to do so would have led
him—perhaps—into revealing more about the condition of the German army than
would have suited his purposes.
In the end, the failure to delve more deeply into the facts undermining the
"fashionable" myth—if it is a myth—of German combat superiority is Mansoor's
undoing, as it is the undoing of those who write in the same school. Mansoor
says that "[W]hile American divisions had a uniform organization and a baseline
level of proficiency, the same was not true of the German army."(267) How does
such a statement advance Mansoor's argument, when he fails to consider whether
the German army "had a uniform organization and a baseline level of
proficiency" when it was at the height of its power in 1940-1941 (as the U.S.
army was in 1944-1945), or why the German army, in the last nine
months of the war, was unable to field "robust, balanced, and capable
divisions" as was the U.S. army.(268) Mansoor takes up the cudgel once again
against Martin van Creveld by asserting the obvious, namely that American
officers would not agree with Creveld that the German army was "more effective"
than its American counterpart. This statement adds nothing to Mansoor's
argument, as well as it misconstrues what Creveld's work is about. In
manhandling Creveld for one last time, Mansoor returns to his unbalanced theme.
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While the cream of the Wehrmacht, the panzer and panzer grenadier
divisions, were combat-effective organizations and a match for the divisions of
the Army of the United States, the bulk of the German army was not composed of
these units. The average German infantry division could not defeat an American
infantry division in battle…In terms of mechanization and their ability to
conduct mobile warfare, American infantry divisions were in a class by
themselves. Nor could the German army consistently sustain its fighting power.
The Wehrmacht could field superb formations equipped with
technologically advanced weapons, but its failure to provide adequate means for
support and sustainment led to their undoing. Historians may criticize the
American emphasis on logistics, but that emphasis helped lead the Army of the
United States to victory in Europe.(269)
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Mansoor's comments on the relative mechanization of the U.S. and German armies,
and on the logistical superiority of the Americans over the Germans are
certainly true, although they surely land him in hot water with the likes of
Michael Doubler, who baldly asserts that these factors had no effect upon the
fighting power of the U.S. army. The problem is that Mansoor, and he is not
alone, seems to assume that the German army chose to have a low level of
mechanization as well as a ramshackle logistics system. Even if we accept the
theory that the German officer corps was so hidebound that it actually
preferred that its infantry divisions move at the same speed as the Roman
legions, or that, if given the choice, it would have rejected the idea of
replacing horse-drawn supply with the vast fleets of trucks available to both
the Western Allies and the Red Army, what would that prove? Whether the
condition of the German army in these respects was the result of informed
choice or not, the fact of the matter is that the German economy, as Ellis and
others have demonstrated beyond cavil, was not capable of bringing the German
army up to the standards of its foes with regard to either mechanization or
logistics. To deny this fact, or to deny its impact upon the army in the field,
is simply nonsense. Nonsensical as well, and for the same reasons, are
Mansoor's comments about the "cream of the Wehrmacht" and the "average
German infantry division." Anyone who has read the present work carefully will
realize that the U.S. army did not encounter either the "cream of the Wehrmacht
" or the "average German infantry division" in Western Europe in 1944-1945.
Both the "cream" of the German army and its "average" divisions were buried in
Russia, where the Red Army had been hard at work grinding them up for three
years before a single American soldier set foot on European soil. It is,
nevertheless, true that the Western Allies encountered formidable resistance
from many German formations, which fought well and bravely almost to the end.
Had Mansoor cared to consider it, he had available to him a veritable mountain
of evidence and scholarship to elucidate the steady decline in the quality of
the German army since the beginning of its sojourn in the east. As that army
prepared for its second summer of campaigning in the Soviet Union, it was clear
to everyone (except Hitler) conversant with its condition that it would be
incapable of conducting operations comparable to those of the previous year.
The army had lost 35% (over 1 million men) of its average strength between the
beginning of the campaign and April, 1942, when the preparations for the second
campaign began in earnest. It had also lost almost 75,000 vehicles (cars,
trucks, motorcycles, tractors) since October, 90 percent of which remained
unreplaced as spring approached. In the panzer divisions, over 2,000 tanks had
been lost and never replaced. In a force still largely dependent upon the horse
for its mobility, over 180,000 animals had been lost during the winter; only 10
per cent of these had been replaced by the following spring. The effect of
these losses upon the mobility of the eastern army may be readily surmised;
Army Groups Center and North, their supply echelons, mobile troops and infantry
stripped of vehicles and horses in favor of Army Group South, were not capable
of major offensive operations. Yet, even in spite of the sacrifices of its
sister formations, Army Group South was reckoned to be at only 85 per cent of
its original mobility.(270)
In addition to its shortcomings in the area of mobility, the eastern army on
the eve of its second campaign also suffered from substantial shortages in
weapons and ammunition. Whereas Hitler had called for a six-month reserve of
ammunition before the outset of the new campaign, in fact the OKH advised
as late as April, 1942 that even if "makeshift expedients" were employed, from
about August onward there would be "bottlenecks" in the ammunition supply,
because production would not be able to compensate when existing supplies had
been used up. The army also had experienced such substantial losses in small
arms—rifles, machine-guns, trench mortars—as well as artillery of all kinds,
and German industry was so incapable of making up for such losses, that Army
Group South could only be "made whole" in these areas at the expense (once
again) of Army Groups Center and North. Compounding all of these difficulties
was the deplorable condition of the Soviet rail system, upon which, as a result
of the even more inadequate Soviet road net, the Wehrmacht was so
dependent for supplies. As a result of the destruction wrought by the Germans
in the previous year, it was necessary to rely upon German engines and goods
wagons, a development that in turn required that the Germans convert the Soviet
broad-gauge to the more narrow German gauge, a feat accomplished with respect
to 21,000 kilometers of track since the beginning of the Russian campaign. In
spite of their exertions, however, the Germans were chronically short of goods
wagons. In January, 1942 the daily average number of such wagons available
stood at 60,000, a number that General Halder characterized as
"catastrophic"; six months later, the largest daily average achieved was
130,000 wagons, a figure that was still regarded by the army's supply
administration as insufficient to meet the urgent requirements of the front. On
February 8, 1942, Hitler appointed Albert Speer Reich Minister for
armaments and ammunition. He and the transportation experts that he employed
were able, by mid-July, to raise the daily average number of available goods
wagons to 180,000, a figure regarded as adequate to meet the needs of the
advance of Army Group South. Nothing that the Germans could do, however, could
improve the road system upon which its supplies traveled after they left the
railhead.(271)
Operation Blue, as the 1942 offensive in the east was called, ended
not in the victory that Hitler, at least, had anticipated, but instead in one
of the most catastrophic defeats suffered by any army in the modern era. Such
also was the fate of Operation Citadel, the last strategic German
offensive of the war, in July of the following year. In the east, the
initiative passed irretrievably to the Soviets. Between July 1, 1943 and
February 1, 1944, the strength of the Ostheer fell precipitously from
3,138,000 men to 2,366,000 men. Among the huge number of men lost were many
officers and NCOs with invaluable training and experience. Because the Wehrmacht
could not meet this manpower crisis by simply expanding conscription, owing to
the negative effect that this would have on German industry, it was forced to
seek other sources of men. In October, 1943 men born between 1889 and
1893 (i.e., the age groups between 50 and 55) were called up; the
previous month, the conscription system had begun to list men born between 1884
and 1887 , with a view to calling up some of these men as well.
Another expedient was to literally comb the army for both officers and other
ranks who might, for some reason, be regarded as redundant. This policy,
however, when combined with losses in personnel now averaging more than 150,000
men per month, so depleted the field army that it became necessary to
reorganize it, a step the Germans took in the autumn of 1943. As a practical
matter, this meant not that the number of German formations was reduced, but
that the size and strength of both existing and new divisions were considerably
reduced. Whereas, as we have previously seen, the nominal strength of a German
infantry division in September 1939 was on the order of 17,000 men, the neuer
Art divisions that began to proliferate in the fall of 1943 numbered 10,708
German troops and 2,005 Russian Hiwis .(272)
With the decrease in manpower came a further reduction in mobility, as already
hard-pressed infantry divisions lost their remaining motorized elements to the
panzer and panzergrenadier divisions. And in spite of the army's
reorganization, units throughout the German army were not able to maintain even
their nominal new strengths; units in combat were particularly afflicted. By
the early summer of 1944, on the eve of the Allied invasion of Europe, the
German army had lost 73 divisions since the beginning of 1943; the
process of breaking up burned out divisions, or of filling them out with entire
regiments of new recruits, was now well in hand.(273) The summer of 1944
accelerated this process; the Normandy invasion was followed, on the third
anniversary of Operation Barbarossa, by the commencement of the Soviet
Operation Bagration , an overwhelmingly powerful offensive that blew
Army Group Center to bits in short order.
Of the steady destruction of the German army Mansoor says nearly nothing.
Instead, like Bonn and Doubler, Mansoor paints a picture in which the German
and American armies contesting in Western Europe in 1944-1945 did so on an
equal basis. That this was not the case is manifest from all of the available
evidence, as Mansoor undoubtedly knew when he wrote The GI Offensive in
Europe. If it is to be argued, as Mansoor and his "school" have done,
that the U.S. army of 1944-1945 was at least the equal of its German foe, then
it is reasonable to inquire how it arrived at such a status of equality. Had
the U.S. army lost 73 divisions in the year before its trial of arms in Western
Europe? Where was its Stalingrad? Its Alamein? Unless Mansoor and his ilk
answer these questions, they cannot equate the U.S. army to the Heer .
Footnotes
(245) Deist, Wilhelm, Messerschmidt, Manfred, Volkmann, Hans-Erich and Wette,
Wolfram, Germany and the Second World War, v.I The Build-up of German
Aggression, (Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 409.
(246) Ibid., pp. 413-414.
(247) Ibid., p. 414.
(248) Ibid., pp. 414-416.
(249) Ibid., pp. 417-418.
(250) Ibid., pp. 419-420.
(251) Ibid., p. 420.
(252) Ibid., pp. 422-425.
(253) Ibid., p. 426.
(254) Ibid., p. 439.
(255) Ibid.
(256) Ibid., pp. 439-449.
(257) Ibid., pp. 450-456.
(258) The Officer's Guide: A Ready Reference on Customs and Correct
Procedures Which Pertain to Commissioned Officers of the Army of the United
States (Harrisburg, Pa. 1943), p. 410. The use of fear as the essential
element in the maintenance of military discipline extends as far back in time
as one may desire to investigate. The armies of both republican and Imperial
Rome employed harsh corporal discipline as a matter of course, the death
penalty being meted out to both entire units and individuals for desertion,
mutiny and insubordination. See, Parker, H.M.D., The Roman Legions (New
York, 1993), pp. 232-235; le Bohec, Yann, The Imperial Roman Army (New
York, 1994), p. 60. The death penalty might also be inflicted on the Roman
soldier who slept while on sentry duty, committed theft in camp, gave false
testimony, was egregiously immoral, or committed the same minor offense four
times. Webster, Graham, The Roman Imperial Army of the First and Second
Centuries A.D. (New York, 1979). Harsh corporal discipline was practiced
in the British army for centuries, the cat o' nine tails being only one of many
implements used to keep British troops in line. The British were also not
averse to the ultimate form of corporal discipline, namely execution. Mutineers
were routinely blown to pieces by being tied to the mouth of cannon.
(259) Mansoor, p. 24.
(260) Ibid., p. 25.
(261) Ibid., p. 26.
(262) Ibid., p. 31.
(263) Ibid., p. 38.
(264) It should be mentioned here that at the same time that Mansoor bewails
the evisceration of American infantry divisions caused by the "90-division
gamble", he informs his readers that the U.S. army never had to rely upon
makeshift kampfgruppen in the manner of the German army, thereby
confirming the superiority of the American system over that of the Germans.
This is yet another example of the "doublethink" employed by Mansoor and his
ilk. One can be excused for wondering, it would seem, how a system as
fundamentally flawed as that of the United States could at once be relied upon
as the reason for the poor performance of American divisions and superior to
the system employed by the Germans.
(265) Mansoor, p. 255.
(266) Ibid., p. 253. One wonders to whom such an argument would have been
"attractive".
(267) Ibid., p. 255.
(268) This is a universal failing in the historiography of the U.S. army in
World War II; no one seems capable of taking into account the fundamental fact
that the condition of the United States in 1944-1945 was nothing like the
condition of Germany in those same years.
(269) Mansoor, pp. 255-256.
(270) Boog, Horst, Rahn, Werner, Stumpf, Reinhard and Wegner, Bernd, Germany
and the Second World War; v. VI The Global War: Widening of the Conflict into a
World War and the Shift of the Initiative 1941-1943, pp. 871-873.
(271) Ibid., pp. 873-882.
(272) Kroener, Bernhard R., Muller, Rolf-Dieter, Umbreit, Hans, Germany and
the Second World War; v. V Organization and Mobilization of the German Sphere
of Power; Part 2 Wartime administration, economy, and manpower resources
1942-1944/5 (Clarendon Press, 2003), pp. 1008-1026.
(273) Ibid., pp. 1027-1031.
Copyright © 2004 by Thomas E. Nutter.
Please send comments to Thomas E. Nutter at: tenutter@gmail.com.
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