Mythos revisited: American Historians and German
Fighting Power in WWII
by Thomas E. Nutter
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Chapter Nine - Part III
KEITH BONN AND THE LEVEL PLAYING FIELD
A measure of the ferocity of the fighting in the Low Vosges, and the relative
ability of the antagonists to tolerate its results, is revealed in Bonn's
discussion of the impact of the struggle on the combat power of the German and
American forces involved. In a chart depicting the average strength of American
infantry rifle companies before and after the pursuit in the Low Vosges, he
shows that the numerical strength of these units "had been protected to a
significant degree", although he does not explain how this result was obtained.
Moreover, "[N]ot only had the strengths of the rifle companies been largely
preserved, but those of the heavy-weapons companies and supporting units were
almost completely intact." For the defending Germans, however, this was not the
case. 361.Volks-Grenadier-Division, for example, had scoured its rear echelon
for troops, many of whom then became casualties, so that by mid-December its
infantry battalions had dwindled to an average strength of 675 men. The
infantry component of the Kampfgruppe of 25.Panzer-Grenadier-Division suffered
similarly. 245.Infanterie- Division, which had started off at a disadvantage,
"had ceased to exist as a coherent formation" by the middle of December. For
all of this, however, Bonn concludes that in these so-called "Battles of
Movement" in the Low Vosges during the first two weeks of December, both sides
accomplished their assigned missions concurrently. "First and most
indisputable", Bonn says, the German forces accomplished their mission of
delay, preventing a breakthrough into the Palatinate, and allowing the German
command to retain its mobile reserve for the Ardennes counteroffensive. The
Americans, on the other hand, are said to have accomplished their mission of
relentless pursuit of the enemy, while at the same time preserving their forces
for the ultimate mission of penetrating the German frontier defenses.(152)
Whereas Bonn is even-handed in his treatment of the "Battles of Movement" in
the Low Vosges, his discussion of the attack of the U.S. XV Corps' 44th and
100th Infantry Divisions upon the Maginot Line bastions of Fort Simserhof and
Fort Schiesseck respectively descends to the realm of the absurd. As with
others of his ilk, Bonn attempts to set up an invidious comparison between the
assaults of these American formations on these positions and the attack of the
German 257.Infanterie-Division on the same position in 1940. Simply put, Bonn
contends that the superiority of American over German arms is proven by the
fact that the U.S. 44th and 100th Infantry Divisions were successful in their
attacks, while the German 257.Infanterie-Division failed in its efforts. Bonn's
comparison, however, begins with a faulty premise, one that leads him to a
false conclusion.
Bonn begins his description of this interlude by asserting that 257.Infanterie-
Division had the opportunity to attack all of the fortifications of the
so-called Ensemble de Bitche, including the two Forts described above, from the
same direction as that followed by the 44th and 100th Infantry in 1944, namely
from France toward Germany. 257.Infanterie-Division's Infanterie-Regiment 457,
says Bonn, did the attacking, first on 21 June 1940 in the abri d'intervalle on
the Grand Kindelberg near Bitche, and then on the following day on the
casemates and blockhouses under the control of Fort Grand Hohekirkel east of
Bitche. Both assaults were without avail; thereafter all attacks were
suspended, and the Germans waited out the acceptance of the armistice by the
garrison of the Ensemble de Bitche on June 30. Bonn concludes that "[T]he
Germans were unable to penetrate the outer rear defenses of these massive
fortifications, and they never progressed against them to the extent necessary
for an assault on the fortresses proper." A brief look at the facts about 1940
explains the actions of the Germans, and undermines completely Bonn's attempt
to disparage German arms. On 21 June 1940, the day on which Bonn claims
Infanterie-Regiment 457 first attacked the Ensemble de Bitche, the French
surrendered to the Germans in a formal ceremony in the Forest of Compiegne. On
24 June, French troops holding out in the Vosges Mountains laid down their
arms. On 25 June all fighting in France ended. Given these facts, one must
question Bonn's assertions and conclusions. Bonn is a professional soldier, and
presumably therefore recognizes that one of the guiding precepts of all career
soldiers is to preserve the lives and general welfare of the soldiers under
their command. The German officers commanding 257.Infanterie-Division and
Infanterie-Regiment 457 in 1940 were also professional soldiers, recognizing
the same precept. Why, then, would they have behaved in the manner Bonn
evidently suggests that they should have done, namely thrown away the lives of
their soldiers in a war already won? The very low casualties alleged by Bonn to
have been sustained by the Germans in their two attacks (15 killed and 63
wounded), and their suspension of attacks after 22 June, suggest that the
German officers commanding were indeed aware of their obligations to their
troops. How, in light of these facts, can Bonn reasonably argue that the
Germans failed in an effort they never made, and had no reason to make?(153)
The absurdity of Bonn's position on this case is further emphasized by his
description of the attacks on the Maginot forts in question by the 44th and
100th Infantry Divisions beginning on 14 December. The fortresses, says Bonn,
were defended by 1.Armee fortress troops and 25.Panzer-Grenadier-Division. Here
it must be noted once again that when Bonn asserts that
25.Panzer-Grenadier-Division was involved in the defense, he is incorrect, for
only a Kampfgruppe of that unit was involved, and by Bonn's own admission (p.
163) the Kampfgruppe mustered only 800 infantrymen and 13 armored vehicles in
the wake of the fighting in the Low Vosges. On the other hand, the attacking
American units, the 71st and 398th Infantry Regiments, again according to
Bonn's own figures, had in their respective infantry companies average
strengths of 146 (81% of authorized strength) and 127 (71% of authorized
strength) soldiers each, thus giving them an overwhelming superiority in
manpower alone. In addition, while the 71st and 398th Infantry Regiments made
their frontal assaults on the fortresses, their sister regiments (the 44th
Infantry Division's 324th Infantry Regiment and the 100th Infantry Division's
397th and 399th Infantry Regiments) made supporting attacks to fix the enemy in
position and prevent counterattacks.(154)
The Americans began their assault on 14 December with a massed artillery
barrage from the guns of the 44th and 100th Infantry Divisions' own organic
105mm and 155mm howitzers, along with the fire of five battalions of XV Corps
artillery, including 8 inch howitzers, 4.5 inch and 155mm guns and 240mm
howitzers, "largely to no avail." Over the next two days, the works were
subjected to 78 P-47 fighter-bomber sorties, dropping 500lb bombs, "also with
little effect." The hard work of reducing the fortresses thus fell to the
infantrymen. The 398th Infantry Regiment took six hard days of fighting to
silence the guns of Fort Schiessek. In this they were assisted by their combat
engineers, who expended five thousand pounds of dynamite destroying the works
and its artillery, and by the attached 781st Tank Battalion, one of whose
bulldozers buried the defenders under tons of earth and rock. The 71st Infantry
Regiment also took six days to reduce Fort Simserhof, using the same
combination of engineers and armor.(155)
Again, what is noteworthy about Bonn's account of these struggles, and
indicative of the tendentious nature of his work in general, is the negative
comparison he makes about the relative performance of the U.S. army in 1944 and
the German army in 1940. He avers that the 71st Infantry Regiment suffered
casualties that "were roughly the same as those" taken by the 398th Infantry
Regiment in attaining its objective. As to the latter, Bonn claims that 16 men
were killed and 120 wounded in suppressing Fort Schiesseck, numbers that he
asserts are "especially significant" because roughly the equivalent (although
57 more Americans were wounded) to the casualties suffered by the German
Infanterie-Regiment 457 in its failed attempts to take the same objective in
1940. His verdict is that "a regiment that was a product of the U.S. Army
Mobilization Training Plan, without special training or experience,
accomplished what a regiment of the vaunted 1940 German army had utterly failed
to do: penetrate the Ensemble de Bitche. Moreover, they accomplished it without
the months of training and minute intelligence that had been available to the
Germans in 1940." As the foregoing discussion has demonstrated, however, this
comparison may most charitably be described as silly. The Germans had no need
to waste the lives of their troops in reducing the Maginot forts in 1940, and
did not do so. The valor and skill of American troops in destroying those forts
in 1944 require no enhancement through false comparisons.(156)
Bonn's last significant topic is the German Nordwind offensive that occurred in
late December 1944 and early January 1945. This operation was intended to
assist the contemporaneously ongoing German offensive in the Ardennes by tying
down, and destroying if possible, potential American reinforcements for the
Allied troops defending there. The German order of battle, according to Bonn,
included Attack Group #1 consisting of XIII.SS Armeekorps (17.SS
Panzer-Grenadier-Division "Gotz von Berlichingen", 36.Volks-Grenadier-Division
and 19.Volks-Grenadier-Division) and Attack Group #2 comprising XC.Armeekorps
(257.Volks-Grenadier-Division and 559.Volks-Grenadier-Division) and
LXXXIX.Armeekorps (256.Volks-Grenadier-Division and
361.Volks-Grenadier-Division, 6.SS Gebirgs-Division "Nord"). 1.Armee
operational reserve included the Kampfgruppe of 25.Panzer-Grenadier-Division
and 21.Panzer- Division.(157)
Bonn characterizes 17.SS Panzer-Grenadier-Division as having been brought to
full strength shortly before the commencement of Nordwind, so that its SS
Panzer-Grenadier-Regiment 37 and 38 fielded a total of slightly over 4000 men,
many of whom were apparently Volksdeutsche, namely soldiers of German descent,
but not German nationals. Bonn also alleges that this division included a
heavily reinforced panzer battalion with about 70 assault guns, as well as a
company of 21.Panzer-Division's Panther tanks. It should be noted that if SS
Panzer-Grenadier-Regiment 38 was indeed present for Nordwind, it was in
considerable disarray at best, having been destroyed near Metz on or about
November 22, 1944. It was apparently reconstituted only on January 1, 1945 by
the simple expediency of renaming three battalions from the SS
Panzer-Grenadier-Ausbildungs-Regiment, along with the remnants of the
division's heavy panzerjaeger company, flak company and pioneer company. Bonn's
figures for the division's panzer battalion also appear exaggerated; it appears
actually to have had no more than 34 assault guns in its inventory for the
beginning of Nordwind, along with 10 Flakpanzer. If a company of Panthers from
Panzer-Regiment 22 (21.Panzer-Division) was indeed attached to 17.SS
Panzer-Grenadier-Division, that company consisted of no more than 19 armored
vehicles.(158)
We have previously described most of the German divisions involved in Nordwind,
but it is worth mentioning some of the admissions Bonn makes about them. Of
19.Volks-Grenadier-Division, Bonn estimates its infantry strength at a paltry
1800, and describes it as "clearly the weakest of the units taking part in the
western thrust of Nordwind." Bonn mentions that 559.Volks-Grenadier-Division's
infantry strength was approximately 2600 men, although he says that one of its
regiments (Volks-Grenadier-Regiment 1125) was "practically nonexistent".
According to Bonn, the division had sustained heavy losses in the previous two
months in battles against the U.S. Third Army in Lorraine and along the
Westwall; furthermore, it had trained as a unit for only one week, and its
organic engineer unit was especially poorly trained in the critical skill of
mine clearance. Bonn describes 257.Volks-Grenadier-Division as having been
"battered to unimportant remnants" in Russia before being reorganized in late
October 1944. It had been filled to authorized strength, Bonn says, "from a
variety of sources" including veterans returning from convalescent leave (40%
of the total) and former Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine personnel, and went into
the attack with about four weeks of actual training.
361.Volks-Grenadier-Division was "still smarting" from its losses during the
first two weeks of the month; its 2000 infantrymen lacked experience and
training as a team. Bonn describes the condition of
256.Volks-Grenadier-Division as even worse than that of 361.Volks-Grenadier
Division, having been ground down by combat earlier in the month so that it
fielded about 1655 infantrymen; its soldiers were principally former
Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe personnel, as well as men who had previously been
exempt from military service because of the significance of their civilian
occupations. Overall, the division was fit only for defensive operations,
although its role in Nordwind was an important offensive one. (159)
In Bonn's view, the only truly battle-worthy unit in the German attack force
for Nordwind was 6. SS Gebirgs-Division "Nord", which Bonn characterizes as
"probably the best German infantry formation on the entire western front in
early January 1945." Bonn is fairly effusive in his description of this
division, calling it a full-strength, fully equipped mountain division
"perfectly suited for the upcoming attack in the Low Vosges." He mentions that
its two infantry regiments, SS Gebirgs-Infanterie-Regiment 11 "Reinhard
Heydrich" and SS Gebirgs-Infanterie-Regiment 12 "Michael Gaissmair" included
"at least 5,700 highly motivated, well-trained, superbly equipped infantrymen."
Bonn's estimates of the strength and motivation of the Nord division are based
upon the post-war reminiscences of its commander during Nordwind, SS
Gruppenfuhrer Karl Brenner. In this connection it is worth mentioning that,
while mountain divisions were generally considered elite formations within the
German army, it is striking that when elite divisions of the Waffen SS are
discussed in the relevant literature, the Nord division is not one of those
listed. Indeed, it had performed rather poorly early in the course of
Barbarossa, unlike the other Waffen SS units that partook in the early stages
of the campaign, and had suffered from a negative reputation thereafter. Thus,
while it may have been of a higher quality than the other German infantry
formations taking part in Nordwind (a status not particularly difficult to
achieve), it was not by any means representative of the cream of the
Wehrmacht.(160)
Bonn's description of the ensuing conflict, and his conclusions about it, are
another exercise in fantasy. It begins with his recitation of the comparative
infantry strengths of the opponents at the beginning of the assault. While the
overall numbers (29,102 American, 29,930 German) are roughly even, Bonn argues
that there was actually a German advantage of 1.21 to 1 because the initial
attack would come from 25,430 Germans against 21,002 Americans; in addition, he
contends that at the main point of German effort the attackers would enjoy a
superiority of 4.25 to 1, soon to be drastically increased by the commitment of
the Nord division to the fray at this critical juncture. By Bonn's own
admission, however, these raw numbers are largely without meaning, since almost
without exception the German units were composed of new troops who were not
only per se lacking in training as infantrymen, but also lacked anything more
than infinitesimal training with their units as a whole. Moreover, and again by
Bonn's own admission, "the Seventh Army's units in the area greatly outnumbered
their adversaries in quantities of tanks." The units supporting 44th (749th
Tank and 776th Tank Destroyer battalions) and 100th Infantry Divisions (781st
Tank and 824th Tank Destroyer battalions) contributed at least 180 tanks and
tank destroyers, while the tanks available with the 12th and 14th Armored
Divisions and the 2nd French Armored Division totaled at least another 250
more, giving the American defenders what Bonn describes as "overwhelming odds"
in terms of available armored fighting vehicles. Further, Bonn points out, the
Americans would be supported by overwhelming Allied air superiority in the
event the weather turned fair during the course of the battle.(161)
Based upon Bonn's description of the condition of the opposing forces, one
would expect the battle to have miscarried from the German point of view, and
of course it did so. The "spin" that Bonn places on this situation, however, is
most interesting. While admitting that the operation "proceeded with tired and
inadequately trained troops", Bonn criticizes the German command for having
gone forward "without doctrinally mandated reconnaissance or mid-and low-level
planning." Exactly why "doctrinally mandated" planning and reconnaissance would
have altered the situation from the German point of view, when the attack was
the result of a Fuhrerbefehl and would have been pressed forward in any case
and under any circumstances, is not clear. In any event, having recognized the
obstacles confronting the attacking force, Bonn is at pains to reiterate as
often as possible the alleged numerical superiority of the Germans at various
points in the struggle. Perhaps this is done to take the "edge" off of some of
the more uncomfortable facts about the contest. For example, Bonn describes the
thwarting of German "limited objective attacks" against Rimling and Gros
Rederching by "dozens" (precisely how many "dozens" is unclear) of armored
vehicles through the intervention of the 2nd French Armored Division. One might
reasonably ask how this particular struggle could have ended otherwise, taking
into account Bonn's previous description of the French 2nd Armored Division as
including a large number of tanks, and the fact that this unit had been
deliberately held in readiness for just such a contingency. There were, in
addition, successful attacks by 256.Volks-Grenadier-Division at Philippsbourg
and by the "Michael Gaismair" regiment at Wingen, where the latter unit drove
the 179th Infantry Regiment back 3500 meters and captured over 100 American
prisoners.(162)
More striking still are Bonn's conclusions about the overall Battle for the Low
Vosges. He begins with acknowledging the prowess of the forces in Heeresgruppe
G in delaying the advance of their numerically superior adversaries, but goes
on to denigrate them by repeating his mischaracterization of the respective
German and American assaults on the Maginot defenses in 1940 and 1944, claiming
that the Seventh Army "penetrate[d] the same fortified positions their
opponents had failed to dent four and a half years earlier." The deliberate
twisting of fact continues, as Bonn sums up Nordwind by claiming that "[W]hen
provided with an opportunity to exert the advantages of numerical superiority
themselves, the soldiers of Army Group B failed utterly", as reflected in the
fact that "[P]oorly trained and organized units conducted attacks in amateurish
and wildly wasteful manners, sustaining such heavy casualties that they
exhausted themselves in two or three days of combat." The American forces, on
the other hand, are described in glowing terms.
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"American units, made up in part of ex-Army Air Forces, antiaircraft artillery,
and technical services' troops, led by officers and noncommissioned officers
with little combat experience (less than seventy-five days for the 44th
Division, forty-seven in the 100th), stonewalled attacks by numerically
superior formations of soldiers of similarly mixed background, led by veteran
combat leaders. The difference, obviously, was training and the cohesion born
of it. Even highly seasoned, previously undefeated SS mountain troops could not
defeat like numbers of similarly experienced Americans…The ersatz ‘American
Volksturm Grenadiers' threw back the best that the Landsers of the genuine
article could offer. Few more telling comparisons could be made."(163)
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If the relative performance of the German and American forces engaged in the
Battle for the Low Vosges constitutes a "telling comparison", as Bonn suggests
that it does, then some serious questions about the fighting power of the
American units need to be addressed. Bonn's work is replete with references to
the fact that the Vosges Mountains represent "some of the most eminently
defensible terrain in all of Western Europe." Since for the most part the
Germans were on the defensive throughout the period covered by his book, the
obvious inference that Bonn wishes the reader to draw is that German army was a
good deal less competent than its reputation would suggest, because it could
not successfully defend the territory in question against its American
adversaries. Yet during the Nordwind offensive the Americans were on the
defensive against an ineptly led, poorly trained German force, and were
nevertheless forced to give ground and depend upon their overwhelming
superiority in armored fighting vehicles to withstand the onslaught. This is
contrary to Bonn's own suggestion, made with reference to the Germans, that the
successful defense of such "eminently defensible" terrain should have been a
foregone conclusion, no matter what the odds.
As has been previously discussed, the suggestion made by Bonn that the forces
engaged were on an equal footing because both were composed of men recently
converted from other military formations is a gross misrepresentation of the
facts. As far as is known, there were no ex-U.S. Navy personnel converted into
infantrymen in the ranks of the Seventh Army, as there were large numbers of
former Kriegsmarine sailors throughout the German formations engaged. Likewise,
in the U.S. army, antiaircraft artillery, technical service troops, and indeed
even Army Air Force soldiers were fundamentally trained as infantrymen; the
same was not true for former members of the Luftwaffe, who made up large
numbers of the so-called infantrymen in the German forces in the Vosges.
And Bonn's characterization of the Nord division as "highly seasoned,
previously undefeated SS mountain troops" is wholly inaccurate. In fact, the
division had its origins in the SS Kampfgruppe "Nord", formed from two
Totenkopfstandarten (police) units, and had its baptism of fire in July 1941 on
the Northern sector of the Eastern Front, where it assaulted a Russian
stronghold at Salla along with a Finnish and a German army division. On that
occasion, the Russians turned back two assaults by Nord, inflicting heavy
losses on the attackers, and then counterattacked to throw them back beyond
their start lines. Nord disintegrated; its soldiers threw away their weapons
and ran in terror through their own artillery lines. The Kampfgruppe was saved
from annihilation by the successful assaults of their Finnish and German army
comrades. In the end, Nord's infantry battalions were broken up and distributed
among its rescuers. A measure of its poor reputation may be gleaned from the
fact that in the subsequent years, it remained on the Northern front, and was
not committed where other Waffen SS formations of elite status were sent.
The final bit of silliness is Bonn's effort to explain away the poor
performance of certain Seventh Army units (Task Force Hudelson ["bastardized"]
63rd and 70th Infantry Divisions ["erratically trained"]), which he says
sustained the highest casualties and came the closest to failing of all the
Army's units engaged. The reason cited by Bonn for the inability of these
formations to perform up to the standard set by other American units is that
they "were not organized with attention paid to cohesion and extensive
training." One needs must simply ask how American units can be exonerated for
their failures on this basis when German units suffering from the same (and
worse) maladies cannot.(164)
In the Introduction to When the Odds Were Even, Keith Bonn condemns Martin van
Creveld's Fighting Power as a work "most useful mainly for instruction in how
not to write comparative history." (emphasis in original). Such a sentiment
takes on a charitable quality when applied to Bonn's own work. Throughout, Bonn
persists in advancing arguments which, if subjected to the least bit of
thoughtful consideration, rapidly reveal their ethereal nature. Bonn concludes,
for example, that toward the end of the war, "both sides were forced to commit
as replacements soldiers whose initial training and military experience suited
them primarily for other roles. The American system was far superior in
retraining such personnel and welding them into effective fighting forces,
however." This argument is fallacious for at least three reasons: first,
because no American soldiers converted from such sources as the Army Air Force,
antiaircraft artillery or service troops had anything less that at least 12-16
weeks training as an infantryman; second, because no American units in the ETO
were replenished by mass levees from the U.S. Navy; and third, all of the sort
of basic training received by American soldiers "converted" to infantrymen
occurred either in the U.S. or some other secure location where interference
from the enemy during the initial training period would not be encountered.
None of this was true of the German formations encountered in the Vosges
campaign.
Bonn also suggests that unlike their German counterparts, the Americans
recognized the importance of morale; it was for this reason, he argues, that
with few exceptions Americans avoided situations in which combat formations
were ground down so that less than 50% of their soldiers remained, while in
contrast the Germans made a regular practice of so doing. This contention
ignores the fact that the oft-maligned U.S. replacement system was capable of
meeting the needs of the forces in the field while the German system was
neither capable of nor designed to do the same thing. As has been amply
demonstrated in the historical literature, after 1941 Germany was totally
incapable of meeting the manpower needs of its fighting forces. If this were
not the case, why would a regime dedicated to the principle of racial purity
have enlisted for its defense the likes of such non-Germanic folk as Italians,
French, Cossacks, Ukrainians, Croats, Serbs, Montenegrins and Russians, to
mention just a few, to say nothing of the tens of thousands of Germanic
"volunteers" (Norwegians, Danes, Finns, Walloons) and Volksdeutsche dragooned
into German service to make up for the manpower shortfall.
What is particularly curious is that Bonn recognizes all of this to be true. He
notes that the training of the German units involved in the Vosges campaign was
vastly inferior to that of the Americans; while Volks-Grenadier units typically
received four to six weeks collective unit training ("Some Volksgrenadier units
didn't even get that much") new American divisions received a minimum of
thirty-five weeks such training. He also observes that German units were filled
with replacements of foreign extraction, among whom even the Volksdeutsche
often lacked the ability to speak or understand German. It is interesting to
note that, having taken cognizance of all of this, Bonn nevertheless takes the
view that all of these German difficulties stemmed from the continuous pressure
exerted on their forces by the Americans. Like others of his ilk, Bonn seems to
have forgotten both that when the first U.S. forces stepped on the European
continent, the Germans had already been at war for nearly five years, and that
the Red Army, to its own great cost, had long since ground up the cream of the
Wehrmacht, reducing it to the shell that now confronted the western
Allies.(165)
Equally disturbing are Bonn's other conclusions. Speaking of the combined arms
operations undertaken by the U.S. army in Western Europe, Bonn concludes that
"[B]y the time of the Vosges Mountains campaign, the Americans had developed
tactical organizations that facilitated the fighting of modern wars to an
extent far superior to their adversaries." It is unclear upon what theory Bonn
makes this quite remarkable statement. As far as is known (perhaps Bonn has
better evidence not shared in his work), German panzer divisions were in the
field long before any American units of a like composition. From the start of
the war, the panzer division was a combined arms organization, comprising an
armor element, an infantry element, an artillery element and support units such
as an organic engineer battalion. During the course of the war these combined
arms formations enjoyed what might be described as a modicum of success against
a variety of opponents, including even the U.S. army. More generally, Bonn
criticizes the German army for having a "chaotic" organization at both the
tactical and operational levels, contrasting this with the more stable American
command and control system. His basis for doing so is the use of foreign
troops, the constant reorganization of TO&E for German divisions and the
frequent changes in command at the level of division and above. As to the root
causes of these developments, namely the effects upon the German army of nearly
six years of war, and the deleterious influence upon that army by the German
political leadership, Bonn says not a word.(166)
There is much else that one could criticize in When the Odds Were Even, but two
final points will suffice. First, the underlying premise of the work is
fundamentally flawed. Not to put too fine a point on it, the notion that the
terrain and prevailing weather in the Vosges Mountains in the winter of
1944-1945 made the contest (or "odds") between the Germans and Americans "even"
is totally without foundation. Bonn is certainly correct to admit, as he does
early in the book, that the Allied preponderance in armored fighting vehicles,
and its complete air superiority over the battlefield, stacked the odds heavily
against the German defenders. It is quite illogical, however, for Bonn to argue
that the neutralization of these two elements by terrain and weather somehow
turned the struggle in Western Europe into one between evenly matched foes.
There are many reasons why this is so, indeed perhaps too many to adequately
enumerate. Some of them are, however, patently obvious. First, while it has
become fashionable for military historians to discount the pernicious effect of
Adolf Hitler's influence on the conduct of the war as mere whining and
excuse-making by members of the German officer corps, the fact of the matter is
that at least after the failed attempt on the Fuhrer's life on 20 July 1944,
German officers of all ranks lived in mortal fear that their leader's fury
would be turned against them personally, an emotion well grounded in fact. To
cite only one example, the film that Hitler ordered taken of the death throes
of his would-be assassins as they hung from piano wire was widely shown to his
troops in order to discourage even the thought of "treasonous" activity. The
effect of such terror was not merely that German officers were influenced to
obey orders from OKH/OKW (i.e., Hitler) without question, but also that they
anticipated his orders, as well as his response if such orders were not obeyed.
It is in this context that one must view what Bonn interprets as the failure of
the Germans to follow their own military doctrine in the Vosges campaign. As
Bonn points out, many of the German divisional commanders in the Vosges were
veterans of long service in both World Wars. Bonn's reason for highlighting
this point, however, seems to be to persuade the reader that these officers
were not really as good as their reputations suggest; in fact, the inference
that Bonn would like us to draw from their alleged failure to follow German
tactical and operational doctrine is that they were really incompetent, and
certainly in no wise as competent as their American counterparts. This myopic
view of the situation ignores the record of these same officers over five long
years of warfare, much of it under very difficult circumstances. It also
ignores the fact that in the winter of 1944-1945 those officers knew that in
order to survive, they needed to follow, and if necessary intuit, Hitler's
orders to the letter, even when it meant they were required to ignore their own
doctrine.
Finally, Bonn (and others of his ilk) seems blissfully unaware of the effect
that the loss of the Great War had upon Germans in general, and the officer
corps in particular. It was, after all, the German defeat in World War I that
contributed in no small way to the popularity of the Nazis and Hitler, who
ruthlessly exploited the alleged treason of the "November criminals" in order
to seize power in Germany. Throughout the interwar period, Hitler and the
Nazis, (and others on the political Right as well) had excoriated those Germans
whom they considered to have betrayed Germany. Many, perhaps most, senior
German officers had served in the Great War and experienced its aftermath. Is
it conceivable that such men would willingly have failed to do their duty to
the utmost?
Other reasons why Bonn's premise is unfounded abound. There is, for one thing,
the manpower problem, and the concomitant training issue, both of which we have
explored at some length already. In addition, a significant point that Bonn and
his ilk ignore is the effect of the Allied strategic bombing campaign on the
ability of the Germans to make war. That campaign had continued in earnest for
over two years, and its effects upon the Germans, particularly those fighting
in the west, was profound. By the time of the Vosges campaign the Luftwaffe had
been virtually annihilated, so that the Allies had command of the air not only
over the battle zone, but deep into the Reich as well. In short, it was of no
importance whatever that Allied airpower was neutralized by weather during the
Vosges campaign. Not only did the same situation obtain on the German side (but
for a different reason----there were no clouds of German fighter-bombers to
darken the skies, even if the weather had been fine), but Allied airpower had
affected and was affecting the ability of the Germans to defend the Vosges in
locales remote from the battlefield.
By the winter of 1944-1945 the principal source of German oil, the fields in
Romania, had been destroyed by Allied airpower and in fact were in Russian
hands. The effect of this need not be imagined, for it was fact---the Germans
had little fuel to operate such vehicles, armored or otherwise, as now remained
in their inventories, to say nothing of rendering them virtually incapable of
training new vehicle drivers and pilots. Nor was this the only effect of the
Allied strategic and tactical air campaign against the Reich. As the Allies
soon learned, nearly every bridge over every stream, large and small,
throughout Germany had been dropped, making the movement of troops and vehicles
to the battle zone difficult and dangerous, regardless of the presence or
absence of Allied fighter-bombers. Added to this was the almost total collapse
of the German rail network, the system upon which the mobility of the German
army so much depended. The effects of the Allied strategic bombing campaign
also explain why the expansion of German production, which by the time of the
Vosges campaign had been largely driven underground, in 1944 was of no
practical consequence for the reasons just stated---there was no fuel to
operate the new equipment so produced, and no means by which it could have been
brought to bear against the Allies, even if the fuel had been available.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, while the Vosges campaign and the Battle
of the Bulge raged in the West, Germany continued to wage a desperate struggle
against the Red Army in the East. Bonn ignores all of this in his so-called
analysis of the Vosges campaign.
The second major flaw in Bonn's work is methodology. As has been noted above,
Bonn relies upon American records for evidence of the condition of German
forces. This approach is fraught with difficulties, not the least of which is
inaccuracy. For example, for the makeup of the German forces confronting the
U.S. Army in the Vosges, Bonn relies principally on two sources, the U.S. War
Department's Handbook on German Military Forces and the series of short
monographs written for the U.S. Army in the immediate postwar era by former
German officers, the so-called U.S. Army Europe (USAREUR) Historical Series.
While both of these sources are valuable, they are not so for the purpose of
providing accurate information as to the manpower and weapon strength of
particular German units, the former because it recounts the ideal composition
of units as mandated by the organizational schemes promulgated by OKH/OKW, the
latter because based upon the memories and personal notes of the authors, and
not upon the actual records of the units with which they served. The
consequence is that when Bonn cites figures for available manpower and weapons
for a given German unit in the Vosges campaign, those figures are quite simply
unreliable and not likely to portray an accurate picture. In addition to these
sources, Bonn relies upon the contemporaneous German strength estimates made by
the G-2 section of the U.S. Seventh Army. Such estimates are just that, and are
therefore likewise unreliable as indicators of German strength. Furthermore,
Bonn repeatedly resorts to assumptions about German casualties and
strength---hardly the stuff of reliable historical interpretation.(167)
Footnotes
(152) Ibid., pp. 147-168.
(153) Ibid., pp. 168-169. Goralski, Robert, World War II Almanac, 1931-1945
(Bonanza Books, 1984), pp. 122-123.
(154) Bonn, pp. 169-170.
(155) Ibid., pp. 169-172.
(156) Ibid., p. 170.
(157) Ibid., p. 184.
(158) Bonn, p. 187; Nafziger, Waffen SS and Other Units in World War II,
p. 117; Jentz, 2 Panzertruppen, pp. 198-201.
(159) Bonn, pp. 188-191.
(160) Ibid., pp. 192-193.
(161) Ibid., p. 194.
(162) Ibid., pp. 194-208.
(163) Ibid., pp. 211-213.
(164) Ibid., pp. 211-213; Stein, George H., The Waffen SS Hitler's Elite
Guard at War 1939-1945 (Cornell, 1966) pp. 130-131.
(165) Bonn, pp. 215-221.
(166) Ibid.
(167) Ibid., Notes pp. 235-268. In this connection it is worth observing that
at p. 240, n. 50, Bonn cites Morris Janowitz and Edward Shils, "Cohesion and
Disintegration in the Wehrmacht," Public Opinion Quarterly 12
(1948): 280-315 for the proposition ("the authors prove") that "the cultural
ties achieved through such policies (i.e., the maintenance by each German
regiment of its own training battalion, and the drawing of each regiment from
the same geographical area) was a major factor in the degree of cohesiveness
attained by German units. Also, Janowitz and Shils found that the time spent in
training together greatly enhanced officer/NCO and soldier confidence, and thus
also contributed in this way to the resilience and cohesion of a given German
unit. Those units lacking these recruitment and training-induced bonds were
found to suffer higher casualties and to break more easily in combat." This is
precisely the same argument advanced by Martin van Creveld in Fighting Power,
a work which, as we have noted above, Bonn reviles as "actually most useful
mainly for instruction in how not to write comparative history." (emphasis in
original).
Copyright © 2004 by Thomas E. Nutter.
Please send comments to Thomas E. Nutter at: tenutter@gmail.com.
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