Mythos revisited:
American Historians and German Fighting Power in the Second World War
by Thomas E. Nutter
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Chapter One
The Historical and Historigraphical Context
Few subjects have captured the interest of historians and the general public
more completely than the history of the conflict in Western Europe between June
1944 and May 1945. In the popular press, in professional journals and on the
shelves of bookstores and libraries, stories, articles and books on the subject
have proliferated in the last half- century. Nearly every aspect of the last
year of war between Nazi Germany and its western enemies has been examined and
reexamined, from the commanders and private soldiers who fought, to the
weapons, vehicles and aircraft they employed, and the clothes and equipment
they wore. There are many reasons why this should be so; for many of the
survivors of that war, both civilian and military, it was the defining moment
in their lives. Similarly, the descendants and other surviving relatives of
those Americans and western Europeans who shared the struggle live with its
effects still. World War II captivates the interest of yet another group of
persons, namely those whose personal connection with it is tenuous, but whose
imagination and desire to know compel them to study its every aspect.
The initiation and course of the campaign in Western Europe in the last year of
World War II owed much to the influence of the United States, whose entry into
the conflict in December 1941 changed the balance of power in favor of the
Allies. In spite of the outrage of the American public against Japan for its
surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the country's political and military
leadership agreed with their new British allies that Germany represented the
greater threat. Although there was agreement on this point, however, there
remained serious controversy between the two English-speaking nations over
where and when to best strike against Germany. The United States favored an
early direct assault at the enemy heartland through Western Europe, while the
British advocated a more deliberate and indirect approach through Italy and
Southern Europe.
Britain's caution about a premature direct confrontation on land with Germany
in Western Europe stemmed from a number of factors, not least of which were a
healthy respect for the capacity of the enemy to resist, and a disinclination
to become involved in a slugging match that might give rise to casualties on a
scale comparable to those suffered in the First World War. Events, as well as
English persistence, conspired to favor the pursuit of the indirect approach.
The venue in which Britain most directly confronted the power of the German Wehrmacht
was North Africa. This area was critical to the survival of the British Empire,
not only because of the presence of the Suez Canal, vital to the ability of
Britain to supply its home island and maneuver its navy, but also because of
its proximity to rich reserves of petroleum in the Middle East. Here the
British, Italians and Germans had struggled throughout most of 1941 in a seesaw
battle ranging over hundreds of miles of desolate landscape. By early 1942,
however, Britain had gained the upper hand and was forcing the Axis troops back
into Tunisia. At the prodding of Winston Churchill, who urged that the United
States must attack the Germans somewhere in 1942, American forces invaded North
Africa in November of that year. By May the western Allies had driven all Axis
forces from the continent of Africa.
The British now maneuvered their American colleagues into continuing to press
the Axis from the south, rather than move more directly on the path to an
invasion of Western Europe. Its ability to do so was facilitated by the inertia
which resulted from the presence of such a large body of Allied forces in the
theatre, and by a critical shortage in landing craft, the principal conveyance
by which the Allies must perforce make their way onto the continent of Western
Europe. In consequence, the Allies in the summer of 1943 assaulted and overcame
the Axis forces on the island of Sicily. That autumn, they began the long and
agonizingly painful conquest of the Italian peninsula.
The British, however, had purchased American cooperation in Sicily and Italy by
committing themselves to an Allied invasion of Western Europe in the spring of
1944. The Allies began the planning and buildup for this undertaking in January
of that year, when a planning staff took form in London, and the bulk of
American and British land forces began slowly to assemble and train in England.
In due course, overall command of the operation was placed in the hands of an
American general, Dwight D. Eisenhower; his principal subordinates were the
ground commander, General Bernard Law Montgomery, the naval commander, Admiral
Earl Ramsay, and the air commander, Air Vice Marshal Arthur Tedder, all British
officers. The Allies planned to undertake this greatest amphibious assault in
history in May or June of 1944.
The Allied invasion began on 6 June 1944. Initial German resistance, though
fierce in the American sector at Omaha Beach, was sporadic elsewhere, and the
Allies affected a solid lodgment from which they were never displaced. The
Normandy bridgehead, however, was strenuously contested for two months, as the
Allies endeavored without success to break the German defensive line so that
the superior capacity for maneuver of the British and American forces could be
brought to bear against the enemy on more open ground. The Allies achieved this
purpose by skirting the enemy's left flank and breaking out across western
France. There followed a second invasion, this time of southern France, an
event which caused the Germans to further disperse their already hard pressed
forces. By autumn the German army had fallen back nearly all the way to the
borders of its homeland.
The Allied offensive now ground to a halt, the victim of strained logistics,
difficult terrain and stiffening enemy resistance. The U.S. army suffered a
bloody repulse in the Huertgen Forest; American and British paratroopers did
the same in Holland. Hard on the heels of these reverses came the so-called
Battle of the Bulge, the product of a German offensive in the Ardennes Forest
during whose early stages the German army sent the western Allies reeling. In
the end, however, this ill-advised enterprise proved to be Germany's last throw
in the west. While hard fighting remained, within four months the Third Reich
was no more, pounded to scrap by the coalition of forces that it had brought
down upon itself. What had been one of the most traumatic periods of all time
was now relegated to the stuff of history.
The flood of written material about the Second World War first described above
began almost immediately after its end. A compilation of all such works would
far surpass this one in length; they cover every imaginable aspect of the war
and its participants. One of the most popular subjects, for both professional
historians and enthusiasts of various kinds, has been the German Wehrmacht.
The amount of study and writing devoted to this topic has been truly colossal.
In this subset of literature about the war, a great deal of energy has been
spent studying the battles and campaigns of the German army, including the part
played in those events by the Waffen SS . A consideration of some of
the works that treat this subject constitutes a substantial portion of the
present study.
In recent years, there has been what might be described as an academic backlash
against the study of the Wehrmacht in the United States. Several
significant works of military history reflect this development. Keith Bonn
published the first of these works in 1994 under the title When the Odds Were
Even.[2] Bonn, who was an active-duty officer in the U.S. Army at the
time he published his work, focuses upon the encounter between the US and
German armies in the Vosges Mountains of northeastern France between October
1944 and January 1945. Here, Bonn argues, the terrain and prevailing weather
prevented the U.S. army units engaged there from enjoying the benefits of
overwhelming armor and air support, elements that he admits rendered the
struggle elsewhere in Europe between the Wehrmacht and the western
Allies an unequal one. In the more pristine environment of the Vosges, however,
combat was reduced to its more fundamental components; the skill and initiative
of commanders, and the toughness, bravery and endurance of the individual
soldier. Little wonder then, Bonn contends, that the U.S. army prevailed in
this struggle, since even where the playing field was level, the GI was more
than a match for the landser.
In 1986, John Sloan Brown published Draftee Division, a history of the US 88th
Infantry Division in World War II.[3] Brown uses the history of the 88th
Infantry Division as a sort of case study to illustrate how American divisions
formed primarily of draftees trained for war and fared in combat in Europe. At
the time he wrote Draftee Division, Brown was a serving officer in the U.S.
army. His maternal grandfather commanded the 88th Infantry Division in World
War II, and his father served as an officer in its ranks. With these visceral
connections to his topic, Brown is able to render a well-grounded treatment of
it. Like Bonn, he concludes that the 88th Infantry Division, and indeed the 5th
U.S. army in which it served, were more than equal to the Wehrmacht at
the height of its combat efficiency.
Michael D. Doubler, yet another U.S. Army officer then on active service,
published Closing with the Enemy in 1994.[4] His purpose is to
illustrate beyond doubt the superiority of the U.S. army over its German
opponent. His thesis is that "[T]actical adaptation, technical innovation, the
dissemination of lessons learned, and experience allowed the army to achieve
unparalleled levels of professional competence" in the three and a half years
that it spent establishing itself, training, and meeting the enemy. It was
these characteristics of the U.S. army, and not its material superiority over
the Germans (a notion that Doubler disputes in any case), that enabled it to
prevail.
Peter R. Mansoor's The GI Offensive in Europe appeared in 1999, and is
in some ways the most virulent of its genre.[5] Mansoor wrote his work while an
active duty lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army. In part, The GI Offensive in
Europe is a ruthless attack on historians whom Mansoor portrays as critical of
the performance of the U.S. army in the Second World War. Primarily, however,
it is a tribute to American infantry divisions of that war. The great
achievement of the U.S. army, Mansoor argues, was the creation of an effective
fighting force from citizen soldiers in record breaking time. The real purpose
of Mansoor's work is to refute the "flawed theory" perpetuated by "the defeated
German army and its apologists" that "the Army of the United States had
blundered its way to victory by throwing mountains of materiel at the superior
but hopelessly outnumbered forces of the Wehrmacht ." It was the
ability of the U.S. army to adapt to combat conditions and maintain combat
effectiveness, not its logistic and material superiority, that gained the
victory in World War II.
The works of Brown, Bonn, Mansoor and Doubler collectively express a new
understanding about the relative capacities and proficiencies of the German and
American armies in the Second World War. In their view, the outcome of that
struggle between two very different armed forces was determined, in the final
analysis, by superior practice of the soldier's art. This thesis runs contrary
to what each of the authors characterizes as conventional wisdom, which holds
that the German army represented the more technically skilled and proficient of
the two forces, and that it was only prevented from prevailing by the numerical
and material superiority of its foes, including the U.S. Army. A significant
element in this new analysis, then, is the necessity to first undermine the
prevailing wisdom, and this is done to a greater or lesser extent in each work,
by attacking those whom the authors view as its chief proponents. It is to the
works of those "proponents of conventional wisdom" that we must now turn.
Chapter Two
S.L.A. Marshall, Men Against Fire.
In the genre of works which forms the subject matter of this study, there is
general agreement that the alleged myth of German military superiority in World
War II has arisen not merely as a result of the pernicious effects of
self-serving memoirs written by former German soldiers, but most especially
from the gullibility of an influential group of historians. According to the
argument, the scholars in question have sinned grievously by uncritically
accepting the theory of the German memoirists that the Wehrmacht was
defeated not by the military skill and persistence of the western Allies, but
by the overwhelming mass of material available to them.
Several of the critics studied in the present work, namely Michael Doubler,
Peter Mansoor and John Sloan Brown, view an American general officer, S.L.A.
Marshall, as the font of error on the subject of the relative fighting
qualities of the German and United States armies. Marshall, a combat veteran of
the First World War, was a deputy chief historian for the U.S. Army in the
European Theatre of Operations during World War II. As a result of his work
during that conflict, Marshall published in 1947 a book entitled Men Against
Fire .[6] In it, he described the results of his findings about the
conduct of American troops in battle, in an effort to discover the root causes
of the willingness, or unwillingness as the case may be, of soldiers to
actively engage the enemy.
In The GI Offensive in Europe, Peter Mansoor is harshly critical of
Marshall. According to Mansoor, Marshall began "an assault on the reputation of
the American army", because his book "called into question the quality of
American infantrymen".[7] Marshall's calumny against the U.S. Army consisted of
his assertion that fewer than 25 percent of its soldiers fired their weapons at
the enemy in any given engagement. Mansoor's chief indictment of Marshall is
that, by reason of the latter's reputation, four decades of subsequent
historians were misled into accepting his thesis as fact.[8] While his language
is less strident, Michael Doubler, in Closing with the Enemy, likewise
includes Marshall among the cast of historians responsible for having fostered
the myth of German combat prowess.[9] Marshall's role as villain is also
described by John Sloan Brown in Draftee Division .[10]
Although the amount of time devoted to Marshall in the works under review is
comparatively small, relative to the time spent by his critics in dealing with
the other so-called "German lovers", appreciating exactly what he said---and
did not say---about the US and German armies is crucial to our understanding of
those critics and their motives. To begin with, the stated purpose of Men
Against Fire is not to compare the combat effectiveness of armies, but
to win the opinion of the American people in the immediate post-World War II
era "toward needed reform" in the U.S. army. While Marshall admits that he
failed in this purpose, because the popular press utterly failed to respond to
the book, nevertheless he claimed success, since within six months of its
publication the US military, as well as others abroad, had taken it seriously.
This had important results for the U.S. army. For while Marshall's evidence had
shown that during World War II less than 25% of American infantry had employed
hand weapons effectively while under fire, in the Korean War the number in
question had risen (according to Marshall's data) to above 55%.[11]
Marshall argued that what the post-World War II U.S. army needed most was more
and better fire. He advocated the position that the training methods,
discipline and personnel policies of the army should conform to the single
purpose of increasing the ratio of effective fire in combat. This could best be
achieved by a system of man-to-man control on the battlefield, a system based
on the knowledge and appreciation of why men fight, rather than upon the
weapons to be used by the men.[12]
Marshall stated his central premise in a straightforward manner:
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…the thing which enables an infantry soldier to keep going with his weapons is
the near presence or the presumed presence of a comrade…so it is far more than
a question of the soldier's need of physical support from other men. He must
have at least some feeling of spiritual unity with them if he is to do an
efficient job of moving and fighting.[13]
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The results of Marshall's investigations during World War II convinced him that
even among well-trained and combat-seasoned troops, 75% would not fire or
persist in firing on the enemy, even in the face of danger. According to
Marshall, this conclusion was based upon his post-combat interviews with
approximately 400 infantry companies in the central Pacific and European
theatres. He asserted that in all of those interviews, he had not found one
battalion, company or platoon commander who had made an effort to determine how
many of his men had actually engaged the enemy with a weapon. Marshall was at
some pains to point out that his figure of 25% did not mean that during a given
engagement, an average company maintained fire with an average of 25% of its
weapons. Rather, in any engagement, out of an average of 100 men in an
aggressive infantry company (in less aggressive units, the number was
considerably lower), only 25 men would have taken any part with weapons.
Furthermore, in such a company the men with heavier weapons, such as the
Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR), the flamethrower or the bazooka, gave a
creditable account of themselves, meaning that the majority of those who were
present and armed but would not fight were infantrymen.
It does not logically follow, however, that because his evidence directed
Marshall to these conclusions, he was motivated to or did assault the
reputation of the American army. Indeed, the record indicates precisely the
opposite to be true. First, it may be stated without fear of contravention that
nowhere in Men Against Fire does Marshall engage in a malicious and
negative comparison of the fighting performance of the U.S. army with that of
the German army, or in fact with that of any other army in the world. Second,
and perhaps more importantly from the point of view of his critics, Marshall's
comments about the U.S. army are almost uniformly favorable, rather than the
other way round.
A few references to Marshall's work will serve to amply substantiate this last
assertion. Speaking of June 6, 1944 on Omaha Beach, Marshall observes that
there were only five infantry companies that were tactically effective
throughout that day, and that in those companies only 20% of the men fired
their weapons during the day-long advance from the beach to the first tier of
French villages inland. While his critics interpret these facts as a negative
reflection on the American infantryman, Marshall's observations upon them are
wholly different. He concludes that "had not this relatively small amount of
fire been delivered by these men, the decisive companies would have made no
advance in the separate sectors, the beachhead would not have begun to take
form, and in all probability Normandy would have been lost."[14] One might
reasonably ask how these words of praise about the actions of heroic men who,
in Marshall's opinion, saved the Normandy invasion from being lost, can be
interpreted as being critical of them.
Marshall also discusses an "incident at the Bourcy roadblock to the north of
Bastogne on the morning of December 19, 1944." In this instance, twelve "very
nervous" American infantrymen, firing in the darkness at what they thought was
a reconnaissance formation, encountered instead the leading elements of the 2.
Panzer-Division, and turned it back. So fierce was the American resistance that
the German commander reported being attacked by superior forces. As a result,
the German corps commander ordered 2. Panzer-Division to alter its planned
movement and swing northward, "thereby wasting precious time and traversing
unnecessary space." The results wrought by the bravery of these few American
soldiers were profound.
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"Had the enemy made one good lunge against the Bourcy roadblock, he could have
turned southward and entered Bastogne before the American forces had assembled.
The whole body of evidence from our own and enemy sources supports the
conclusion that had this happened, the Ardennes campaign would have run a far
different course and the enemy would not have been checked short of the line of
the Meuse."[15]
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In a similar vein, Marshall describes the heroic resourcefulness of a group of
American paratroopers dropped off course during the early morning hours of June
6, 1944. Because these few parachutists engaged the enemy with fire around Le
Ham and Montebourg, the German high command concluded that the area of this
firefight delineated the northern limit of the American assault. Having done
so, the Germans held their troops north of Montebourg throughout that day.
Marshall concludes that the release of those troops for an immediate southward
attack might have broken the tenuous hold of the 82d Airborne Division on Ste.
Mere Eglise, with serious consequences for the invading force.[16]
Marshall's prolonged discussion of the valor of one battalion of the 502d
Parachute Infantry gives the lie to the contention that his book "called into
question the quality of American infantrymen." Marshall began following this
battalion during its attack along the Carentan causeway on the night of June
10, 1944. Marshall recounts the testimony of the battalion commander, Lt. Col.
Robert G. Cole, who reported that "not one man in twenty-five voluntarily used
his weapon", in spite of the fact that the enemy was so close and the position
so exposed that "their only protection was to continue a fire which would make
the enemy keep his head down." Nevertheless, the battalion closed with the
enemy early the next morning and drove him back from his firing positions,
inaugurating "a day-long battle marked by the closest kind of fighting, as the
enemy came on five times in counterattack along the hedgerows, trying to regain
the initial position." The sharpness of the fighting may be gauged from the
fact that it began with an American bayonet charge, resulting in six Germans
being killed with that weapon. At points of crisis during the day the two
forces were no more than 40 feet apart, and machine gunners were encountering
targets at less than 20 yards range. In this classic infantry struggle the
result was a complete American victory, in spite of losses amounting to about
40% of the force.[17]
Marshall's analysis of this battalion of the 502d Parachute Infantry
consistently supports his general conclusion that no more than 25-30% of
American infantrymen used their weapons in combat. It is a total
mischaracterization, however, to suggest that Marshall was therefore critical
of these men. His concluding remarks about the battalion are worth recounting
in detail.
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I followed this same battalion through the airborne invasion of Holland in
September 1944, and through the winter fighting in the Ardennes, and I doubt
that there has ever been a finer fighting unit in the army of the United
States. It never tasted defeat nor was it ever given an easy assignment. At
least three of its engagements are historically noteworthy examples of
heroically successful achievement against great odds. It was tested over
marshland and through hedgerow country. In Holland, west of Zon and near the
Wilhelmina canal, its hardest engagement was fought through a checkered pine
forest on flat ground; the enemy had enfiladed every forest trail with
machineguns and from the other flank and from the front his artillery kept the
woods under a point-blank fire. Perhaps the battalion's finest hour was had on
the rolling hills northwest of Bastogne during the early stage of the defense
of that town in December 1944.[18]
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Nor is the foregoing atypical of the praise heaped on the American soldier by
Marshall. He describes the story of Lt. Col. H.W.C. Kinnard, commanding first
battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry, to advocate the position that a soldier
must control his situation, rather than let the situation control him. During
Operation MARKET , Kinnard's formation had as its task the defense of
the corridor west of the town of Veghel. The Germans pressed hard against
Kinnard's men as soon as they began to touch the ground. Kinnard decided that
the best means of defending the corridor was to attack the enemy, and during a
three-day march of 360 degrees through enemy-held territory, his unit destroyed
German forces three times their strength. This caused the Germans to alert an
entire corps to meet the danger. Marshall's concluding observation about
Kinnard was that "he weighed the hazard that he would be moving at all times
with at least one flank exposed, then accepted this risk in view of the
prospect for proportionate reward. I know of no better illustration in the book
of war of the quality of mind needed in the combat officer."[19]
Marshall also recounts the story of Company M, 116th Infantry Regiment, a
weapons company that landed on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. It had been planned
that Company M would land in support of units already in control of the beach.
In the event, they were the first troops to land on the particular sector of
the beach in question. Under heavy German fire, officers and men dragged every
piece of the unit's equipment across the beach, making it the only force on
Omaha Beach that day, according to Marshall, to achieve this feat. Company M
moved up the steep escarpment, again under strong enemy fire, and then moved
inland, "hitting hard and traveling far." The survivors of the Company M fought
all through the Normandy campaign, through St. Lo and the siege of Brest,
"still not knowing that on D-Day they had done anything exceptional….If this
incident were unique it would scarce be worth mention. But it is typical."[20]
Finally, Marshall describes "one of the finest river crossings in our army
during World War II", namely the crossing of the Elbe near Magdebourg on April
13, 1945 by the 331st Infantry Regiment. The Germans here were resisting
fiercely, having reduced a bridgehead further upstream and forced the American
unit engaged there to retire to the west bank of the river. Col. George B.
Crabill, commanding the 331st Infantry Regiment, hit the ground running,
getting his lead battalion in the water on boats within thirty minutes of
arriving at the river. So quick were the regiment's movements that they
encountered no enemy fire, and during the following night the main body of the
regiment and a platoon of tanks were brought to the new bridgehead. In the face
of a strong German counterattack with infantry, armor and artillery, Crabill's
bridgehead held out for three days until the enemy attacks died away.[21]
It is quite evident from the foregoing that Marshall did not assault the
reputation of the U.S. army, or question the quality of American infantrymen,
as asserted by Mansoor, or suggest that American soldiers spent all their time
cowering in foxholes, as claimed by John Sloan Brown. It does not take a
particularly rigorous reading of Men Against Fire to realize that it
was written for the purpose of enhancing the future combat effectiveness of the
U.S. army, at a time when a new and powerful foe seemed to be on the horizon,
or that it contains absolutely nothing in the way of a comparison as between
the fighting power of the U.S. army and that of any other fighting force in the
world. Critics of Marshall either do not know his work, or willfully
misrepresent it. In either case, the historical profession is ill served.
It is particularly noteworthy that Peter Mansoor is at some pains to discredit
Marshall's work. After spending a good deal of time and energy describing the
thesis behind Men Against Fire , he moves on to point out that while
some historians, including John Keegan and Max Hastings, "quoted Marshall's
statistics as historical truth", others "have examined Marshall's evidence and
found it wanting." He alludes to The Men of Company K, written by Harold P.
Leinbaugh and John D. Campbell, both veterans of the unit in question, which
was a part of the 84th Infantry Division. The authors asserted that there was
no basis for Marshall's claims that their unit was among those in which the
majority of soldiers did not bring their weapons to bear on the enemy, opining
also that the experience of Company K was no different than that of any other
company in the European Theatre of Operations (ETO). Moreover, Leinbaugh
purportedly showed that Marshall had "lied about his own experience in the 90th
Division during World War I."[22]
After posing the question whether "Marshall had also fabricated his
statistics", Mansoor goes on to answer in the affirmative. On this point he
relies in part upon the work of Roger J. Spiller, who sought unsuccessfully for
a record of the "over four hundred company-level after-action interviews" that
Marshall claimed to have undertaken and which purportedly formed the basis for Men
Against Fire . After having interviewed at least one of Marshall's
colleagues and reviewed the General's personal papers, and in each case finding
that there was "no evidence that he [Marshall] was collecting statistics",
Spiller concluded that Marshall's "systematic collection of data" had been "an
invention." Mansoor goes on to buttress Spiller's conclusions by noting that
the National Archives "bear no traces of Marshall's quest for firing ratio
statistics in Europe" and that no such documents exist at the University of
Texas at El Paso, where the S.L.A. Marshall Military History Collection is
housed. On the basis of the foregoing, Mansoor concludes that "there is no way
[Marshall] could have determined the percentage of soldiers who fired their
rifles in a given engagement." It is but a small step for Mansoor to go from
having undermined Marshall's evidence to eviscerating the General's argument as
well. Here Mansoor relies primarily upon the evidence provided by a
questionnaire given graduates of West Point who served in the ETO between 1943
and 1945. This subjective source (which Mansoor construes to be contrary to
Marshall's thesis) counterbalances Marshall's statistically-based argument, in
Mansoor's view, since Marshall never really had any legitimate statistics to
rely on in the first place.[23]
Michael Doubler also accepts the Spiller view that "Marshall's findings
resulted from intuitive and subjective means rather than quantitative methods",
as a result of which "his conclusions can be neither proven nor disproven."
Doubler's criticisms of Marshall, however, are more guarded than those of
Mansoor. For example, while Doubler disagrees with Marshall's suggestion that
only 15-25% of American infantrymen fired their weapons at the enemy, he
nevertheless admits that "[A] close survey of after-action reports and training
memoranda from the ETO does reveal that volume of fire was a problem in many
units." Interestingly, however, Doubler opines that "[W]hile many soldiers
probably never did fire their weapons, the problem was perhaps not as great as
Marshall believed." Indeed, Doubler suggests that "[I]f Americans did not fire
their weapons, it was because of training inadequacies rather than some innate
inability or lack of courage." Doubler therefore blames these inadequate
training methods, as well as "the impersonal replacement system", for the
problems that manifested themselves in the form of a reluctance to fire on the
enemy. Doubler concludes his remarks on the subject of Men Against Fire
by admonishing those who have sought to discredit Marshall's integrity as well
as his arguments against throwing "the baby out with the bath water." In fact,
Doubler finishes by stating that "[O]n balance, it appears as though Marshall's
writings about the broad experience of men under fire are much more often right
than wrong."[24]
Thus is Marshall's Men Against Fire dispensed with. The question
remains, why do the authors of this genre insist that Men Against Fire
be held up to the general gaze, to be recognized for the tissue of lies that it
purportedly represents? It will be recalled that Doubler, Mansoor, Brown and
Bonn all have as their stated purpose the destruction of the "myth of German
superiority". As has been pointed out numerous times above, there is nowhere in
Men Against Fire a comparison between the U.S. Army and the German
army of World War II, and indeed there is no comparison as between the U.S.
Army and any of the forces engaged in that conflict. And contrary to what
Doubler implies, there is not a shred of evidence in Men Against Fire that
Marshall believed that American infantrymen suffered from a lack of courage. In
addition, as far as is known, none of the other authors excoriated by Bonn, et
al relies upon Marshall as an authority upon the issue of the combat
effectiveness of the U.S. Army. Some of the arguments against Marshall are
entirely ad hominem in nature---what possible relevance, for example,
does Marshall's alleged disingenuousness about his own career in the First
World War have to do with his thesis on the aggressiveness of the American
infantryman in the Second World War? Marshall's argument should stand or fall
on its own merits; his personal life should not come into the question. The
fact that Marshall's critics see fit to indict his character suggests that they
consider their own case on the merits against him to be a weak one. It is
perhaps for this reason that Mansoor treats the issue as though it is settled,
when obviously it is not. Much more important than the tawdry treatment of
Marshall by some authors, however, is the simple fact that there is no nexus
whatever between Men Against Fire and the relative combat
effectiveness of the German and American armies in World War II. In short, in
the genre in question, S.L.A. Marshall is nothing more than a straw man whose
specter is raised in order to provide its conjurers with something to knock
down.
There is, finally, a point made by Marshall that is of particular relevance to
the arguments made by both Mansoor and Doubler about the prolonged failure of
the Allies to adequately deal with German resistance in the bocage country
of Normandy. Both of these authors assert that a fundamental failure of Allied
generalship was its deplorable lack of preparation, for themselves as well as
for their men, with respect to the peculiar problems they would encounter in
this terrain. The argument advanced by Mansoor and Doubler is that the Allies
took three months to drive the Germans out of the bocage at least in part
because of the nearly criminal failure of the Allied leadership to prepare
their troops to fight in it. Marshall's revelation on this issue is telling:
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"Once in discussing with Lt. Gen. Walter Bedell Smith (Eisenhower's chief of
staff) certain of the tactical difficulties of the Normandy campaign, I asked
whether some of our faults there could be traced to lack of advance information
about the bocage country and a consequent pinching of the tactical
preparation….He answered: ‘Not at all! That wasn't the source of the trouble.
The information which we had from the French was more than adequate. Moreover,
Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke and Gen. Sir Frederick Morgan had both come out
that way in 1940. They told us about the country, describing it quite
accurately. They were very pessimistic about our chances of coping with it. But
we couldn't believe what we heard. It was beyond our imagination. The fact was
that we had to get into the country and be bruised by it before we could really
take a measure of it.'"[25]
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Chapter Three
Russell Weigley, Eisenhower's Lieutenants
Another historian pilloried by his critics for having "trumpeted the tactical
superiority of the Wehrmacht at the expense of the American army" is
Russell Weigley, one of the most prominent American military historians of the
post-World War II era. The work for which Weigley is criticized in this respect
is his Eisenhower's Lieutenants, a study of the U.S. Army and its
performance in Western Europe from June 6, 1944 to the end of the war.[26]
Mansoor opines that "Weigley gave the American army faint praise" in Eisenhower's
Lieutenants. In particular, Mansoor complains that Weigley
mischaracterized the U.S. army as lacking "the staying power to fight a war of
attrition against their German opponents." He is also unhappy with Weigley's
argument that in the American army "the quality of …infantry units was so poor
that they could not routinely close with and destroy the enemy" and that the
"pedestrian tactical abilities" of American generals led them to wage a war of
attrition for which their army was ill suited. From Mansoor's point of view,
however, Weigley's greatest failing was his conclusion that the material
resources of the U.S. Army enabled it to "rumble to victory" in spite of its
combat ineffectiveness against the Wehrmacht.[27] Michael Doubler
makes the same criticism of Weigley, noting especially the author's contention
that the war dragged on longer than it should have owing to the paucity of
American military skills. Both Mansoor and Doubler agree that Eisenhower's
Lieutenants played an essential role in promoting the "popular
argument…that the German army was the ultimate paradigm of operational and
tactical success in World War II, while its American opponents muddled through
to victory by the application of overwhelming resources and awesome
firepower."[28]
Does Russell Weigley assert that the U.S. Army lacked the staying power
necessary to fight its German opponents, that the quality of American infantry
was so poor that it could not come to grips with the enemy, that American
generals were "pedestrian"? Does he claim that the Americans were able to
"muddle through to victory" solely because of their possession of superior
resources and firepower? The record manifestly does not support these
contentions. The meat of Eisenhower's Lieutenants begins with
Weigley's description of the U.S. Army's first harrowing day on the European
continent at Omaha Beach. Here Weigley addresses the contention, advanced by
Chester Wilmot[29], that the near disaster on Omaha Beach demonstrated that the
U.S. Army was unequal to the task assigned to it, especially when the American
experience is compared to that of their British allies on the beaches farther
to the north. Weigley recounts how Gen. Omar Bradley, the American officer
responsible for Omaha Beach, contemplated abandonment of that assault as his
troops sustained mounting losses under the withering fire of the German
defenders. The valor and initiative of the American soldiers ashore removed the
necessity for such an unpleasant decision.
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The officers and NCOs and natural
leaders among the privates on the beach spared Bradley a final decision.
Perhaps without a combat-experienced division, the 1st, as the core of its
landing force, Omaha Beach could not have been taken. In late morning, by
example and by exhortation, the bravest of the leaders began to gather growing
clusters of followers around them, and to urge the men forward into the hills
bordering the exits. Colonel George A. Taylor of the 16th Infantry enjoined the
men around him: "Two kinds of people are staying on this beach, the dead and
those who are going to die---now let's get the hell out of here."….Company C of
the 116th Infantry, urged on by the regimental commander, Colonel Charles D.W.
Canham, and by the assistant commander of the 29th Division, Brigadier General
Norman D. Cota, moved up west of the Les Moulins draw and worked its way to the
crest of the bluffs, to permit General Cota to open his command post there. The
5th Ranger Battalion followed closely. Canham persuaded men to advance by
pointing out that they were being murdered as long as they remained on the
beach---they might as well move up and take their chances of being murdered
inland. Cota found a bulldozer abandoned just where it could have broken the
antitank wall at the exit from the beach. "Who drives this thing?" he asked. No
one answered. "Hasn't anyone got guts enough to drive the damn thing?" he
demanded again. A soldier slowly rose and deliberately approached the
bulldozer, saying, "I'll do it." Cota responded, "That's the stuff. Now let's
get off the beach," and other men began to rise, too. Both Canham and Cota thus
won the Distinguished Service Cross….Yet the initiative, the bravery, and the
tactical skill in the indirect approach among the soldiers on the beach had
between midday and darkness turned General Bradley's thoughts from withdrawal
to reinforcement. The casualties on Omaha had been high…But mainly, the
casualties reflected the toughness of the German resistance. Significantly, the
British to the east, who did not have to face cliffs and steep bluffs like
those at Omaha, had an easier time of it---everywhere but on their extreme
right, around the village of Le Hamel, where their 50th Northumbrian Division
collided with the right of the same enemy 352d Division that defended Omaha.
There, the British fared scarcely better than the V Corps.[30]
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The foregoing passage not only typifies Weigley's overall approach to the valor
and resourcefulness of the American soldier, but also illustrates his own
sensitivity to a truly unfair criticism offered by Wilmot. In fact, Eisenhower's
Lieutenants is replete with praise for the American fighting man and
his leaders. Thus he describes Major General Manton Eddy, commander of the
Regular Army 9th Infantry Division in both Tunisia and Normandy, as leading his
unit with "conspicuous boldness and skill". Likewise he depicts General
"Lightning Joe" Collins, commanding the U.S. VII Corps, as commanding his units
with "peppery vigor" and the "ruthless intolerance of a Philip H. Sheridan
toward leaders less impatient than himself for success" so that unlike the Army
of the Potomac, the U.S. First Army in Europe was "fortunate enough to have
found its Sheridan at the very outset of its campaigns." Weigley characterizes
the successive commanders of the 2nd Armored Division, General Lucian Truscott
and Major General Edward H. Brooks, as "bold" and "solidly competent"
respectively.[31]
The works of Weigley's critics are filled with praise for the skills of the
American fighting man, as well they should be, and descriptions of the
advantages possessed by their German foes. Contrary to what Weigley's critics
would like us to infer, however, Eisenhower's Lieutenants contains the
same sort of approach. Relating the assault of the VII Corps on the Cherbourg
defenses, Weigley recounts how its troops were having to fight "for every
pillbox…advancing under artillery cover to within 300 or 400 meters of these
emplacements, machine guns and antitank guns firing into the embrasures while
demolition squads worked around to the rear doors, the demolition teams finally
blowing up the doors and thrusting pole-charges and phosphorous grenades
inside."[32] Likewise he sounds even more like his detractors, praising the
American infantrymen for their resourcefulness in the bocage, where they
struggled against "tough and stubborn German defenders…shielded by the
hedgerows and armed with a formidable array" of weapons.[33]
Weigley tells exactly the same story as his critics regarding the development
of the "Rhino" tank as an answer to the problems presented to armor by the
hedgerows. Thus, he describes how on July 14, General Bradley visited the 2nd
Infantry Division to see the Rhino, invented by Sergeant Curtis G. Culin of the
102nd Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron. The Rhino featured long frontal
projections of heavy steel construction, allowing the Sherman tank to engage
the hedgerow and drive through it without exposing its underside to enemy fire.
Bradley saw the beauty of this idea, ordering even tanks yet to be shipped from
England to be equipped with the devices, so that by the beginning of Operation
Cobra, sixty percent of First Army's tanks were provided with this unique
earthmoving structure. Both Mansoor and Doubler recount this same story. How is
it, then, that Weigley's work is pro-German, and theirs is not?[34]
Weigley's picture of the American advance across the Seine rivals anything
found in the writings of his critics. It was led by VII Corps, comprising 1st
Infantry Division ("General Huebner's North Africa, Sicily, and D-Day
veterans"), 9th Infantry Division ("so well brought up and well commanded so
long by General Eddy") and the 3rd Armored Division, transformed by Maurice
Rose "into a marvelous thing".[35]
It is indeed true that Weigley is critical of American conduct of operations,
but this fact does no more than highlight the fact that Weigley's analysis of
the Allied campaign in Europe is even-handed, while those of his detractors are
not. For example, both Mansoor and Doubler are at some pains to describe the
valor, resourcefulness and determination of the American soldiers in assaulting
and taking the port of Brest.[36] Weigley does no less. His analysis of the
incident, however, reveals not only these qualities, but also the shortcomings
of the approach taken by the American leadership. He points out, for example,
that the VIII Corps suffered 9,831 casualties in taking Brest and 38,000
prisoners. This involved a commitment of 80,000 troops, whose commander General
Troy Middleton was given first priority in supply by General Bradley, even
ahead of the Allied troops who were forging on toward Germany. In addition, for
the better part of a month Bradley diverted "a considerable part of the AAF's
European strength" to aid Middleton. Bradley told General Patton that the
reason for this was that "we must take Brest in order to maintain the illusion
of the fact that the U.S. Army cannot be beaten", a view with which Patton
readily concurred. Bradley's postwar explanation of the affair was that the
defenders, General der Fallschirmtruppe Bernhard Ramke and
2.Fallschirm-Jaeger-Division, left him and Eisenhower with no other choice, in
spite of the fact that in other circumstances, such as at Lorient and St.
Nazaire, the Americans had merely sealed off the defenders and left them to die
on the vine. The most critical element of the Brest affair, as Weigley points
out, and his detractors do not, is that it occurred at a time when everyone on
the American chain of command realized that a crisis of supply was developing
which would hinder the ability of the Allied forces east of the Seine to push
aggressively on into Germany. Weigley contends that this failure to seize the
initiative, thus forsaking a major strategic opportunity in favor of a sideshow
like Brest, reflected a persistent obsession on the part of the Allied
leadership with staying ashore instead of being prepared to take advantage of
promising opportunity. Weigley at least presents us with an important question
for examination; his critics utterly fail to do so.[37]
It is a hallmark of works such as those of Mansoor, Brown, Doubler and Bonn
that no quarter is given to the perceived enemy. All praise is given to the
Allies; their enemies are treated with contempt. Put another way, neither side
in the struggle is afforded unbiased treatment. Weigley, on the other hand, is
nothing if not fair minded. While the foregoing discussion illustrates his
trenchant criticism of the conduct of battle by the American generals, his work
is also replete with innumerable allusions to the formidable fighting qualities
of the GI. Thus, while describing the Battle of Arracourt in September, the
author of Eisenhower's Lieutenants recounts how the US "4th Armored
Division demonstrated that it was not to be pushed around easily by such stuff
as the 111th Panzer Brigade" and that it "stood up so stoutly [to the enemy
attack] that the Germans shifted their main effort northward the next day",
concluding that this unit "had proven itself as admirable a formation in hard
defensive fighting as on the racing pursuit."[38]
Both Doubler and Mansoor dwell at some length upon the American assault on the
city of Metz, holding it up as an example of Yankee ingenuity and persistence
in the face of an objective that favored the defender. Weigley does the same,
but his account is without the sanitization that characterizes those of his
critics. In this vein he describes the failed American attempt to take Fort
Driant, which from its position on the heights south of the city commanded its
approaches with heavy caliber cannon. After a week's heavy fighting, the
Americans dominated the German position but could not take it. Weigley quotes
Captain Jack S. Gerrie, commanding Company G, 11th Infantry Regiment, as
reporting on October 4 that "[T]he situation is critical. A couple more
barrages and another counterattack and we are sunk. We have no men, our
equipment is shot and we just can't go on. The troops in G are done, they are
just here, what is left of them…The enemy artillery is butchering these troops
until we have nothing left to hold with. We cannot get out our wounded…."
Weigley credits Patton with admitting that the frontal assault on this bastion
had been a mistake, in spite of his own determination to seize the objective
"if it took every man in the XX Corps, but he could not allow an attack by this
Army to fail." Because of Patton's intervention, the assault on Fort Driant was
called off, all of the Americans were withdrawn by the night of October 12-13,
and Patton and his staff concentrated on taking Metz by envelopment. Weigley
observes that the Americans learned well from their experience at Fort Driant.
A month later, still working at the reduction of Metz, the 90th Infantry
Division assaulted Fort Konigsmacker along the Maginot Line.
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"Driant had helped teach the
Americans not to go down into the tunnels of such works, but to persist in
chipping away with satchel charges, thermite grenades, TNT blocks, and dousings
of gasoline from above. Infantry and engineers stormed to the top of Fort
Konigsmacker early on the first day, got themselves well established on its
west side by nightfall, and with systematic blasting away at its ferro-concrete
forced its surrender as a gift to General Patton on his birthday…."[39]
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Noteworthy are Weigley's comments regarding the Vosges, about which Bonn has
written. He describes its unique natural characteristics and inherent
defensibility, but concludes that rather than rely simply upon these factors,
the Germans counted on two elements, namely the weakness of Devers' French army
and the Schwarzwald, which lies directly across the Rhine from the Vosges
chain. The interposition of the mountains of the Black Forest between the
Allies and any worthwhile strategic objective enabled the Germans to rely upon
a thin defensive line in the region.[40]
The author of Eisenhower's Lieutenants , like his detractors, makes a
point to eulogize the ingenuity of the U.S. army while under the strain of
combat. His account includes the story of General Terry Allen's 104th Infantry
Division in the Roer Plain. The General had made a special point to train his
units in the art of night fighting, in response to the predilection of the
Germans to make use of the nighttime hours for surprise attack. Allen used his
414th and 415th Infantry Regiments to attack and drive out the German defenders
of the town of Eschweiler by night. His 413th Infantry Regiment used the cover
of darkness to attack and hold Hill 154 and part of the town of Puzlohn, both
of which objectives had successfully resisted the regiments daylight
assaults.[41]
The famous confrontation at Bastogne provides Weigley with the opportunity to
praise his fellow Americans yet again. Weigley's critics insist that he helped
foster the "myth" of German combat effectiveness by holding the Wehrmacht
up as the epitome of operational professionalism. The story of Bastogne is only
one of many instances in which the Germans come up short in Weigley's analysis.
Here, he notes that the 2. Panzer-Division, 116.Panzer-Division and Panzer-Lehr-Division,
the Schwerpunkt of the 5.Panzerarmee, "dithered while the
Americans rushed to reinforce Bastogne". The reinforcement was done by the
501st Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, which arrived
in the town at midnight on December 18 after an eight-hour march through
darkness, fog, snow and rain.[42]
Weigley's description of the Battle of the Bulge illustrates clearly that he is
anything but an uncritical toady of the German army, as urged by his
detractors. Discussing the failure of the 2.Panzer-Division and its XLVII.Panzerkorps
to move on the Meuse without delay when the opportunity presented itself---on
December 21 little in the way of organized defense stood between the Germans
and the river---Weigley remarks upon the "sluggishness" of both the division
and the corps, accounted for to some degree by the fatigue of both the landsers
and their equipment. According to Weigley, however, "fatigue does not offer
sufficient explanation" for the "uncommendable hesitancy" of the two German
formations before the American roadblock at Bastogne, "which greater
aggressiveness might have brought promptly into German hands."[43]
Weigley's entire retelling of the story of the Bulge is so replete with
references to the combat prowess of the Americans as to represent a paean to
them. The inability of no less than four panzer divisions---Panzer-Lehr-Division,
2. Panzer-Division, 116.Panzer-Division and 2.SS
Panzer-Division "Das Reich"---to move forward with their accustomed
dash is attributed by the author to the "stubborn resistance to being pushed
around" exhibited by the "multiple scratch forces" of GIs in their path. He
notes that the "bravery and resourcefulness" of the Old Hickory Division, the
3rd Armored and the 740th Tank Battalion, and their respective attachments "cut
the heart out of the 1st SS Panzer Division". He comments upon the public
tendency to lump together Bastogne and the Bulge, doing "an injustice to the
resistance of other American troops who were not at Bastogne" but whose
fortitude irrevocably turned the tide of the war in the west. He relates in
detail the heroic counterattack of the US 84th Infantry Division to retake the
village of Verdenne on Christmas Day, its hard-pressed men fighting house to
house with their German counterparts and confronting the panzers on their own
until the arrival of part of the 771st Tank Battalion enabled the Americans to
retake the village and destroy all of the enemy's tanks.[44]
It is also worth noting that Weigley, like his critics, bemoans the
inefficiencies of the American replacement system. On this subject he quotes
Patton, who told his diary that "we are forced to fight…with inadequate means",
the nature of which the General informed Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson were
replacements and ammunition. In spite of these inadequacies, however, the
Allies prevailed in the Battle of the Bulge, a victory that "belonged
preeminently to the American soldier". It was the "stubbornness and bravery" of
those soldiers which enabled their generals to succeed in
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"wresting the momentum of battle
away from the enemy and in time restoring it to the Allied command. The history
of American wars in the twentieth century has mainly witnessed the American
armed forces in possession of enough material superiority that doubts can
reasonably be raised whether a duel with an equally well equipped enemy might
not find the American military a paper tiger, too dependent on material
superiority to get along without it. The Ardennes battle, like Guadalcanal but
on an immensely larger scale, is one of history's few means of reducing such
doubts. With material superiority nonexistent in the Ardennes or nullified by
the weather against a Wehrmacht that, if not in its high summer of
1940 or 1941 was still…in the strength of its Indian summer---against these
adversities and temporarily abandoned by many of his generals to his own
resources, the American soldier won the battle. If the victory was less than
complete, the fault lay mainly in generalship's failure to seize fully the
opportunities created by the valor of the men at Lanzerath, Clerf, Stavelot,
St. Vith, the Baraque de Fraiture, and scores of other places besides the
fabled Bastogne."[45]
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Reading such a passage, one must reasonably ask whether the criticism of
Weigley by Mansoor and his ilk amount to anything more than the creation of
another straw man to suit their purposes.
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A final occasion for plaudits to
the American armed forces is Weigley's description of the Saar-Palatinate
campaign of 1945. In the author's opinion, "the campaign was notable for its
display of the American army's sharpening instinct for the jugular. The
campaign's two envelopments, of the German 7 Armee by two columns of Patton's
Third Army, and then of the German 1.Armee by both Patton's Third and Patch's
Seventh Armies, were models of how not only to gain ground but to destroy enemy
forces. And the extent of the American victory cannot be attributed merely to
German decay. Some of the enemy's formations…retained much of the old German
savvy and toughness; The American victory was in large part the product of
mastery at last of a thoroughly mobile form of warfare genuinely aimed at the
destruction of the enemy forces."[46]
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The foregoing are but a few examples, in a volume over 700 pages in length, of
the author's persistent praise for the common American fighting man and his
leaders. They give the lie to the assertions of Weigley's critics that he
damned the U.S. army with faint praise, condemned the quality of American
infantry, found American generals "pedestrian" and attributed the American
victory solely to their superior resources and firepower.
Chapter Four
Martin Van Creveld, Fighting Power
Among those targeted by the self-appointed defenders of the honor of the U.S.
army for their alleged bias in favor of the Wehrmacht, none has incurred more
vilification than Martin van Creveld. Creveld is the author of several
well-received works on the general subject of warfare.[47] He has also written,
however, Fighting Power: German and U.S. army Performance, 1939-1945.[48]
It is this latter work that has earned him the opprobrium of those historians
who cannot abide anything, real or imagined, that smacks of criticism of the
U.S. army. Doubler characterizes Creveld as arguing that the American army
regarded war as a contest in which machines and firepower would largely
determine the outcome; that it viewed its soldiers as subordinate to their
machines, overlooked their most fundamental human needs, and favored
bureaucratic efficiency over troop morale. According to Doubler, Creveld found
American leadership mediocre at best.[49] Mansoor calls Fighting Power
"the most extreme case for the combat superiority of the Wehrmacht"
and "a damning indictment of the American army of World War II". His criticisms
of Creveld's work are identical to those of Doubler.[50] The most virulent
attack on Creveld, however, is mounted by Keith Bonn. Bonn calls Fighting Power
"notorious", saying that it is "limited by …basic flaws", "contain(s) gross
historical inaccuracies" and "represent(s) the worst kind of revisionist
history". Of Creveld's work, Bonn comments that "[S]o many factual flaws
regarding the U.S. Army exist in this book that it is impossible to list them
all here." According to Bonn, Creveld's observations about the U.S. Army are
"typically bizarre." Bonn recites the same litany of criticisms of Creveld's
work listed by Mansoor and Doubler, but maintains that the "most dangerous of
all" Creveld's assertions is "that the German doctrines for operations and
tactics were so far superior to those of their bumbling Ami opponents that the
contemporary U.S. Army should emulate the practices of the very foe their
forebears so soundly defeated!" Bonn concludes that Creveld's book and others
like it (not identified, it may be noted) "are actually most useful mainly for
instruction in how NOT to write comparative history."[51]
It is no exaggeration to say that the criticisms leveled at Creveld,
particularly those described in the foregoing paragraph, result from
grotesquely shallow analyses of his work. They amount, in fact, to nothing more
than total mischaracterizations of his work, designed to serve the agendas of
his critics by setting up yet another straw man to be knocked down. The notion
that Creveld sets up the German army as a model to be emulated is a palpable
falsehood. Even the most cursory reading of Creveld shows this to be true. In
his concluding chapter, for example, Creveld has this to say:
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Precisely because its power rested
almost solely on the excellence of its organization per se, the German
army was capable both of fighting with the utmost stubbornness and of
cold-bloodedly butchering untold numbers of innocent people. So strong was the
grip in which the organization held its personnel that the latter simply did
not care where they fought, against whom, and why. They were soldiers and did
their duty, regardless of whether that duty involved carrying out an offensive
in the south, a defensive in the north, or atrocities in the center.[52]
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It is indeed true that Creveld refers to the American officer corps as "less
than mediocre". The critics, however, have jerked this phrase totally out of
context, for the purpose of serving their own agendas. The broad context of the
phrase in question is that Creveld's work is an HISTORICAL comparison of the
ways in which two nations, the United States and Germany, created their armies
during the Second World War. The particular context is as follows:
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If it is indeed true, as is so
often said, that the officer corps counts for everything in war, then the
American officer corps of World War II was less than mediocre. Owing partly no
doubt to pressure of time, the methods used to select and train officers were
none too successful. Far too many officers had soft jobs in the rear, far too
few commanded at the front. Those who did command at the front were, as the
official history frankly admits and the casualty figures confirm, often guilty
of bad leadership. Between them and their German opposite numbers there simply
is no comparison possible….Yet when all is said and done, the fact remains that
the American GI did win World War II. He did so, moreover, without assaulting,
raping and otherwise molesting too many people. Wherever he came---even within
Germany itself---he was received with relief, or at any rate without fear. To
him, no greater tribute than this is conceivable."[53]
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Creveld's detractors purposely do not bring these comments to the fore, since
they do not serve the purposes of the critics.
In point of fact, Creveld is not only highly critical of the German army, as
noted above, but also makes clear that he does NOT hold it up as a paradigm to
be followed by more modern armies. Creveld argues that modern technology
requires more specialized human and material resources, with the result that it
is critical to carefully employ those resources and make them mutually
supportive. Taking into account the complexity of modern armies, it is no
wonder that they rely to a large extent indeed on data control systems unheard
of fifty years ago, but clearly anticipated, as Creveld points out consistently
in his work, by the personnel methods of the U.S. army in the Second World War.
The effect of this development is "to turn the Wehrmacht's entire
loose and decentralized personnel management system into a historical
curiosity", and to make "an organization as specialized for operations as was
the German army…inconceivable under modern conditions…", comments hardly
indicative of the slavish adulation of the German army of which Creveld is
accused. Those attributes of the German army which Creveld does in fact
advocate are, as he describes them, "eternal in the sense of being largely
independent of technology". They include such things as the notion that
officers should be leaders and teachers of their soldiers, a system of
terminology and customs conducive at once to unity and distinction among
officers and their men, a pay and promotions system that favors those on the
sharp end, an equitable system of military justice and a respect for human
rights. Surely no one could seriously contend that these are characteristics
peculiar to the German army, and many would argue, Creveld among them, that
certain of these elements were to a large degree absent from that force.[54]
The fact of the matter is that Fighting Power is not, as Creveld's
critics would have it, a paean to the Wehrmacht. It is, rather, an
attempt at careful comparative analysis of two important twentieth century
fighting forces, and in particular an effort to understand why one of them, in
spite of various serious obstacles, some of its own making, managed to
persevere and fight effectively until the bitter end. The easy answer to this
question---the one advocated by Josef Goebbels during the war and now adopted
by an entire school of historians---is that the common soldier of the German
army, who did the hard work of fighting, did so because he believed
wholeheartedly in the ideology of Nazism.[55] This approach to the problem,
which amounts to little more than the conversion of wartime propaganda and
postwar caricature into an historical theory of facile answers, is not the one
adopted by Creveld. Instead, he employs a thoughtful comparison of two fighting
forces by looking at aspects of their makeup that had nothing to do with
combat. Creveld's method is nothing if not mundane. It focuses on such
manifestly unheroic topics such as the place of the armed forces in society,
military doctrine, command principles, organization and personnel
administration, rewards and punishments, troop indoctrination, rotation and
medical treatment, and the role of leadership, as embodied in both commissioned
and non-commissioned officers. His work includes a myriad tables and figures
related to all of these subjects, and is grounded on published and unpublished
primary sources, including those in the US National Archives and the Bundesarchive/Militararchiv.
The result of all this focus on detail is that Fighting Power is
frankly often heavy going, certainly not a bracing account of Teutonic military
virtue, as one would expect from reading Creveld's critics.
The "problem" with Creveld's work, of course, is not with his methodology, but
with his conclusions. Creveld concludes that the "German army was a superb
fighting organization. In point of morale, elan, unit cohesion, and resilience,
it probably had no equal among twentieth century armies." He attributes this
conclusion principally to that army's internal organization, which he sees as
"creating and maintaining fighting power." His view of the German soldier also
makes him a marked man among historians, for he opines that the landser
was motivated not by Nazi ideology, but by the reasons that men have always
fought: because the German soldier saw himself as a member of a
well-integrated, well-led team whose structure, administration and functioning
were perceived by him as being generally equitable and just. In his view "the
German army …[developed] a single-minded concentration on the operational
aspects of war to the detriment, not to say neglect, of everything else." It
sent its best men to the front; "its organization was designed to produce and
reward fighting men." This, in Creveld's opinion, was the secret of its
fighting power. Creveld concedes that even by the standards of the U.S. army in
World War II, and indeed "by modern and even contemporary standards", the
German army was a crude organization. Some of the reasons for this were
negative: innate conservatism, lack of interest in innovation, and outright
adherence to Nazi ideology. On the other hand, this crudeness reflected a
positive element, namely "a conscious determination to maintain at all costs
that which was believed to be decisive to the conduct of war: mutual trust, a
willingness to assume responsibility, and the right and duty of subordinate
commanders at all levels to make independent decisions and carry them out." In
short, Creveld concludes, the German army "was built around the needs, social
and psychological, of the individual fighting man. The crucial, indeed
decisive, importance of the latter was fully recognized; and the army's
doctrine, command technique, organization, and administration were shaped
accordingly."[56]
Creveld is indeed critical of the U.S. army, as his critics charge. But as we
have seen, he is equally critical, if not more so, of the German army, while at
the same time full of high praise for the fundamental role played by the
American soldier in defeating the Nazi regime, as well as for his high moral
character. In his section entitled "Reflections on the U.S. Army", Creveld
observes that "[B]etween 1940 and 1945 the U.S. Army grew from 243,000 officers
and men into a force numbering over 8 million. With eighty-nine divisions, made
up of men who had shortly before been civilians in one of the world's less
militarized nations, it crossed the oceans and played a decisive role in the
defeat of two of the most highly militarized powers the world has ever known.
It is doubtful whether any other nation would have been capable of such feats:
not for nothing, indeed, has General Marshall been called ‘the organizer of
victory'." Nevertheless, there were problems with this magnificent fighting
machine, some of which, Creveld concludes, resulted naturally from overrapid
expansion and inexperience. In Creveld's view, the U.S. Army "was for the most
part as good as, and often vastly superior to, the German one" in "mechanical
performance", as evidenced, for example, by the fact that the U.S. Army
developed logistical capabilities "that the Germans could only dream about",
and by the fact that American divisions contained no more "fat" than those of
their German enemies. Creveld's criticism lies not with the valor, resilience,
or even fighting power of the U.S. army, but with what he perceives to be its
reliance on firepower to defeat its foe at the expense of the psychological
welfare of its soldiers.[57]
It may be stated categorically that nowhere in Fighting Power does
Creveld assert that "German doctrines for operations and tactics were so far
superior …that the contemporary U.S. Army should emulate" them, as Keith Bonn
has claimed. What Creveld does, instead, is to suggest that latter day soldiers
might learn from the German experience in a few areas. We have already
discussed his view that certain aspects of manpower management "are eternal in
the sense of being largely independent of technology." He argues also that
"overemphasizing the role of technical and supporting services" to the
detriment of focusing on the military's primary job, namely fighting, ought to
be avoided. He advocates organization based on regional structures [e.g., U.S.
national guard units) and the use of a regimental system based on the British
model. He favors a delegation of important responsibilities, such as the
selection of officers and NCOs, to regimental, battalion and company
commanders. In opining thus, however, he issues the following warning:
|
"The German army had extremely
high fighting power, it is true, but only at the cost of producing troops to
whom an order, regardless of its nature, was an order and who could therefore
be relied upon not only to fight hard but to commit any kind of atrocity as
well. To produce fighting power without paying as high a price: that is the
true challenge facing the armies of the West."[58]
|
|
Chapter Five
John Keegan, The Second World War
Peter Mansoor describes the works of John Keegan, Max Hastings and John Ellis
as praising "the combat effectiveness of the Wehrmacht at the expense
of the victors of World War II" and as having accepted "the arguments of
Weigley and van Creveld without much alteration." According to Mansoor, all
three of these men contend that the German army "was much more competent in
combat effectiveness than its Allied counterparts. The Allies won through brute
force by bringing to bear the full weight of their material resources against
the German military forces, which fought skillfully but unsuccessfully against
overwhelming odds.[59]
It is odd indeed to see the name of John Keegan on a list of historians
characterized as (1) favoring Germany over the countries which defeated it in
World War II and (2) mindlessly accepting the point of view of other
historians. Keegan, be it noted, was born in 1934 and was thus a toddler when
war came to Europe in 1939. Unlike many historians of the period, therefore, he
had personal experience, at a vulnerable and impressionable age, living in a
country besieged by a powerful and ruthless enemy. His was an early childhood
spent, with innumerable others of similar tender years, either under the bombs
or in the countryside to evade them, wondering when and where the invader would
come. And indeed he did see his homeland invaded, not by men in field grey from
Hannover, Leipzig and Munich, but by soldiers in khaki from places like Big
Springs, Junction City, Vinegar Bend and Pilot Knob. This was an experience he
has never forgotten. Since the appearance of his justifiably renowned volume
entitled The Face of Battle in 1976, Keegan has published widely and
highly successfully on the subject of military history. This success has led,
in its turn, to a very high public profile for Keegan, with personal and media
appearances around the globe. There are two fairly constant themes in Keegan's
appearances: the first is a highly critical view of the Third Reich and its
apologists; the second is an undying admiration, respect and appreciation for
the United States and the brave, self-sacrificing American soldiers who fought
the Nazi tyranny.
It is curious as well that Keegan's The Second World War is singled
out for criticism. In this work of nearly six hundred pages there is no theme
of praise for the Wehrmacht . There is, instead, an even-handed
treatment of the prowess of all combatants, as indeed there must be in a
narrative recounting the events of the greatest conflict in history. The notion
that Keegan slavishly adheres to the alleged views of Creveld regarding the
German army is doubly untrue; as we have seen, Creveld does not suggest that
the German army represented the epitome of tactical and operational expertise,
and Keegan does not mindlessly adhere to such a non-existent theory.
Keegan's description of the Normandy invasion begins, as it must, with a
retelling of the harrowing experiences of the Allied airborne troops, among
whom there were many Americans who drowned under their heavy packs after being
dropped at sea or in flooded lowlands. Still more others, though widely
scattered in the French countryside, "were to roam for days behind enemy lines,
refusing to surrender while rations and ammunition lasted." Keegan points out
that while this unwanted dispersal of the American paratroopers caused
considerable discomfiture to their commanders at the time, in "retrospect it
can be seen materially to have added to the confusion and disorientation the
invasion was inflicting on their German opposite numbers."[60]
Keegan, however, does not focus merely on the resourcefulness and opportunism
of the American parachutists. He also speaks of the relative quality of the
Allied and German units in the invasion landing zone. Two German divisions,
709. and 716.Infanterie-Divisionen , were poised to meet the invaders
on the American Utah and the British/Canadian Gold, Juno and Sword beaches
respectively. Neither of these units, according to Keegan, was of good quality,
and both lacked means to maneuver. 709.Infanterie-Division, says
Keegan, undertook the "almost impossible mission" of defending not only Utah
Beach, where the US 4th Infantry Division ("an excellent formation") was
landing from the sea, but also the area where the US 82nd and 101st Airborne
Divisions ("the cream of the American army, trained to a knife-edge and
prepared for battle") descended from the heavens. 709.Infanterie-Division
was unequal to the task; its component units put up a token resistance, and
then surrendered. 716.Infanterie-Division faced the British 50th
(Gold), Canadian 3rd (Juno) and British 3rd (Sword) Divisions, as well as the
British 6th Airborne Division and did little better than 709.Infanterie-Division.
Keegan compares unfavorably the performance of 709. and 716.
Infanterie-Divisionen with that of 352.Infanterie-Division, the ("well
trained and resolute") German unit that wreaked such havoc among the American
troops landing on Omaha Beach. He opines that the potential for catastrophic
results was present, in the event that all the German defenders of Normandy had
been of the same quality as 352.Infanterie-Division . Fortunately for
the attackers, however, they were not.[61]
Keegan points out that one of the reasons that the German army was not up to
the task of repelling the Allied invasion in Normandy was that unlike its
western opponents, "the German army belonged to a previous generation of
military development." Excluding its panzer and motorized divisions, the German
army relied on rail, where available, to move over long distances; for tactical
movement, the primary motive power came in the form of human and horse muscle.
When the French railway system was laid waste by Allied bombers to isolate the
Normandy battlefield, the result was that the Westheer lost "its ability not
only to maneuver but even to fight at all".[62]
Keegan does take the view that the German army was innovative, aggressive and
resourceful in defense, and that its panzer arm was without peer in the
practice of mobile warfare. He shares these perceptions with a considerable
number of historians, most of whom are not cited by Doubler, Mansoor, et al
as having undermined the reputation of American arms. To suggest, however, that
in recognizing these attributes of the Wehrmacht , he slavishly adopts
the pro-German viewpoint attributed to Creveld by the latter's detractors is
little short of preposterous.
The Second World War is a big book that surveys a worldwide conflict,
and in it Keegan discusses, among other things, not only the inability or
unwillingness of the Wehrmacht to modernize, but also its abject
failure to master its foes in the Battle of the Bulge. Far from representing a
groveling paean to the German army, Keegan's work is a balanced assessment of
the qualities of the participants in the greatest war in history.
Chapter Six
Max Hastings, Overlord
Max Hastings is another English historian who has been accused of swallowing
whole a theory that the German army was in every respect superior to its
Western opponents, and that it was defeated only by the grinding of sheer
numbers. Like the rest of the charges examined in the present work, this one is
without foundation. For example, discussing the lack of aggression displayed by
most German commanders on the morning of 6 June 1944, Hastings observes that
while the "balance of probability remains that the Allies could have gained
their beachhead against any German reaction on D-Day", nevertheless "the early
release of the armor would have made matters incomparably more dangerous for
them." He therefore concludes that "[I]t was fortunate that the senior staff
officers of all the major German formations behaved with a lassitude that
verged upon utter incompetence." One exception to this rule was Generalleutnant
Wilhelm Richter of 716.Infanterie-Division , who ordered one of his
battalions forward to recapture the Orne and Caen Canal bridges from British
paratroopers early in the morning. When this unit encountered stiff resistance
from the enemy, however, it desisted from its attack and accepted a stalemate.
Hastings observes that "716th Division's operations were conducted with nothing
like the determination that could have been expected from a top-class
formation."[63]
Hastings' praise for the martial qualities of the American soldier is
continuous. In his discussion of the near fiasco on Omaha beach, he pays
special tribute to the Ranger battalions that carried the day for the
Americans. "It was a tribute to the quality of the Rangers that despite losses
on a scale that stopped many infantry units in their tracks on Omaha that
morning, the survivors of C Company pressed on to climb the cliffs west of the
beach with bayonets and toggle ropes, clearing German positions one by one in a
succession of fierce close-quarter actions with tommy guns and phosphorus
grenades." It was these men, and their brothers in arms from the US 1st and
29th Infantry Divisions, "a handful of courageous leaders and small groups of
men" who "forced a path for the American army off Omaha beach." It is in this
context that Hastings makes reference to "Chester Wilmot and others" who
"seized upon the example of Omaha to demonstrate the supposed shortcomings of
the American soldier." Hastings rejects such an evaluation, noting that on
D-Day, there were "sufficient outstanding individual American soldiers and
enough elite units such as the Rangers and Airborne to gain the day."[64]
Hastings is effusive in his praise for American leadership. For example, he
extols in detail the virtues of General Lawton Collins, commander of the US VII
Corps. As a result of Collins' leadership, his force showed "speed and energy"
in reaching the port of Cherbourg . Hastings refers to Collins as "one of the
outstanding personalities of the campaign", a professional soldier who endured
long years of stagnation between the wars in preparation for the role he was to
play in this critical campaign. A man of "catholic" tastes, Collins was "a
ruthless driver of men" who unhesitatingly removed from command officers of all
ranks who failed to meet his standards. Far from being critical of his subject,
the author praises Collins for having "a superb eye for an opportunity on the
battlefield: American ---and British---forces in Normandy sorely needed more
commanders out of his mould."[65]
As noted above, Hastings is clearly not in the camp of those who maintain that
the German army was the epitome of professionalism. He refers, for example, to
the "crushing tactical surprise" the western Allies inflicted upon the Germans
on 6 June 1944, a boggle exceeded only by the fact that the Allies' Operation
FORTITUDE, a massive strategic deception which convinced the Germans
that General Patton was poised to invade northern France with still another
American army, "imprisoned almost the entire Fifteenth Army in the Pas de
Calais until late July." He points out that the most senior German commanders
failed to reach a consensus about how best to respond to the invasion during
its critical first days and hours. Generaloberst Alfred Jodl, the
oft-belittled toady of the Fuhrer, quickly perceived that there would be no
second invasion, while Generalfeldmarshall Erwin Rommel, the cagey
veteran of innumerable battles with these same opponents, was persuaded that 15.Armee
should remain intact and in place, thereby depriving himself and his men of
reinforcements that might have had an incalculable effect upon the battle and
perhaps the war itself. Equally deleterious to the German effort in Normandy,
according to Hastings, was the morbid state of their intelligence. "Almost
totally devoid of air reconnaissance, with every agent in Britain under British
control, lacking any breakthrough in Allied codes and aided only by the fruits
of low-grade wireless interception and prisoner interrogation on the
battlefield, Rommel, von Rundstedt and von Kluge knew pathetically little of
their enemies' potential strength or plans." It should be noted that these
characteristics, namely poor leadership and faulty intelligence, are also cited
by Hastings' critics as explanations for German defeat in the West.[66]
Chapter Seven
Trevor N. Dupuy, Numbers, Prredictions & War
Sharing with Martin van Creveld the unenviable distinction of being the
historian most despised by Mansoor, Bonn and their cohorts is a retired United
States Army Colonel, Trevor N. Dupuy. Dupuy was a graduate of the United States
Military Academy and well-known student of military affairs, and the author, by
himself and with others, of literally dozens of books on various aspects of the
topic, from ancient to modern times. In the post-World War II era, Dupuy became
a consultant to the defense establishment in the United States. He worked with
a network of former military officers, academics and other defense consultants
to supply the needs of the American military as it strove to prepare to fight
the next global war. Dupuy's affiliation with the Historical Evaluation and
Research Organization (HERO) resulted in, among other things, the study that
led to the publication of Numbers, Predictions & War in 1979.
Numbers represented Dupuy's effort to express to a wider audience the
analytical systems he and his colleagues at HERO had developed for use in
attempting to understand combat.
The language used by Dupuy's critics betrays the virulence of their reactions
to some of the conclusions set forth in Numbers. Peter Mansoor refers
to Dupuy's "assertion of the inferiority of American combat units on the
European battlefields of World War II" and avers that he "concluded that German
units were on the average 20 percent more effective than their British and
American counterparts." Mansoor says that the factors found by Dupuy to be
responsible for this outcome included "better utilization of manpower, more
experience, greater mobility, better doctrine, more effective battle drill,
superior leadership, and inherent national characteristics." He calls Dupuy
"the vanguard of a group of historians who trumpeted the tactical superiority
of the Wehrmacht at the expense of the American army" and comments
favorably on the criticism of Dupuy set forth in John Sloan Brown's Draftee
Division .[67]
In When the Odds Were Even , Keith Bonn excoriates Dupuy on two bases.
He argues first that the "incredibly complicated series of parameters" (the
availability of ammunition and fuel, the effects of weapons and morale, the
quantities of troops available, "et cetera ad infinitum") utilized by Dupuy to
analyze ground combat did not exist "as such during the period when the battles
being analyzed were fought." Consequently, in Bonn's view, those parameters
"are artificial and ex post facto at best, irrelevant at worst." The second
basis upon which Bonn criticizes Dupuy is that the latter included in his
analysis intangible variables not easily amenable to assessment. For these
reasons, Bonn pronounces "[T]he usefulness of [Dupuy's] work as anything more
than an interesting collection of conceptual ideas for commercial war games
…extremely limited." Some preliminary comments on Bonn's conclusions are worth
mentioning at this point. First, the notion that factors such as ammunition and
fuel, weapons and morale, and the number of troops available to a commander did
not exist during World War II, but are instead the artificial construct of
Dupuy, is so absurd that it would not merit comment but for the fact it is
asserted by a professional officer in the U.S. Army, and is therefore leant a
certain degree of credence. How anyone, let alone a graduate of the United
States Military Academy, could maintain that a person analyzing a particular
engagement should not take into account that one of the forces involved was
understrength, had been repeatedly pummeled by its adversary, was low on
ammunition and fuel and operated with weapons inferior to those of its
opponents is so fundamentally ridiculous as to be beyond comprehension. Second,
had Dupuy ignored the "intangible variables" of combat (the so-called "fudge
factors") in his analysis, he would have been guilty of the grossest
distortion, and would therefore have merited even more stringent criticism than
that offered up by the likes of Bonn.[68]
Michael Doubler evidently has so little regard for Dupuy that he mentions
neither him nor his work. A critique of Dupuy, however, is essential to John
Sloan Brown's Draftee Division, so much, indeed, that he devotes an
entire appendix (captivatingly entitled The Mythos of Wehrmacht Superiority:
Colonel Dupuy Reconsidered) to a supposed refutation of Dupuy's work.
In fact, however, Brown's appendix represents little more than an opportunity
for him to vent his spleen about a number of real or imagined slights that
Brown perceives to have been heaped upon the reputation of the American
fighting man. Most of these slights have little or no relation to Colonel
Dupuy. For example, in the very first paragraph of the appendix in question,
Brown begins by remarking upon the "pervasive adulation of the Wehrmacht
" which he claims to have infected the history of World War II, and ends by
asking rhetorically whether American soldiers, having captured thousands upon
thousands of German soldiers, believed that the latter were "better than
themselves." Neither of these points of view form any part of Dupuy's analysis.
In turn, Brown blames the exaggerations of German combat prowess by the British
and French, made for the purpose of explaining away their own defeats, German
bombast, and cartoonists such as Bill Mauldin for having laid the groundwork
for the "inflated" perception of German arms. Added to these elements were the
availability of German sources, the postwar disinterest of Americans in
military history, and the availability of Hitler as a scapegoat for German
failures, all of which tended to unfairly support the notion of German martial
superiority. There are, finally, certain prominent military historians, such as
S.L.A. Marshall ("suggesting that most American infantrymen spent World War II
cowering in the bottom of their foxholes") and B.H. Liddell Hart ("vent[ing]
his pique on Allied leaders who did not share his elevated impression of
himself"), as well as a number of unidentified behavioral scientists, whose
work had the effect of creating "images skewed to favor the German soldier over
the American". Brown's truly childish vitriol on the subject of these alleged
slights is best illustrated, however, by his conclusion that the unfair skewing
of history in favor of the German soldier at the expense of his American
counterpart "is not at all ameliorated by the fact that a significant fraction
of the public buying World War II books consists of enthusiasts who collect
Nazi memorabilia, construct plastic panzers, and energetically seek to be the
German player in hex-grid war games." This work has already shown that Brown's
characterization of Marshall is totally without foundation. One also wonders
what scientific investigation formed the basis of Brown's conclusions about the
character of the "significant fraction" of purchasers of books about the Second
World War he describes. And even if his statements about these so-called
"enthusiasts" were true, one would want to know precisely what such "facts"
have to do with the issue at hand in any case. In fact, there is little to
support the "thesis" urged by Brown's "analysis" of Dupuy's work other than the
author's own venomous bias.[69]
What is it about Numbers, Predictions & War that so inflames the
critics of its author? In order to answer this question, it is necessary for
one to consider the work in some detail. Dupuy says that the purpose of the
book "is to describe the Quantified Judgment Method of Analysis of Historical
Combat Data" or QJMA, a major component of which "is a long but simple
mathematical equation" known as the Quantified Judgment Model ("QJM"). Of this
simple mathematical equation Brown concludes that it "simply demonstrates the
intellectual intimidation wrought when complex calculations are unleashed upon
a liberal arts community." On this point Dupuy opines in a rather different
tone than Brown. " Let me hasten to reassure those who feel at all
uncomfortable when faced with pages of complex mathematical equations; I feel
exactly the same way….I am not a mathematician, and all of the formulae which
appear in this book are merely means for organizing numbers or quantities, and
can be understood by anyone who is able to add, subtract, divide, and
multiply."[70]
Dupuy begins by pointing out that there are two principal problems in the
quantitative analysis of "war data", namely the reliability of the numbers, and
the interpretation of them. The first involves that which none of Dupuy's
critics has done---"time-consuming, frustrating, tedious, and expensive
research, with frequent comparison of differing data sources, different
engagements, and different campaigns." The second calls for a rejection of the
view that military history is irrelevant, embracing instead its opposite,
taking into account the significant impact upon modern warfare of new weapons
and technology, particularly those relating to transportation, observation and
communications. Dupuy then discusses at length the pratfalls attendant to the
use of "war data", describing in some detail a list of ten commonly presented
propositions often depicted as being based upon military experience. Among
these are the notion that as weapons have become more lethal, changes in
warfare have become correspondingly more radical. Dupuy rebuts this proposition
by showing that the technological change that has most influenced modern ground
warfare was the introduction of the muzzle-loading rifle musket, firing an
elongated bullet, a change that occurred in the decade between 1850 and 1860.
This change reversed the relation of lethal capability between artillery and
infantry weapons that had previously obtained, so that during the American
Civil War, small arms accounted for over 85% of the casualties, as opposed to
the 10% caused by cannon fire.[71]
Dupuy also disputes other commonly accepted maxims about military history.
Notable among these are the proposition that an attacker should have a
three-to-one superiority over the defender, that the numerically inferior force
is usually successful, and that modern technology permits faster advance rates
in combat. In each case, Dupuy marshals data to show the contrary of the axiom.
Dupuy engages in this exercise in order to "illustrate the problems of trying
to analyze trends in ground combat by making sense out of the anarchical masses
of data that lie in the dark and musty records of warfare", and to show why, in
view of the general inaccessibility of data, military historians and analysts
regularly engage in guesswork, assumptions and generalizations. In contrast,
Dupuy says, the purpose of Numbers is to translate the numbers of
military history into a coherent, consistent, quantitative theory of combat and
combat relationships.[72]
The first step taken by Dupuy in this regard is to analyze the effects of
weapons lethality upon combat. This comparison of weapons to casualties is not,
Dupuy points out, a simple matter of matching numbers to numbers; instead, the
analysis requires knowledge not only of the numbers of weapons, but also of
their various types and respective lethality. This latter Dupuy and his
colleagues define as the ability of a weapon to kill personnel and render
equipment ineffective in a given time period, where the capability of the
weapon depends upon weapon range, rate of fire, accuracy, radius of effects and
battlefield mobility. Since it was not possible to give precise values to the
effects of these variables, it was necessary to "postulate a standard,
theoretical, laboratory-like environment which could be common for all
weapons." This standard Dupuy calls the Theoretical Lethality Index (TLI), a
composite of thirteen variables common to all weapons, from the Roman short
sword to a nuclear warhead. The TLI of an individual weapon, however, had to be
converted into an Operational Lethality Index (OLI), which is done by applying
to the TLI the "Dispersion Factor", the area in square kilometers occupied by a
tactically deployed military force of 100,000 soldiers. Both the TLI and OLI
are values that assume "proving ground" circumstances; in order to find the
actual battlefield value of an individual weapon, it was necessary for Dupuy to
account for such variables as weather, terrain, season, mobility
characteristics and vulnerability, and to determine how these factors affected
weapon effectiveness.[73]
The "concept of variables…is the essence of the Quantified Judgment Model, and
of the Quantified Judgment Method of Analysis of Historical Combat Data." What
are the variables that form this essence, that define the battlefield values of
weapons? They fall into three categories, namely (a) environmental (affecting
weapon effectiveness) and operational (affecting employment of weapons and
forces) variables, (b) tabular (represented in simple tables) and formular
(represented in formulae) variables, and © tangible (representing specific,
quantifiable factors of practical effect on weapons) and intangible
(qualitative factors that resist quantification) variables. Dupuy and his
colleagues isolated seventy-three variables; among these are a number of fairly
obvious tangible, quantifiable factors such as the effects of terrain, weather,
season and air superiority, as well as offensive/defensive posture, all of
which are amenable to tabularization. Two other tangible variables, mobility
and vulnerability, involve the interaction of several variables, and must
therefore be expressed in formulae. More intangible, but no less significant
variables, include the concepts of leadership, training and morale, logistics,
time and space, momentum, intelligence, relative technological development and
initiative. A final intangible, combat effectiveness, represents an amalgam of
all or most of the others, among which the most important seem to be
leadership, training/experience, morale and logistics. As Dupuy points out
clearly, however, comparisons of combat effectiveness as between opposing
military forces represents "an oversimplified statement of a complex
relationship."[74]
From this point, Dupuy moves to the difficult task of constructing a model
within which the variables could be seen to operate. The notion that a model
might be useful was suggested to Dupuy and his colleagues during the course of
performing various investigations into historical data for, among other
clients, the United States Air Force. In large measure, however, the decision
to seek a model was taken because it was felt that members of the operations
research community, which included many who either doubted or rejected the idea
that history could teach anything meaningful on the subject of modern warfare,
could be appealed to best by resort to quantitative facts marshaled in support
of qualitative observation. This they would do by using the OLI to quantify the
total weapons firepower of opposing forces in a given engagement, and applying
to this figure reasonable factors for identifiable and quantifiable variables.
The first effort to do this was in connection with a study done for the British
Ministry of Defence, which inquired about the relationship between tactical air
support and land combat. In this particular study, Dupuy's group studied 60
division-sized engagements between September 1943 and June 1944 in the area of
operations of the U.S. Fifth Army in Italy. It is worth noting that the
analysts selected Italy because the ground and air operations of Fifth Army
were confined by the terrain to a narrow space, thus allowing more confident
assumptions about weapons interactions. The result of this study was the QJMA,
"a method of comparing the relative combat effectiveness of two opposing forces
in historical combat". In Dupuy's view, the QJMA resulted from a comparison of
(1) the Quantified Judgment Model formula for ascertaining the theoretical
winner of an engagement, in which historical data for the weapons inventories
of each side of an engagement are used to arrive at a figure for the Power or
Power Potential of a each force; the force enjoying a resulting ratio of 1 or
more would be regarded as the likely "winner"; and (2) the Result Model formula
for quantifying the actual outcome of the engagement; this model would in turn
take into account (a) the degree to which the respective sides achieved their
mission goals; (b) the ability of the respective sides to gain or hold ground,
taking into account their relative weapons inventories; and © the relative
"casualty effectiveness" of the two sides, arrived at by comparing casualties
to the starting strengths of the respective sides.[75]
The QJMA is ultimately based on three comparisons. In the first, the combat
power potentials of two opposing forces in a given engagement are compared.
These combat power potentials are derived by applying the effects of all of the
environmental and operational variables that can be identified to the
Operational Lethality Index (OLI) values for the total weapons inventories of
each combatant. As previously indicated, a ratio of greater than 1.0 is
regarded as predictive of success. In the second comparison, the actual
battlefield performance of the combatants is compared in the Result Model as
described above. The three performance criteria in the Result Model are
analyzed, and each side is assigned a resultant R value; the R values are
subtracted, and the side with the larger value is determined to be the actual
"winner" in the engagement. The final comparison is between the calculated
results of the two models. If the QJM ratio is greater than 1, then the Result
Model ratio should be positive; for example, when the ratio of power potential
between forces A and B is greater than 1 in favor of A, the ratio of AR minus
BR should be positive. Dupuy's analysis shows that this comparison is
consistent throughout; when it is not, it is "certain that the inconsistency is
due to some exceptional combat phenomenon, which is usually explicable after
further study and analysis. In fact, it has been through the exploration of the
causes of such inconsistencies that the value of the QJMA as an analytical tool
has been the greatest."[76]
Of particular importance to Dupuy's critics is his analysis of combat in World
War II. Criticism, in fact, formed a background for the development of the QJM
almost from the start, and found its focus on the subject of Dupuy's study of
the conflict in Italy in 1943-44. Foremost among the early criticism was the
notion that HERO's consideration of the 60 engagements involved amounted to
what Dupuy calls a "curve fitting" exercise. In this case, the term in question
supposes that if one employs as many variables as equations, the values of the
variables can be mathematically adjusted "to fit", thus potentially rendering
the variables meaningless for "equations" (or battles) fought under different
circumstances. Dupuy and his colleagues began to address this issue by
expanding their database. They first added data on eighteen engagements between
US and German formations in France between August and November 1944; they added
a further three engagements (at Kursk in July, 1943, in Italy in late 1944, and
in the Battle of the Bulge) by studying the use of obstacles and barriers in
World War II. Dupuy refers to these twenty-one engagements as the "Validating
Data Base" (in contrast to the "Development Data Base", a term used to describe
the original 60 engagements); nearly identical results were achieved by the
application of the same formulae, procedures and variables to both
databases.[77]
The problem with Dupuy's analysis, from the point of view of his critics, is
that it demonstrates an average German combat effectiveness superiority factor
of about 23 percent. More importantly, the study results indicate that this
superiority was manifest not only in the conditions prevalent in Italy, but
also in the very different situations presented by the Allied pursuit of the
German army in France during the summer and autumn of 1944, and in the Ardennes
in December of that year. Yet while the focus Dupuy's critics has been upon the
alleged unfairness of the study results, the author and his associates directed
their attention instead to the "problems" that the analysis uncovered. One of
these "problems" concerned the role of Allied airpower. On the one hand, it was
apparent that most deviations from the norm (of German combat superiority)
established by the overall study occurred where Allied airpower was either
unemployed or inconsequential; on the other, the study results showed that
Allied success was only assured (with some exceptions) where their overall
power superiority was very great. In cases where the power ratio favored the
Allies only marginally, the Germans were usually successful. In situations
where the power ratio suggested an indeterminate outcome, the Germans were
invariably the "winner", just as they were when the ratio was in their
favor.[78]
Dupuy and his associates had begun their investigations of the campaign in
Italy with an assumption that the Germans possessed a 10 percent advantage in
combat effectiveness over their American and British counterparts at the time
of the Salerno landings, based upon relative experience. They also believed,
however, that the Allies would erase this gap by the middle of 1944, an
estimate not proven by the study. Analyzing this problem, and the issue
described in the preceding paragraph, the Dupuy group found that the
consistency of most of their results involved a balance struck between their
underestimation, on the one hand, of German combat effectiveness, and on the
other of the effect of greater Allied air strength. As a result, the group
began applying a 1.2 relative combat effectiveness value to show German
superiority, as well a doubling of the values they had been applying for the
effects of air weapons.[79]
Dupuy's findings about German combat effectiveness in the Developmental Data
Base were confirmed in the analysis of the Validating Data Base. In an effort
to investigate the reason for consistent findings of German combat superiority,
the group made a comparison of fighting strength versus overhead for German and
American infantry divisions, based on tables of organization for 1943-44. This
comparison showed that in a German infantry division, 59.83 of the personnel
strength was involved in serving or manning weapons in a normal combat
situation. The relative number in an American infantry division was 50.26
percent. This comparison "suggests" that "part" of the finding of overall
German superiority "probably" was the result of better utilization of
manpower.[80]
A third "problem" encountered by the Dupuy group in their initial evaluation of
World War II data was the "perturbation" in results created by combat surprise.
On this subject, Dupuy discusses in particular the very poor showing of the
British 56th Division against an understrength German 65.Infanterie-Division
in an engagement along the Moletta River between 16-19 February 1944. The Dupuy
group concluded that the factor contributing substantially to the unanticipated
outcome was the surprise achieved by the Germans. This led the group to
theorize that three major effects proceed from tactical surprise. These
effects, which the group then incorporated into the QJM model, are (i) that the
mobility of the surprising force is enhanced because of its ability to position
its troops for optimum effect before the attack; (ii) that the vulnerability of
the surprised force is made worse by its opponent's ability to place fire
unexpectedly and accurately; and (iii) that the vulnerability of the surprising
force is reduced through its ability to more effectively plan and position its
troops. Although Dupuy observes that the general validity of this thesis was
confirmed for several other engagements in World War II, as well as in the
Arab-Israeli Wars, he cautions that "[T]here are, however, undoubtedly other
effects of surprise, and further research should be undertaken to attempt to
ascertain these."[81]
Of special significance with regard to the criticism leveled at Dupuy is his
conclusion about the probable outcome of the struggle in northwest Europe in
the summer of 1944. On the basis of their analyses of the engagements examined
in the Validating Data Base, the group concluded that "had the Allies made a
concentrated thrust on a relatively narrow single army front, the Germans would
have been unable to withstand it. I am now convinced that had this been done
the Allies could have at least reached the Rhine by September 1944. Beyond
that, of course, one can only speculate, but certainly under such circumstances
a German Ardennes offensive in December would have been impossible." Such
conclusions are manifestly not those of a person intent on denigrating the
combat prowess of the United States Army.[82]
Dupuy also addresses the issue of accounting for the effects upon a land battle
of air power. He identifies two conceptual problems in this regard. First,
there is the fact that aircraft "loiter" over a battlefield for only a fraction
of the engagement. Second, even when aircraft are in the area of the ground
battle, they may be assigned tasks other than ground support. The real
conundrum, however, is presented by the fact that even when not directly
engaged in ground support roles, aircraft may profoundly affect the ground
battle indirectly by, for example, interdicting the enemy's supplies away from
the battlefield. The issue presented by this latter phenomenon is how to take
into account such indirect ground support missions in the QJM, while at the
same time not including the weapons possessed by aircraft on such missions in
the battlefield inventory.[83]
The Dupuy group's assumptions concerning air interdiction were threefold: (1)
that the supply capability of the interdicted force is reduced through both the
destruction of supplies and the difficulties created for moving such supplies;
(2) that the ability of the interdicted force to move reinforcements as well as
troops actually engaged is impaired; and (3) that the damage done to the
interdicted force's communications impairs its command and control function.
Dupuy and his colleagues were only able to investigate the effect of
interdiction upon the supply function. When this element was considered in
connection with the Developmental Data Base (the original 60 engagements
studied), it was found that it was decisive in 25% of the engagements in which
interdiction effects were discernible. But whereas it was somewhat difficult
for the group to evaluate the effects of interdiction, the effects of direct
interaction between air and ground weapons were much more susceptible to
evaluation. The group identified eight different ways in which airpower affects
ground action; most of these effects increase the combat power of the side with
air superiority. The group applied the eight air superiority elements to the
Developmental Data Base, in which there were 38 instances of Allied success, as
well as seven in which the outcome was inconclusive. Dupuy and his colleagues
found that if the air component had been removed from these 45 engagements, a
German success would have been either predictable or very likely in 20-24 of
them. Put another way, in this subset of 45 engagements, "airpower provided the
margin which provided victory or prevented defeat" in at least 44% (perhaps as
high as 53%) of Allied successes and inconclusive engagements.[84]
Dupuy is frank to observe that his group's use of data related to the influence
of airpower on the ground battle has relevance to the conflict in Italy in
1944, because of the peculiar nature of that particular situation, viz., the
relative and absolute superiority of Allied airpower, and the methodical manner
in which it was brought to bear on the enemy. Accounting for the effects of
airpower is one of the areas upon which Dupuy's critics dwell. Others are what
Dupuy refers to as "fudge factors". These are principally the behavioral
variables of surprise and combat effectiveness, the significance of which
"cannot be perceived or appreciated unless the observer sees what the combat
power ratio would be without the factors." The attitude of Dupuy's critics is
that the HERO staff resorts to the use of these factors only when they are
needed to make the formulae work correctly. In fact, however, Dupuy points out
that the relevance of these factors was discovered only when they were ignored
in particular instances, with the result that peculiar outcomes developed.
Because of this, Dupuy and his colleagues automatically include a factor for
surprise when they are aware that it was achieved by one or the other side in
an engagement. Surprise as a verifiable phenomenon of significance in combat
has been illustrated by the Dupuy group in both Italy and France.[85]
The finding of superior German combat effectiveness, and its application in the
QJM, is the "fudge factor" that most infuriates critics of Dupuy and his work.
The group therefore had to address the question whether this was truly a
measureable factor, rather than an arbitrary "fudge factor" used to make the
use of the QJM and the results of that usage believable. They confirmed German
combat effectiveness by assessing casualty-inflicting capability, a measure
that first became apparent to them through a study of the American Civil War.
Dupuy and his group applied the same assessment method to both the First and
Second World Wars. In both of these struggles, German combat effectiveness was
superior to that of its western European and American opponents by nearly
identical figures. In the same manner, German combat effectiveness superiority
with respect to that of the Russians was nearly consistent over both World
Wars.[86]
Dupuy was quite aware of the criticisms leveled against his analysis. As he
observes, the most common critique of his work is that such an historical
approach is scientifically invalid. Dupuy points out, however, that while the
scientific techniques and experience of his technically-oriented critics (or
those who purport to rely upon such techniques and experience) are reliable in
dealing with scientific questions, they are less so when applied to human
behavior in the historical context. History, Dupuy argues, is the most reliable
guide to evaluating or indeed predicting human behavior. This, in his view,
gets at the crux of the matter. At the time Numbers, Predictions & War was
published, the most vehement critics came from the so-called OR (Operations
Research) community, a group composed of mathematicians and scientists whose
careers as analysts of current military affairs and supposed predictors of the
nature and outcome of future wars not only made them suspicious of
professionals with credentials other than their own, but also biased them
against the value of historical analysis and its applicability to the present
and future. Dupuy counters the OR critics by observing that (1) the comparative
analyses of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War by the OR community and the HERO group
showed that the real world validity of the mathematical models of the former
were no more realistic that the OLI representation of the QJM; (2) the
imprecision and unreliability of modern OR models has been pointed out by a
member of the OR community, Dr. J.A. Stockfish of the Rand Corporation, who
contended that modern mathematical models lack reliability at least in part due
to a failure to enlist empirical data; and (3) whereas the OR community was
unable to reproduce or represent modern war with modern weapons (as in the case
of the 1973 October War), the QJM model proved itself capable of doing so.
Dupuy also addresses criticisms of the QJM with particularity, with special
reference to the oft-repeated claim that the good results of the QJM can be
explained by the use of "manipulated data". There are, Dupuy says, three
different ways in which numbers could be manipulated: (a) weapons and other
variable values could be specifically selected to fit the circumstances of a
given engagement; (b) the results themselves could be made to fit the
preconceived notions harbored by the analyst, should the formulae not yield the
desired results; and © , in a case where the QJM and Result formulae had been
applied, one of the two truly judgmental inputs to the Result formula (assessed
mission accomplishment or the distance-advanced figure) could be changed.
Dupuy's response to these arguments is a simple one: All of the numbers,
formulae, values, tables and the like utilized in the QJM are fully
substantiated and justified in the historical record, "[A]nd that record is
there…for the review and scrutiny of anyone else who wishes to check on either
the data or the process."[87]
Numbers, Predictions & War is an affront to its critics not
because its methodology is faulty, as those critics would have us believe, but
because its conclusions about the relative combat effectiveness of the German
army and its Allied counterparts are unpalatable to them. The solution to the
critics' conundrum---the supposed invalidity of Dupuy's findings, resulting
from the application of flawed statistical analysis to suspect data---is for
the critics to correct the record by conducting their own statistical analysis
of the same (or "better") data, and publish the results for the profession to
scrutinize. This they have regrettably and unaccountably failed to do.
Copyright © 2004 by Thomas E. Nutter.
Written by Tom Nutter. If you have questions or comments on this
article, please contact Nutter at:
tenutter@gmail.com.
Last Modified on: 12/03/2006.
* Views expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent
those of MHO.
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