Is he right?
>>708918
You're going to have to tl;dr his assertion down.
>>708924
The Second World War was nowhere near as mechanized as it is made out to be, tank battles were rare and tanks were not as much of a gamechanger as some people think, and it was largely like WW1 in nature.
>>708936
He is pretty incorrect. The whole ost front was lost by a poor choice of where to sent the mechanized units, and armor was extremely important in Africa and Italy.
>>708918
Half the time, he's attacking popular misconceptions, such as this.
>>708936
>>708948
Lol no, the Ost Front was lost because the Germans moved their supplies by horses. The overwhelming bulk of the killing was done by artillery.
But when he actually discusses the details of tank and bomber tactics, he's wildly, wildly out of his depth and wrong.
>>708971
New to the thread, but even though the number of enemies killed by armor pales next to things like artillery or infantry, that doesn't make armor unimportant.
Tanks offered rapid tactical movement, and an ability to focus firepower at a particular point in the enemy line to achieve a breakthrough, as well as the mobility to exploit it. That's pretty damn important.
>>709056
>as well as the mobility to exploit it.
One quibble here, but it's an important distinction: Armored DIVISIONS with their motorized Infantry and Artillery attachments allowed for that.
Yes. Like I said, the book works best when it's attacking the popular perception of 'blitzkrieg', which is tanks just running ahead completely on their own at a strategic level.
>>709076
So the book works best when it's using one inaccurate perception with another inaccurate perception?
>>709076
>Armored DIVISIONS with their motorized Infantry and Artillery attachments allowed for that.
Oh, for sure. I should have been more precise. One only needs to look at the Soviet performances in the opening phases of Barbarossa to see what happens to unsupported armor, even in "tank country"
You know, it's funny. You sometimes hear tanks being called the knights of a modern battlefield, and a lot of the same misconceptions attach to both, being viewed as these slow, armored things that just trample over anything in their paths. I wonder why that is.
>>709102
Tanks are actually like a joker card. They can be artillery support, AFV(support again), breakthrough elements, defensive positions(will fail miserably without air cover), etc. They give you flexibility in your strategy and command but they are definitely not huge gamechangers.
>>709102
I'd say that's die to the fact that both cause an almost primal fear in one unaccustomed to them.
A giant, limbering mass of steel and death is heading for you. The instinct is to see it as unstoppable and run for yer life.
After all, it took a good amount of drilling to get infantry to form a square instead of flee when charged, and to overcome tank terror.
>>709383
>They can be artillery support, AFV(support again), breakthrough elements, defensive positions(will fail miserably without air cover), etc.
>[series of tactical claims]
>They give you flexibility in your strategy
A poster who can't differentiate strategy, operations and tactics is worth listening to.
problem with this and many other books its far more detailed by any popular history faggotry BUT their topic is so fucking wide and huge it cannot and will not cover everything in 300pages, maybe in 3000. So it fails what an actual history books purpose, bring you the facts so you could draw your own conclusions.
>>709463
>missing existential verb and possessive apostrophe
Noice.
>>709472
>criticize english of a non native speaker
>speak as underaged memester
die in cancer little shit, along with your family
>>708936
Seems more like layman's misconceptions than historical debate.
German's reliance on horses is well known. As is the Soviet's initial dependence dropping with the steady improvement of logistics. The poor infrastructure in the East coupled with horrible environmental conditions is a cornerstone in the lore of the Eastern front.
The effects of strategic bombing is well documented; the speed limits enforced on German motorized divisions, the operational limits of Me 262s tethered only 25 miles from base, the 1,500+ tanks assembled to defend Silesia from the Red Army unable to be deployed for lack of fuel.
Jesus fucking Christ the generalized bullshit is amazing.
>WWII was just like WWI!
No. Don't even bother comparing them. They might be more similar than is popularly believed, but don't skew the truth even further in claiming that they were seriously similar. Trench networks were very much present and complex, but the firearms available to the all opponents were just in another league. The availability of LIGHT machine guns that worked reliably, small caliber cannons, and excellent rifles with variable optics (German up to 8x, Russian/Allied peaking around 3-4x), necessarily changed warfare. People don't realize how many trucks and tracked movers were available and operated in WWII too. So many thousands. Warfare was simply, objectively much faster. Hence 'blitzkrieg', even if that word alludes to other, bullshit generalizations.
And 'tank battles' is so peculiarly vague. For one thing, battles involving tanks weren't particularly rare. If you want to map out battles by severity, or even frequency later into the war, the presence of armored fighting vehicles shooting at other armored fighting vehicles is not rare.
>>709573
>excellent rifles with variable optics (German up to 8x, Russian/Allied peaking around 3-4x), necessarily changed warfare
>rifles with scopes changed warfare
heh heh
>>709573
>but the firearms available to the all opponents were just in another league
Is that why the vast majority of troops in WW2 were issued with WW1 era firearms or bolt action rifles with very little difference to the models used in WW1?
>>709581
Among other things, yes, snipers and marksmen did change warfare.
>>709587
your claim was those are ww2 inventions however
>>708971
>he thinks you can measure the relative importance of equipment by number of enemies killed
>>709590
or to be specific that ww2 rifles with variable optics changed warfare
>>709586
>Is that why the vast majority of troops in WW2 were issued with WW1 era firearms or bolt action rifles with very little difference to the models used in WW1?
1 million MG34s and MG42s collectively, 5 million PPSHs, 1 million MP40s, and millions of automatic and semi-automatic weapons that were far more ergonomic than anything in WWI.
Yeah, they were just issued those old bolt-actions, right? Okay.
>>709590
>your claim was those are ww2 inventions however
No it wasn't.
My point is that good quality, refined optics enabling snipers and marksmen to greater degrees than in previous conflicts would have changed warfare.
>>709604
>Yeah, they were just issued those old bolt-actions, right? Okay.
Literally no one said that.
>>709634
>Literally no one said that.
>Is that why the vast majority of troops in WW2 were issued with WW1 era firearms or bolt action rifles with very little difference to the models used in WW1?
Considering this was a rhetorical question in response to the assertion that weapons had majorly developed since WWI, the obvious implication then being that there hadn't been enormous strides made in weapon development because bolt actions were still very prevalent, what was said was retarded enough to warrant such a response.
>>709095
Yes. I would not recommend it.
>>709586
Not the Americans.
Which is why we won.
>>709457
They seem basically the same to me. No need to get so caught up in semantics.
>>709723
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/majority
>>714207
>one word changes the entire sentiment of the rhetorical question
No.
>>711859
no, american infantry doctrine actually suffered as a result of its development around semi-automatic rifles and the resulting lack of machine gun based squad tactics
>>708918
Yes. Reviews by serious historians (not the wiki-warriors of his) were positive. Also my friends Great-grandfather lived to be 102 years old and he was in a Panzermannschaft. He kept watching history channel documentaries and laughed at the claimed superiority of German tanks cause he knew they were frightened as shit of French and Russian tanks.
>>708936
>The Second World War was nowhere near as mechanized as it is made out to be
U N M E A S U R A B L E C L A I M
M E A N I N G L E S S S T A T E M E NT
>>714313
>He kept watching history channel documentaries and laughed at the claimed superiority of German tanks cause he knew they were frightened as shit of French and Russian tanks
This does not mean anything about the war not being as 'mechanized' as whatever person might have thought though. The Germans built more IFVs and tank destroyers and they did this through the Panzer IV chassis being convertible from a tank to an anti-tank gun to an IFV and more.
The German's whole doctrine was about speed and mobility and transporting as many troops as possible to focal points to establish a breakthrough and eventually an encirclement of the enemy force. This is what Blitzkrieg is, and it is evolving off of the Infiltration tactics used by the British during WW1 and advocated by many of their strategists during the Postwar-Era.
To say that WW2 was not mechanized "as one might have thought" (this is an infuriatingly junk statement just not even worth considering) because there were only a few tank battles is to completely ignore that much of the war's initial encirclement in Barbarossa of the Soviet's 3rd Army, 10th Army, 18th Army, 20th Army, 24th Army, 57th Army, and 2nd Shock Army. This was what shook the Soviet military so badly and what furthermore punctuated the fact that by undertaking their purges they had completely wiped out their capability to conduct Deep Battle, which was the Soviet doctrine, properly.
The war was very mechanized. To not be as mechanized as one might have thought? That's just putting things into boxes that don't need to be done. Sure, the General Public's ideas of things were markedly different then how they were, but when one considers that the General Public is not educated nor willing to be so, then why is the statement even worth proving or disproving?
>>714645
gonna nitpick a bit
>The origin of the term blitzkrieg is obscure. It was never used in the title of a military doctrine or handbook of the German army or air force,[9] and no "coherent doctrine" or "unifying concept of blitzkrieg"
No. What Blitzkrieg is, is just another propaganda buzzword. Historians usually shy away from using that meme and prefer, for example, bewegungskrieg.
What you are describing and what the germans utilised to great effect is maneuver warfare. This wasn't an inherently german innovation nor is it tied to interwar mechanisation specifically. Mechanisation and aviation, when applied with a proper doctrine, did of course enchance it, though It has existed way before that in concept and practise if not in modern codified form.
Also, the only completely mechanised army of the was was that of the US. This should speak volumes of how much of a mechanised was it really was.
>>714251
Bullshit.
>>714251
>no, american infantry doctrine actually suffered as a result of its development around semi-automatic rifles and the resulting lack of machine gun based squad tactics
Yeah, machine gun based squad tactics that was so successful and advanced that literally no one adopted it after WW2.
>>714716
Three books i recommend to everyone on this subject.
Robert M. Citino
The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years' War to the Third Reich.
The Death of the Wehrmacht: The Campaigns of 1942.
The Wehrmacht Retreats: The Campaigns of 1943.
>>711885
>They seem basically the same to me
That's because you don't know much about military strategy.
Strategy is at the level of "the war". Strategy is the dimension of how you win a war. Tactics are at the unit level and are how you win a battle. Operations in a military planning sense fit somewhere in between depending on who you ask.
Consider the German invasion of Russia.
The "Strategy" of the Germans was to encircle and break Russian armies, using the blitzkrieg maneuvers to attack Russia along its whole front with Army Group North to Leningrad, Army Group Center to Moscow and Army Group South to the Ukraine. The "Operation" was the carrying-out of that plan, Operation Barbarossa. The "tactics" can run the gamut from small unit tactics (squads fighting other squads) to blitzkrieg tactics, maneuvering your forces to win a battle.
>>717540
They certainly were the most successful ones used in the war, and the postwar development resembled them much more than those of semiautomatic rifle equipped American WW2 forces.
>>717504
>a high level of discourse is expected
>>708936
>The Second World War was nowhere near as mechanized as it is made out to be
I-in my headcanon it is! S-shut up!
To be blunt, he is wrong. Tanks were the reason trenches, machine guns, and barb wire were no longer effective at stopping an offensive. Tanks were a necessary part of combined arms warfare.
>>718640
>what are sources
>>718637
That's exactly wrong, but sure whatever.
>>714607
This guy gets it.
That book in OP looks like a 200-page post on /his/.
The truth is, the Germans seemed to be working miracles in modern warfare, but in reality they were just fighting the Polish and French armies, making every move they made appear a stroke of genius.
>>720408
Why were French commanders so incompetent?
>tanks couldn't possibly make it over all those leaves in the Arden forest
Has this author even recognized what combined arms operations are, and what they look like?
Yes, of COURSE tanks weren't widely used. That would be a grossly inefficient way of fighting. You don't build a Roman army entirely out of Triarii, and you don't build a carrier group out of entirely carriers. You don't push a hole in enemy lines with just tonks, planes, or infantry.
Also what someone else already said, but I'll reiterate - you cannot judge the effectiveness of a weapon system based on how often it was used or by how many people it killed. What matters in an industrial war is whether it allowed you to achieve war-winning objectives. That's why Eisenhower credited the landing craft, not the aircraft or the navy's guns, as the thing that won D-Day and thus (in his somewhat erroneous ameri-centric view) the war.
>>720420
Hubris and extreme egos. I'm not sure a military superpower has failed as miserably as the French did in 1940. It's truly remarkable. Fucking Poland lasted twice as long, fighting both Germans and Soviets.
The most unbelievable part is the French just surrendering to Germany. How could they just capitulate to the Germans in two weeks? French is the ultimate beta nationality.
>>720423
The author is simply an idiot
>>720436
That's not totally fair. It was the destruction of Warsaw that caused the French to give up. They didn't want Paris to become a smoking ruin so once it became clear they couldn't stop them from reaching Paris they surrendered. In so doing they saved a large part of their cultural heritage. I can't say I blame them. You could say they were playing the long game.
Of course letting the Germans get that far was the fault of French commanders.
>>720392
>That's exactly wrong
its exactly right
the american idea was that a dedicated lmg was not necessary
because riflemen would provide enough volume of fire with the garand
guess what?
they didnt
>>720420
Because of hindsight. The major line of thought was that a massive armored spearhead would not go through the Ardennes, because it was a massive risk.
So basically the author's target audience is people whose only knowledge of World War 2 is the memory of their primary school teacher saying "Germans conquered France and they used fast tanks in what was called the Blitzkrieg".
>>720436
For Poland to last twice as long, they would have to last three months. France fell in six weeks, not two. What are you on about.
>>720483
Risk how?
The only reason I can imagine them leaving the Arden relatively undefended was because they thought it was impassible due to the terrain, which it really really wasn't.
>>709076
>which is tanks just running ahead completely on their own at a strategic level
Lmao, noone thinks this. Sounds like the book is one big strawman.
>>720496
>Risk how?
Risk in that the buildup and the subsequent huge traffic jams experienced on the few roads in the region by the Germans would be a prime target for a counterattack, or at the very least the cause of commitment of French reserves into what would be the one single axis of attack on which the success of the entire plan hinged. Allied commanders actually had some warnings of the above happening but held firm to the belief that some fifty thousand vehicles would not be committed to a plan which would require them to make use of at some points just four (4!!!) roads to reach their destination.
>>720508
Uneducated plebs do. I remember hearing stupidity like that in some of my WW2 classes in middle school.
>>720524
I realize it was a risk, but I can't shake the feeling that French commanders misunderstood modern warfare on a fundamental level by thinking such an offensive couldn't possibly pay off.
Was it an underestimation of the mobility of modern armies? The usefulness of air support? Did they think the Germans were in as terrible logistical shape as France was?
>>709095
kek
>>720697
You are painting the French commanders in too negative a light. Certainly they made several mistakes but it is not like they failed to realize the fundamentals of warfare. The French army deployed armored divisions of its own, as well as mechanized divisions. They were well aware of what such forces could do if they were unleashed on the norther French plains - that is exactly why they had planned to advance into Belgium to meet the enemy in favorable terrain and prevent it from happening (and also preventing a repeat of WW1 where key industrial regions were wrecked by the German invasion).
The French did not fail because they were some backwards buffoons who didn't realize tanks were useful. They failed because their reasonable enough plan - which saw the bulk of their mobile forces advance to meet the enemy as outlined above - was utterly crushed by a very daring exploit whose high risk and high reward ratio was taken advantage of by the Germans and, conversely, mistakenly but not inexplicably so overlooked by the French. Thus leaving the aforementioned forces cut off and the rest of France ripe for the taking.
They certainly did not misunderstand modern warfare on a fundamental level. They fully understood that the advances of modern warfare unleashed on favorable ground would not be easily contained. Funnelling some fifty thousand vehicles through four roads was in no way a "advancement" of "modern warfare" nor a result of any kind of backwards thinking by the French staff. It was a grave mistake but not one born out of somehow flawed doctrine. Alternate history is obviously silly but still, had the area been defended by a couple of divisions more, the entire German invasion might have been stopped virtually before it began and we would be here badmouthing the Germans, what were they thinking, taking such a massive risk, committing so many troops to such a narrow and dangerous front, relying on this one single gamble, etc. etc., you get the idea.
>>720861
Also to expand on this, for all the talk of blitzkriegs and tanks and modern warfare, the fall of France owes a lot to good old *infantry* action especially at the absolutely key securing of Meuse bridgeheads. Or there's the fact that French and British armies were by far more motorized and mechanized than the Wehrmacht. Sure, factors like the use of armored spearheads and the like meant an advantage for the Germans conversely.
It is a popular shorthand to say the allies expected "another WW1" and that is true in the strategic sense, but it would be a mistake to think they expected the developments on the ground to be the same - why would they when already WW1 had shown the potential of combined arms and the interwar years were a huge development in this particular area of the military.
>>720861
I'm sorry, not buying it. The fact that they thought Germany couldn't possibly exploit the gap in their lines requires a fundamental misunderstanding of the capabilities of modern equipment. If they knew Germany could absolutely wreck their shit by going through the Arden and did nothing as a huge gamble then they were incompetent. If France didn't hide their numbers and positions and the Germans did right before the offensive such that the Germans could exploit the opening then again, the French command was incompetent.
War is often a gamble and the French plan COULD have worked had things played out differently, but as it stands I believe there must have been some fundamental blunder in the French defense that should be taken to heart. I'm not sure what that lesson is, but I have a strong feeling there is one.
>>720697
>>720906
Oh and one last thing -
>The usefulness of air support?
- they certainly realized just how useful air support would be. But remember that the Luftwaffe had executed successful airstrikes at the outbreak of the invasion and as a result the Germans enjoyed superiority in the air, which then meant two things - first that allied air could not hinder the otherwise ripe and vulnerable Ardennes advance, and second, that the French own mobile divisions were severely hampered in their ability to do what they were meant to do, move and strike quickly or react as rapid reserves. Which obviously meant the success of every German breakthrough was magnified as it could not be checked easily.
>>720918
What "capabilities of modern equipment" are you talking about?
Funnelling fifty thousand vehicles through four roads is not somehow an inherent, positive function of "modern equipment".
Not deploying a big blocking force against what was perceived as difficult terrain for an armored offensive is not a "fundamental misunderstanding" of said equipment.
Doing the above was not a huge gamble, it was the attack through the Ardennes that was exactly that.
Failing to act on the intelligence that the enemy had actually decided to do it was the mistake.
>The fact that they thought Germany couldn't possibly exploit the gap in their lines
But the French did not think this. Where are you getting these ideas? They were fully aware that the Germans might attempt to do this. That is why they focused on the Gembloux gap whose terrain presented by far the greatest danger of the Germans breaking and exploiting the allied line with swift armored action.
>>720960
Again let me repeat that the French had deployed armored and mechanized divisions of their own and were fully aware of just how devastating highly mechanized and motorized warfare could be if unleashed in the open ground of northern France and molded their own plan accordingly, these factors remove any validity from the notion that they somehow "misunderstood modern warfare on a fundamental level" or from the idea that they had a "fundamental misunderstanding of the capabilities of modern equipment".
The French staff were not moustache twirling 90-year-olds who wanted red trousers and bayonets, they did not think the war would look the same on the ground as WW1, they did not think the tank was a fancy gimmick that would soon go away. The French failings were several, but they were not doctrinal.
>>720960
As in moving artillery, soldiers, tanks, and supplies quickly across varying terrain. If not equipment then they misunderstood how well a modern army could operate its own logistics. If they understood all that then they understood that they could have been quickly routed by Germany. If they understood that and yet did nothing then they were incompetent on a whole other level.
The idea that war came suddenly and that they were defending the most vulnerable routes to Paris and forgoing the less desirable routes as a gamble knowing they couldn't sufficiently defend them or move their reserves in time would make sense if they hadn't been preparing for this for years. If they didn't have the manpower to defend all the routes not defended by the Maginot line then they should have extended the Maginot line.
>>721026
To simplify, they either thought an attack through the Arden was impossible using modern equipment and logistics or they intentionally gambled the security of France on Germany being incompetent to not exploit the weak point in the French lines. Neither bodes well for the competence of French command.
>>721039
To be fair, the French were not baseless in their assumption that an attack through the Arden was Impossible, or at least unlikely.
One of their greatest failings was that if they had responded quickly, and effectively, the Germans WOULD have been heavily bottlenecked, and possibly even pinched off.
The Germans themselves were taking a big gamble with the Arden forest.
>>721066
The vulnerability of the German offensive through the Arden is a moot point because France didn't consider it as such, else there would have been a devastating French counter attack. France either thought such an attack was impossible or they gambled that Germany wouldn't exploit the hole.
>>720478
>its exactly right
[citation needed]
>the american idea was that a dedicated lmg was not necessary
>use the .30 cal and the BAR at the platoon and squad level
Do you have any idea what you're talking about, retard?
>>720420
>those leaves in the Arden forest
The ARDENNES was extremely dense, nearly as dense as you.
>>722030
But it's true kid
>Muh marksmanship, muh garands!
Sometime after WWI, a bunch of American Infantry brains sat down to think up a set of tactics for the U.S. footsloggers. With a basic train of thought rooted in the sharpshootin' tradition of the American rifleman, these men formulated methods based on the rifle. In a slight concession to the contemporary trend to increase squad firepower, the U.S. tacticians included a Browning Automatic Rifle (or BAR) in the squad's equipment.
The 12-man squad itself was divided into 3 distinct parts - a 2-man scout team, a 4-man support team including the BAR, a 5-man assault team, and the squad leader. The system was supposed to work like this: the squad leader advances with the scout team to locate the enemy, then direct the fire of the support team on their positions before joining the assault team in order to lead them in to wipe them out. This seemingly simple system placed a lot of faith in the GI and that indisputably fabulous weapon, the M1 Garand.
Then the war came and these squad tactics were put to use. Here's what often happened to the squad in combat: the squad leader gets pinned down or hit with the scout team; the support team blasts away in the general direction of the origin of enemy fire without any real idea of where their positions really are; the leaderless assault team then makes the attack alone, that is if they didn't need the influence of their NCO to do it under fire in the first place. Worse yet, the whole plan could be upset by a few casualties.
>>722399
The main problems here were twofold: an inability to achieve fire superiority and squad tactics that invited the loss of unit cohesion.
This first problem explains why the GIs were so dependent on the support of heavier weapons outside of the squad to build up a large enough base of fire to get that all-important "fire superiority". The combined fire of M1s and a BAR was seldom enough to sufficiently suppress or damage the enemy; unable to do this on their own, the squad was obliged to call in help from the outside.
>>722402
The German entered the war with a system that was only slightly less complicated than the US design: 10-man squads divided into an MG troop and a rifle troop, with a squad leader over all. It is also likely that the Germans experienced at least some of the same problems as the GIs in the beginning, so by 1941 they had simplified the organization and workings of their "Gruppen". The following description applies to German tactics from 1943 on.
Although the 9-man (or before 1943, 10-man) squad was divided into a 3-man MG team and a 5-man rifle team with a squad leader over all, the division in the German squad was less distinct in the German unit. In fact, some German manuals ceased to distinguished between these two teams after 1941. The reason this came about was because the German squad leaders actually employed their whole formation as a single, large, MG team.
>>722403
The important lesson that the German military thinkers brought out of WWI was that the machine-gun, not the rifle, was the primary killing weapon on the battlefield. This is one reason that they continued to equip their riflemen with the outdated Mauser bolt-action or the short-ranged machine-pistol; even though the well-developed German arms industry was capable of providing its riflemen with a more sophisticated long-arm, it did not because the MG was the only weapon in the infantry squad that mattered. The primary mission of the rifleman was to provide protection for the MG and help bring up ammo for it if necessary. The MG was also usually operated by one of the best men in the unit since the Landser squad leaders had instructions to place one of their steadiest soldiers behind it.
These tactics went something like this: the squad leader advances with his whole unit until contact is made; the MG then opens up on the enemy to achieve "fire superiority". If a good hosing down with this beast isn't enough to either destroy or run off the opposition, the whole squad would leapfrog forward in short rushes until the desired effect was achieved. In the event that the MG fire itself wasn't enough to finish the job, the gun would be used in a suppression mode as the riflemen went in to clean up with hand-grenades and the bayonet.
>>722404
In summation, it seems that the German squad had the right weapons to achieve fire superiority and the right training and tactics to retain unit cohesion and the "will to combat". All of this would probably have sounded immaterial to the Landser who cowered under a shower of Allied shells, ran for the ditches under attack by the dreaded Jabos, or were hunted by groups of fierce Paratroops. But when small units of German and GI troops tangled, the difference in performance was often marked.
In contrast, most American squads were handicapped by an overly-complicated squad organization, lack of an effective automatic weapon, and the detrimental effects of the loss of unit cohesion cause by confusion or the loss of their leaders.
>>722423
>but im right, rite guise??? garands are kewl
>>722423
But it's still the truth, stop your puny damage control. Every single modern army after WW2 based their squads on MGs
>>722030
>Do you have any idea what you're talking about, retard?
I do, you don't, sorry :(
>>714716
>This wasn't an inherently german innovation nor is it tied to interwar mechanisation specifically.
This is true.
Basically what Germans understood was that the inventions of modern transport methods allows you to execute strategies you've executed before, just faster and it's the best things since sliced bread.
The conflict from the strategical side didn't differ much from let's say the 1870 Franco-Prussian war, the difference was that some divisions could move 100 km a day rather than 20 and logistics weren't tied in 100% to horses and trains. Which made answering for enemy's concentration in breakthrough points much harder.
What made "blitzkrieg" so successful initially was that French failed to understand that the middle years of WW1 were an exception from the norm, rather than TOTALLY NEW HOT NORM. British on the other hand performed some experiments with mechanised units way back in 20's but never really had funds to implement the lessons they've learned in the interwar period and then simply couldn't adapt soon enough because wartime is wartime(then again they've had a French-like lobby as well).
Americans and Russians were both reluctant to static warfare because they've never actually fought it during WW1, but USSR obviously had problem in form of officer's corps being decimated by purges so the "deep battle doctrine" materialised as late as in during Bargation.
Then again the notion that WW1=WW2 because the only COMPLETELY 100% mechanised army was US army is kinda simplistic as well. It's not 0-1 sort of thing, army mechanised in 40% is still much more mobile and potent in offensive actions than army mechanised in 0%.
>>723027
you do know that the french had tank divisions, mechanized divisions
and were more motorized than germany in 1940
yes?
>>723034
Mechanisation isn't everything.
French Army, despite higher degree of mechanisation failed to respond to German actions quickly enough, most of it was caused by the ignorance.
>>723034
>>723055
Strictly speaking outside from the inexcusable slowness of reaction to the Ardennes assault (e.g. having prior intelligence), the further inability of the french forces like the DLMs to respond quickly was caused by German air superiority. What the French utterly failed to do - strike at and disrupt the bunched up together forces in Ardennes from the air - the Germans did to the French armor all day erry day.
Mechanized war isn't just "use tanks to kill shit" which is the biggest axiom Mosier gets wrong. It's also about moving infantry in tank-time instead of moving tanks in infantry-time. This can be achieved by providing trucks or railcars to infantry or even letting infantry ride on the tanks directly. One can have a largely infantry-based war and still have it be a mechanized war, as long as troops are moving at the speed of mechanized units instead of vice-versa.
>>714716
>Also, the only completely mechanised army of the was was that of the US. This should speak volumes of how much of a mechanised was it really was.
The marines were not mechanized, yet they were very much the army of the Pacific, so I do not consider this statement to be truthful.
As far as the army in Europe and North Africa, yes. Absolutely, mechanization there existed on a scale unprecedented. However, one must also consider that the American military was one of the best equipped of the entire war, so it comes as no surprise then, that with its factories not even coming close to being bombed by enemies, and with an industrial capacity far superior to that of the USSR (considered to be the main industrial power of the time), that America and her armies should be the best equipped and mechanized. In fact, if this were not so, then we should conclude that the commanders of the American military were wasting their opportunity to exploit the recent ideas developed by, as you put it, the general principle of 'maneuver' warfare.
But let's talk about Blitzkrieg.
>No. What Blitzkrieg is, is just another propaganda buzzword. Historians usually shy away from using that meme and prefer, for example, bewegungskrieg.
Well, frankly you are addressing an established idea. But since you have admitted you are already nitpicking, additionally it does not do not concern me to argue for what it is called, nor what you care to call it, or why for whatever reason you choose to assign this worn out and useless moniker of 'buzzword' to it, other than to communicate you are simply tired of the word and wish to delve into more obscure German language not accessible to global audience. Which is fine by me, as a speaker of German to some degree, anyway.
>>723065
The French did not grasp the concept of combined arms is what they did not do. In failing to utilize their aircraft in addition to their tanks and infantry, they ultimately failed to apply pressure to choke-points --a point that Germany succeeded in doing amazingly well.
>What you are describing and what the germans utilised to great effect is maneuver warfare. This wasn't an inherently german innovation nor is it tied to interwar mechanisation specifically. Mechanisation and aviation, when applied with a proper doctrine, did of course enchance it, though It has existed way before that in concept and practise if not in modern codified form.
The fact is that the Interwar period saw the development of the aviation and mechanized inventions used during WW1. So prior to these inventions, maneuver warfare was not so viable as opposed to the kind of warfare we saw in WW1, which can be argued as being more materiel then anything, I suppose, but now with these inventions we could obviously see that the encirclement was now going to be the new element of warfare.
>>723148
>The French did not grasp the concept of combined arms is what they did not do. In failing to utilize their aircraft in addition to their tanks and infantry, they ultimately failed to apply pressure to choke-points --a point that Germany succeeded in doing amazingly well.
You got it backwards. It is not that the French did not grasp the concept, they did - as shown by the air attacks on the river crossings on both the Meuse and the Somme - but rather they were unable to employ it because of Germans air superiority.
The allied attempts to wrestle back control of the skies even resulted in higher than expected losses for the Luftwaffe. That is until the allied airforces were pretty much broken and the German superiority in the air was replaced by basically absolute supremacy during the collapse of the Weygand line.
>>723133
The US Army is not the USMC.
>>723148
>So prior to these inventions, maneuver warfare was not so viable as opposed to the kind of warfare we saw in WW1
To a degree, but I feel as if the inflection here a bit misleading. For the relatively brief period in the latter half of the XIX century and the years of WWI and the surrounded circumstances especially, yes, trench was superior to maneuver. But this isn't an absolute. There's always been a tugwar between those two aspects of warfare with either one being on top in different times and regions. For example, the War of Independence of Estonia in 1918-1920 was largely one of maneuver warfare. Only when the concentration of men and guns per km2 reached the levels comparable to those of the Western Front did it become dominated by trench warfare and static defenses at places.
Also, encircling, which has always been an element of warfare, isn't the defining action or goal of maneuver warfare. It's literally out maneuvering your opponent instead of engaging in grand battles. This doesn't specifically mean encircling at all costs, but even just moving in or pulling back to secure advantageous positions and forcing the enemy into an uncomfortable one, making and taking opportune envelopments, concentrated attacks and exploitations of weak-points etc. Encirclement is a sort of a jackpot which can be achieved if everything is and goes in ones favour. It's certainly not the one true aim maneuver warfare by which conflicts should be categorized. You can successfully pull off maneuver warfare without achieving any large-scale encirclements.
>>723133
>Well, frankly you are addressing an established idea.
An idea first established by whom? German propaganda in conjunction with panzer, poles and bratwurst? Not exactly a sacred cow, me thinks.
>it does not do not concern me to argue for what it is called, nor what you care to call it
Here's the thing, tho. Why even call it blitzkrieg? What value, besides propaganda, does it have to call an exemplary operation of maneuver warfare which superbly displayed and exploited interwar innovations in both materiel and thinking and became a huge influence for future modern military doctrine. Why use Blitzkrieg, literally a progabanda buzzword
>noun
>1.
>a word or phrase, often sounding authoritative or technical, that is a vogue term in a particular profession, field of study, popular culture, etc.
carrying implications which are undesirable at best and untruthful at the worst. For what purpose? What is gained?
>>722399
>But it's true kid
[citation needed]
>b-b-but my desperate blather:
>>722399
>>722402
>>722403
>>722404
>>722406
All of which fails to prove your argument since it never happened in the US army.
>>722996
sorry you have no sources and have to emote.
Meanwhile at the end of the day you're wrong.
>>722427
We moved to semiautomatic rifles worldwide and not boltaction rifles, kiddo.
>>723457
>All of which fails to prove your argument since it never happened in the US army.
>Several paragraphs literally dedicated to the squad composition of the US army.
Well mem'd, friend :^)
>>723457
>I'm 15 years old and have no reading comprehension whatsoever
Stop it garand kid
>>722404
>This is one reason that they continued to equip their riflemen with the outdated Mauser bolt-action or the short-ranged machine-pistol; even though the well-developed German arms industry was capable of providing its riflemen with a more sophisticated long-arm, it did not because the MG was the only weapon in the infantry squad that mattered.
>literally introduced a semi-automatic rifle during the war
When you're going to try and pretend you know something, look less like an uninformed idiot when you write paragraphs on it.
>>722402
>and squad tactics that invited the loss of unit cohesion
Patently false. US rifle tactics had immense success against the Germans in Italy and France, and the German style led to an inflexibility that cause their entire line to become untenable if flanking was even a possibility.
Makes sense considering the Allies won most infantry fights and Germany didn't.
>>724049
>German style led to an inflexibility
Squad level german tactics actually went the other way around, pal. There are alot of accounts on which US squads couldn't get fire superiority over german defenses unless they called outside support such as mortar fire or plain artillery.
>>724075
>squad level
Haha, no. There are a lot of accounts of German infantry folding due to inflexibility and poor flank support firepower.
>>724080
>literally an uncited wehraboo article
This is fucking priceless.
>argument is postwar US military organization resembled Germany's more
>there are people still arguing for such an actual reorganization to take place because it hasn't
https://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/rethinking-rifle-company
so... this is the power... of being a wehraboo?
>>724025
>Arguing over semiautomatic rifles
>not knowing that the MG matters first.
The point is that at squad level, MG is king. Sure is a good thing to have more firepower at disposal in the squad in the form of semiautomatic rifles or proper assault rifles but the center was and is the MG. In fact modern squad composition on NATO and US armies coincidentally seems to mirror what the Panzergrenadier squads did 70 years ago. 2 fireteams with two MGs as the center of them.
The US learnt it's lesson when it tried to emulate the MG-34/42 in the form of the M-60, assigned to 10 men squads by vietnam era
>>724107
>The US learnt it's lesson when
It did what it had already been doing and assigned MG teams at the platoon level.
Literally a non-debate. You'd be better off arguing adapting the FN mini to replace the role of automatic rifleman was a closer emulation of the use of an LMG in WWII.
>>724107
You seem to be using decent information, but reaching the wrong conclusions. I recommend you read "On Infantry," by John English and then rejoin a discussion like this in the future. Cheers.
>>720436
yeah the last time a world war happened ended up so great for france
Why is /his/ full of arrogant people who say "You're wrong," don't expound upon it, and then tell them to read this book? Why don't they share what they know? Isn't this a place of discourse?
>>726413
Because this is the containment board for contrarian biased fanboys, racist doomsayers, and literal cultists.
>>726446
>racist
I haven't been here for a while, but maybe I shouldn't be surprised to see that word uttered unironically here.
>>724107
>The US learnt it's lesson when it tried to emulate the MG-34/42 in the form of the M-60, assigned to 10 men squads by vietnam era
The US in no way emulated the German type of squad organization. The M60s were carried one per fireteam according to standard USA fire&movement doctrine. Germany went with squads composed of an MG team and a rifle team, not two equal fireteams making a squad. They kept that type of organization until the 2000s.
>semi automatic rifles can provide a faster rate of fire than machineguns
mg34 900 rpm
98k aprox. 15rpm
m1 garand 24rpm
m1 bar 650 rpm
5x15+900=975
9x24+650=866
(assumes the mg teams are providing ammo and shit thereby not firing for simplicity. Does not calculate smgs due to variable range)
germans had greater local fire support in pure rate of fire. And this is being generous by not citing the mg42. Ameriboos are fucking faggots
>>726553
>two squads centered around machineguns
>SEE, NOT A MG AND A RIFLE TEAM
lel, you are completely oblivious. This is clearly replication of the concept albeit with more machineguns per squad. Notice how able baker charle doesn't survive the war...
>>726413
same reason people copypasta from uncited blogs and pass it off as gospel
recommending a book on /his/ should be the standard actually tbqh. we're here to learn.
>>723984
Look at Brecourt manor.
In the end it was rifle squads with machine guns in support that defeated the German style of machines in their rifle squads. End of story.
That's why Germany adopted American infantry norms and tactics.
