Surveying the Combatants

In the previous six articles, I have devised a way of rating the weapons effectiveness of various infantry battalions fielded by the Germans and the allies. This rating was expressed in Kilograms of metal and high-explosive that a given battalion, assumed to be at full strength in personnel and weapons, could produce in one minute of combat. To better understand what these figures imply for the men who fought, the figures must be compared. To simplify the comparison, I will take each weight of fire figure in Kilograms, divide by 100, and round off. Furthermore, I will sort the figures in descending order so that the reader can see straight off which battalions were the most powerful:

11...German Panzergrenadier Battalion
9....German regular Grenadier Battalion
9....German Paratrooper Battalion
7....German Volksgrenadier Battalion
5....US Infantry Battalion
5....French Infantry Battalion
4....British Infantry Battalion
3....Soviet reduced-strengh Rifle Battalion

Significantly, the allied units occupy the bottom slots of this table. In most cases, they are out-gunned by 2 or even 3 to 1.

Much hay is made accusing the allies of relying on overwhelming aerial and artillery firepower to win the victories they achieved in 1944-45. In fact, the allies did use a lot of artillery and close air support in their style of warfighting, and I hope the table above makes it clear why this had to be so. Factor in also the defensive, often dug-in or even fortified posture of the German troops during the final year of the war, and it becomes overwhelmingly apparent why the allies had to use so much firepower to defeat the Germans. It wasn't, as has been suggested, that the allies lacked enough 'fire in the belly' to go after the Germans (as if hand-to-hand and bayonet actions were really that common in the 1940's!), it was simply that at the level where infantry combat is decided, the allies lacked enough organic firepower to counter and supress what was being fired at them from the German lines. Thus, there was a heavy reliance on artillery and close air support to tip the scales and allow the allied infantry to close with their opponents.

None of this, of course, is apparent without a detailed survey of weapons and unit organizational structures. Telling sly half-truths on the internet is far easier and faster than conducting the research needed to understand the complex factors underlying relative unit strengths. Perhaps, the lesson in all this is that history, like all things, is far more complex than we give it credit for. Beware of the cozy, well-accepted "truths" that emerged out of the Second World War. While they are sometimes true in certain circumstances, they are rarely as universally applicable as some would have you believe.

The Combatants VI

The French Army of Liberation

Of the larger allied armies of the final year of the war, the French Army of Liberation is one of the least well documented in the English language. There are sources available, though, leading one to conclude that some of the prevailing ignorance regarding these French troops is more a matter of choice and bias than an absolute lack of information. It is bad enough to see the same old nonsense being repeated on the internet, but this willful ignorance is also present in recent historical works by well-known authors who should have either known better or done better research before they displayed their ignorance (or national biases) in published volumes.

The French army of 1944-45 bears scant resemblance to the large army that was handily defeated by the Germans in the Spring of 1940. The Army of Liberation, as the French refer to it, was a seasoned, well-led, and ultimately victorious force. The part of this organization called the French First Army was one of the most successful allied field armies on the western front during the campaign in NW Europe, and its operations are well worthy of study. During periods of time when the other allied armies were bogged down in front of German lines, the French First Army moved decisively, rupturing German defensive lines and capturing entire corps of German troops. Because historical documentation of the operations of the entire 6th Allied Army Group (French First Army and U. S. Seventh Army) has taken a distinct back seat to boatloads of volumes describing operations of the U. S. 12th Army Group, the contributions of the French First Army remain comparitively unknown.

In terms of weapons, the major units of the French army used weapons provided by the U.S.A. Their unit organization as well was largely patterned after 1943-style American organizational forms. By organizational tables, a regular battalion of French (or French colonial) infantry was equipped with these weapons:

Carbines M1C, 132 each, 30 rpm, 7 grams
Rifles M1903, 387 each, 20 rpm, 9.85 grams
60-mm mortar M2, 6 each, 8 rpm, 1360 grams
50-Cal Heavy MG M2HB, 3 each, 236 rpm, 46.01 grams
30-Cal Light MG M1919A6, 6 each, 203 rpm, 9.85 grams
30-Cal Auto Rifle M1918A1, 27 each, 150 rpm, 9.85 grams
30-Cal Heavy MG M1917A1, 8 each, 250 rpm, 9.85 grams
81-mm mortar M1, 6 each, 8 rpm, 3145 grams

Thus, the French battalion could produce a weight of fire totalling 457 Kilograms or 1,005 pounds in one minute. The only real difference in the French armament was the use of bolt-action M1903 rifles with a rate of fire that was about two-thirds of the semiautomatic M1 rifle used by U. S. infantry units. Like the U. S. units they were patterned after, the French battalions lacked a weight of fire that could contend with the prevalence of belt-fed machine-guns and heavy mortars found in German units of like size. Tellingly, soon after the war the French adopted organizational structures that equipped approximately one-third of every infantry squad with submachine-guns as a way of increasing the infantry's weight of fire.

The Combatants V

German paratroopers, armored infantry, and Volksgrenadiere

A curious aspect of the German armed forces in the last year of the war was the variety of organizational forms that performed essentially the same function. The emergence of these forms reflected the political infighting of the Third Reich, and in a sense, the units organized as part of these forms were the private armies of high political leaders. Thus, by the end of the war, regular German infantry, Volksgrenadiere (People's Grenadiers), Fallschirmjäger (paratroopers), Luftwaffe infantry, Marine (naval) infantry, SS infantry, and Reichsarbeitdienst (Labor Service) infantry were all fulfulling an infantry combat role in the German armed forces.

Two variants of these, and a legitimately independent form of infantry, the armored infantry, were commonly encountered by allied forces. Indeed, on the western front, perhaps one-half or more all German infantry battalions were Fallschirmjäger, Volksgrenadiere, and Panzergrenadiere (armored grenadiers). For this reason, I wish to discuss these units briefly and point out their weights of fire.

Both the Panzergrenadiere and the Fallschirmjäger had heavy weights of fire, due to the generous allocation of belt-fed machine-guns and automatic anti-aircraft cannon in one or both unit types. A motorized Panzergrenadier battalion could reckon with:

Rifle Kar98, 345 each, 20 rpm, 12.83 grams
Sub MG MP40, 69 each, 150 rpm, 8 grams
Light MG MG42, 54 each, 250 rpm, 12.83 grams
Heavy MG MG42, 12 each, 500 rpm, 12.83 grams
8cm mortar, 6 each, 8 rpm, 3500 grams
12cm mortar, 4 each, 6 rpm, 16000 grams
2cm AA gun, 6 each, 200 rpm, 119 grams

This leads to a one-minute weight of fire of 1,116 Kilograms or 2,456 Pounds. This kind of unit had more than three times the number of belt-fed machine-guns in the front lines as a U. S. infantry battalion. As well, 2cm automatic cannon fired high explosive shells than could produce as many as 20 lethal or incapacitating fragments, sort of a way of saying that each 2cm high-explosive shell was equal to a shower of 20 machine-gun bullets.

The Fallschirmjäger were also very heavily armed:

Rifle Kar98, 216 each, 20 rpm, 12.83 grams
Sub MG MP40, 129 each, 150 rpm, 8 grams
Light MG MG42, 60 each, 250 rpm, 12.83 grams
Heavy MG MG42, 8 each, 500 rpm, 12.83 grams
8cm mortar, 13 each, 8 rpm, 3500 grams
7.5cm recoilless rifle, 2 each, 8 rpm, 5455 grams

This produces a one-minute fire weight of 905 Kilograms or 1,992 pounds. Again, this organization could easily out-shoot any allied infantry battalion it encountered.

The Volksgrenadiere were a late-war expedient meant to reduce manning in infantry units and boost their firepower with more automatic weapons. Although the Volksgrenadiere were German army units, the responsibility for their moral fervor was the province of the SS. The success of this hybid approach was not readily apparent, but in any case, the Volksgrenadiere on average fought as well as any other German army infantry unit. A VG battalion counted the following weapons:

Rifle Kar98, 168 each, 20 rpm, 12.83 grams
Rifle MP43/44, 114 each, 150 rpm, 7.8 grams
Light MG MG42, 27 each, 250 rpm, 12.83 grams
Heavy MG MG42, 8 each, 500 rpm, 12.83 grams
8cm mortar, 6 each, 8 rpm, 3500 grams
7.5cm infantry gun, 4 each, 8 rpm, 6000 grams

The resulting fire weight for one minute was 674 Kilograms or 1,484 pounds. This weight of fire is more on par with allied battalion fire weights, and notably, the Volksgrenadiere did not carry the same reputation for being difficult opponents as the paratroopers or Panzergrenadiere. While the élan of the other two groups played a role, their ability to generate overwhelming firepower was certainly a contributor to their reputation of being dangerous opponents.

The Combatants IV

British Infantry

During the Second World War, the British struggled to find effective formation structures for their army, and the infantry was no exception to this. Unlike most armies which had triangular structures and medium machine-guns at the battalion level, the British infantry battalion in NW Europe often had four rifle companies. Medium machine-guns were not organic to the British infantry battalion, but farmed out from machine-gun companies that were under the control of the divisional machine-gun battalion. Usually, though, a battalion could count on the support of four Vickers .303 medium machine-guns. Likewise, support from heavy 4.2-inch mortars was an asset controlled by echelons higher than battalion. This relative lack of belt-fed machine-guns meant the British battalion had a comparatively low ability to generate "metal on target", especially when compared to their opponents, the German Grenadier and Fallschirmjäger battalions. This may have pleased quartermasters but was a scourge for the infantry, who depended heavily on artillery support to achieve the suppression necessary to advance against dug-in German troops. It is of note that the British Army, like its U. S. counterpart, had placed great stock in marksmanship prior to the Second World War.

Many British battalions in Italy fielded only three rifle companies during 1944-45. Britain, like all the allied powers, suffered from infantry manpower shortages, and this caused the units to adopt modified orders of battle.

A four-company British battalion had the following weapons, with associated rates of fire per minute and weight in grams per bullet or shell:

Rifle No 4, 400 each, 20 rpm, 11.27 grams
Light MG Bren, 40 each, 150 rpm, 11.27 grams
Sub MG Sten, 52 each, 150 rpm, 8 grams
Mortar 3-inch, 6 each, 8 rpm, 4500 grams
Medium MG Vickers, 4 each, 225 rpm, 11.34 grams

These weapons produced a one-minute weight of fire equal to 446.39 Kilograms or 982.06 pounds. This is comparable to the weight of fire produced by a battalion of U. S. Infantry, but far short of the fire weight a German unit of comparable size could produce.

The Combatants III

Soviet Rifle Troops

Of all the armies of the Second World War, the Red Army is perhaps the least appreciated in terms of its achievements. Political issues and behavior to German civilians aside, the bald truth is that the Red Army was the largest contributor to the defeat of the German land forces. While hobbyists have long been fascinated with a very particular set of famous German units, the fact remains that by May 1945, practically every one of these celebrated German units had had its back broken by the Soviets. One should not be confused on this point: the credit for the defeat of the Third Reich goes in major part to the Soviet Union.

The bulk of the Soviet army were the rifle troops. Undermanned and poorly equipped with antitank weapons, the rifle troops of the Red Army fought with incredible tenacity and suffered staggering losses on the roads to Berlin, Warszawa, Budapest, Praha, and Wien in 1945. The losses were so high that rifle units in general were understrength. The following figures reflect this, and are meant to reflect a rifle division with a reduced establishment of some 5,300 men. The reader should note that while the division was downsized through such expedients as removal of entire battalions, the Soviets endeavored to maintain those battalions in the field at something like normal strength unless the division had fallen to extremely low levels of manpower. The Soviets generally had a triangular structure to their units, although this was modified for reduced-strength establishments. In the case of the 5,300 man division, for example, each regiment had only two vice the normal three battalions.

The figures for weapons follow:

Rifle M1891/30, 276 each, 20 rounds per minute, 11.98 grams/bullet
Light MG DP, 27 each, 150 rpm, 11.98 grams
Sub MG PPSh, 27 each, 150 rpm, 5.57 grams
Medium MG Maxim, 12 each, 250 rpm, 11.98 grams
82-mm Mortar, 6 each, 8 rpm, 3050 grams

Thus, this variant of reduced strength Soviet rifle battalion could produce some 320 Kilograms (703 pounds) of metal and high explosive in a minute of combat. Note this is roughly only one-third of what a German Grenadier battalion could produce.

The Combatants II: German Grenadiers

The standard infantry (Grenadier) battalions of the German army had an organization similar to that of the U. S. Army. The battalion had three rifle companies and one weapons company. However, the Germans used larger-caliber mortars and equipped every squad with a belt-fed machine-gun that had a very high rate of fire.

Thus, in a battalion versus battalion fight, the Germans could generate a considerably greater weight of metal and high explosives than their allied opponents. This ability contributed to the defensive ability (and reputation) of the German forces in no small fashion. As mentioned before, the Germans were the first to understand that weight of fire on a battlefield counts for more than good marksmanship.

Rather than walk through the calculations again, I'll simply post the relevant figures and a final total, against which the figures for the U. S. Infantry Battalion can be compared. Total weapons in a German battalion, their rate of fire per minute, and the projectile weight in grams, follows:

Rifle, Kar98: 288 each, 20 rpm, 12.83 grams
Light Machine-Gun, MG42: 39 each, 250 rpm, 12.83 grams
Sub Machine-Gun, MP40: 84 each, 150 rpm, 8 grams
Heavy Machine-Gun, MG42: 12 each, 500 rpm, 12.83 grams
Mortar, 8cm: 6 each, 8 rpm, 3500 grams
Mortar, 12cm: 4 each, 6 rpm, 16000 grams

The battalion total weight of fire is 890.13 Kilograms, or 1,958.43 pounds. Note what a difference the large-caliber mortars and belt-fed machine-guns make: The German battalion can generate almost twice the weight of fire as a U. S. Infantry battalion in one minute.

The Combatants I: The American Infantry

In this series of articles, I will describe combat organizations of various armies, and attempt to assign them a rating that addresses the weight of fire they could produce in one minute of combat.

To keep the analysis simple, the weight of fire will be the sum of the actual weight of metal and high explosives the fire produced by the weapons of these units. The weapons represented by the analysis will be those likely to be used in combat. Thus, while a U. S. infantry battalions might have many machine-guns dedicated to anti-aircraft defense, only those machine-guns likely to have been used in ground combat will be reckoned.

= = = = = =

A U. S. infantry battalion in the final year of the war was made up of three rifle companies and a heavy weapons company. The battalion included an antitank platoon of three 57-mm antitank guns, but these were rarely used during offensive operations and the men were often used to form an extra ad-hoc rifle platoon. The antitank platoon will not be included in the following calculations, and pistols will also not be included as they are used only at extreme short range and are practically more of a melee weapon than a regular infantry weapon.

So, each of the three rifle companies had three rifle platoons, and each rifle platoon had three squads of 12 men each. Each echelon from platoon on up also had headquarters units of varying size. For the sake of calculation, I'll assume every man in the rifle company is a potential combatant, or part of what can be termed the "bayonet strength". Considered in this fashion, a rifle company consisted of the following armament (10 men had M1911A1 pistols as primary armament):

44 Carbines, M1C
129 Rifles, M1
3 60-mm mortars, M2
1 50-Caliber Heavy Machine-Gun, M2HB
2 30-Caliber Light Machine-Guns, M1919A6
9 30-Caliber Browning Automatic Rifles, M1918A1

So how does one assign a "weight of fire" to these weapons? A good first step for weapons that fire bullets (as opposed to shells that explode), is to consider the sustained rate of fire. Sustained rate of fire is rarely described in books, so I will arbitrarily assume the sustained rate of fire to be 45 per cent of the weapon's cyclic (full-speed) rate of fire. This rate will be calculated in minutes and multiplied by the weight of the bullet. To this will be added the weight of the number of 60-mm mortar projectiles that can be realistically fired in one minute on a sustained basis. The resulting sum can be considered the "weight of fire" that this company could theoretically produce in one minute. Let's assign a sustained rate of fire and bullet weight to the smaller weapons:

M1C Carbine: 44 x 30 rounds/minute x 7.00 grams = 9.24 Kilograms
M1 Rifle: 129 x 30 rounds/minute x 9.85 grams = 38.12 Kilograms
M2 HMG: 1 x 236 rounds/minute x 46.01 grams = 10.86 Kilograms
M1919A6 LMG: 2 x 203 rounds/minute x 9.85 grams = 4 Kilograms
M1918A1 BAR: 9 x 150 rounds/minute x 9.85 grams = 13.30 Kilograms (Note 1)
60-mm Mortar: 3 x 8 rounds/minute x 1360 grams = 32.64 Kilograms

Total: 108.16 Kilograms of metal and high explosive in one minute, or 238 pounds.

For three rifle companies, then, the total would be 324.48 Kilograms or 713.86 pounds.

Repeating the above process for the battalion's heavy weapons company, the following weapons are identified:

6 81-mm mortars, M1
8 30-Caliber Heavy Machine-Guns, M1917A1

The weight of fire calculations for these are:

M1917A1 HMG: 8 x 250 rounds/minute x 9.85 grams = 19.7 Kilograms (Note 2)
81-mm Mortar: 6 x 8 rounds/minute x 3145 grams = 151 Kilograms

The total for the heavy weapons company is 170.7 Kilograms, or 375.54 pounds. Combined with the fire weight of the three rifle companies, the battalion can produce 495.18 Kilograms, or 1,089.4 pounds of metal and high explosive in one minute. While this figure may seem uninteresting at the moment, it will become more interesting when like figures are calculated for the infantry battalions of other armies of the period.

During the campaign in NW Europe, U. S. rifle companies began equipping each platoon with two additional BARs, for a total of 45 BARs in the battalion. This was an obvious response to the superior fire weight of German belt-fed machine-guns. In the Pacific Theater, the Marines recognized the inability of the BAR to generate a sufficient weight of fire and compensated by equipping every Marine rifle squad with three BARs.

Note 1: The BAR was a magazine-fed weapon with 20-round magazines. Magazine reload time accounts for lower rate of fire (cyclic rate of fire for the BAR was 550 rounds/minute).

Note 2: The M1917A1 was a water-cooled weapon and thus capable of longer bursts of sustained fire than its air-cooled cousins, the M1919A4 and M1919A6.

The Weapons the War left behind

Pictured is a Soviet 76mm infantry gun. Infantry guns were organized into batteries at the battalion and regimental levels of many Second World War armies. Their presence gave the battalion or regimental commander "pocket artillery" that was dedicated for his use. Infantry guns were one of many types of weapons that were phased out during or soon after the war, because they were insufficiently mobile or because other weapons systems took over their role.

Other guns that were replaced in the years following the war were anti-aircraft and antitank guns. Although light AA guns remain in the inventories of armies, the heavy pieces were gradually replaced by surface-to-air missiles. Antitank guns had grown so large by the war's end, that their mobility was restricted and their utility correspondingly limited. In the 1950s, France developed the first operational antitank guided missiles (ATGM) with powerful shaped-charge warheads. (The Germans had experimented with a prototype ATGM before the war ended, but it never achieved operational status.) As well, the Germans fielded the first recoilless rifles during the war -- another weapon that used a shaped-charge antiarmor warhead and that weighed far less than a conventional antitank gun. Antitank guns were replaced in large part by ATGMs and recoilless rifles during the 1950s and 1960s.

Likewise, antitank rifles were replaced by antitank rocket launchers. The German Panzerfaust was further developed by the Soviets and fielded as the RPG-2, and later, the RPG-7. After the war, specialized tank destroyer vehicles were gradually replaced by vehicles that mounted ATGMs. As famous as vehicles like the Jagdpanther were, they represented a functional dead-end that ATGM-carrying vehicles could easily surpass.

In the air, specialized dive-bombers faded away after the war, replaced by more general-purpose close-support aircraft. Propellor-driven combat aircraft have almost completely disappeared and have been replaced by jet-propelled aircraft. The first operational jet-propelled combat aircraft were fielded by the Luftwaffe in the final year of the war.

The war also demonstrated beyond a doubt that the era of battleships as a decisive weapon of naval combat was over. The development of naval weapons systems has evolved so dramatically since the war that naval combat today bears almost no resemblance to the actions of the Second World War. Landing craft, while still used, will likely never see another invasion on the scale of D-Day -- for the simple reason that such a massed fleet presents a magnificent target for a tactical nuclear weapon.

The end of the war also saw the first use of atomic bombs. To Germany's great fortune, the Third Reich collapsed before July 1945, else, a German city may well have been the world's first to be devastated by atomic fire.

Less dramatically, but easily as important, was a revolution in infantry warfare launched by Germany with the introduction of the MP43 assault rifle. The assault rifle was destined to replace both bolt-action and semiautomatic rifles, and, to relegate the submachine-gun to use by police and security forces. A near copy of the MP43, the AK47, has become the most widespread and famous assault rifle in the world. The Germans understood perhaps better than any other army of the time that good marksmanship meant far less in a battle than superior firepower -- thus the introduction of automatic rifles that could overwhelm an enemy with heavy fire.

Sources noted thus far. Future references to them will be in the abbreviated format indicated at the end of the source, e.g., [SAWICKI87].

The Festungen, Part I

Festung is the German word for "fortress". The use of garrisons in cities, whether truly fortified or not, was a common feature of German operational and strategic art during the final year of the war. Fortifications are emblematic of anything but mobile warfare, and so one must wonder how the Wehrmacht, so renowned for achieving swift victories through mobile warfare, came to rely so heavily on fixed defenses.

In truth, the bulk of the German forces were little motorized and even less armored. Very large parts of the German forces moved as armies had moved in the Age of Napoleon, that is to say, they were drawn by horse. If this doesn't square well with the popular image of Blitzkrieg, than that is because the popular image of German forces is a gross distortion of reality. By 1945, German mobility was even more constrained by vehicle shortages (SAWICKI87, p.157) and shortages of petroleum, oil, and lubricants. Faced with a lack of mobility in their own forces and confronted by enemies of superior mobility, the Germans made the conscious decision to sacrifice less mobile elements of their forces in fixed defense positions whose role was to deny the allies access to key centers of communication (cities), thus complicating unit movement and forward logistics support for the allied forces. These German formations were designated as Festungen.

To support the manning of these fortresses, the late-war German order of battle included hundreds of infantry, machine-gun, antiaircraft, antitank, engineer, and artillery battalions organized as fortress-specialists. They were organized much like their mobile counterparts, but with distinctly less motor and horse-drawn transport. While often not manned by personnel of the highest quality, these units were still capable of hard-bitten resistance, especially when fighting from within reinforced concrete bunkers. Additionally, other kinds of units were often found in fortresses - units such as Luftwaffe antiaircraft artillery (FlaK) battalions, people's militia (Volkssturm) units, ad-hoc units formed from reservists, personnel on leave, personnel recovering from wounds, etc. (Alarm battalions), and regular militia (Landesschutz) units.

Fortifications have traditionally allowed an army to exercise economy of force. Economy of force allows an army to mass its forces in areas that are critical and to man less important regions with fewer troops. The presence of fortifications, then, allows those fewer troops to manifest a more robust defense than they could otherwise.

One of the more persistent myths to emerge from the war was that fortifications were proven to be essentially useless and that their presence belonged to an earlier era of warfare. This belief is a fine example of a truism that has been unreasonably expanded to become an immutable fact. In truth, fortifications are still highly viable on any battlefield today - provided that their limitations are realized and accounted for. Fortifications cannot substitute for the presence of mobile reserves, and fortifications cannot be strong everywhere, from every aspect. The role of the mobile reserves, then, is to counter any enemy penetration of a fortified line that could potentially attack the fortifications from their weaker aspects. If a fortress is strong enough, and is backed by enough mobile reserves, it can prove incredibly difficult to take or even reduce. German mobile reserves and strong fortifications in Lorraine in 1944 combined to stop the advance of Patton's Third Army for three months - and then they fell back onto the Westwall, yet another fortified line. Patton's experience was not unique; all along the Westwall the allied forces, after an epic pursuit across western Europe, sputtered to a halt. Equally stymied was the Soviet 3rd Belorussian Front under the command of General Cherniakhovsky who assaulted heavy German fortifications in Ostprüssen (East Prussia) in October 1944. Cherniakhovsky committed no less than five Soviet combined-arms armies to his offensive, only to advance from 50 to 100 kilometers over a sixteen-day campaign that saw heavy casualties and no breakthrough. (See GLANTZ95, pp. 228-229 for more details.)

It was perhaps inevitable that the Germans would make use of fortresses while on the defensive - after all, the German Führer himself had fought for four years in the trenches on the western front of the First World War. He had directly experienced the strength that a well-organized fortified line could present, and, as strategic options ran out, he fell back on concepts that had served his First World War comrades well for years on end. His tendency to immobile defense became first apparent during the winter fighting around Moscow in 1941. German generals, shocked by the savagely cold weather and a resurgent Red Army, had implored Hitler to allow a general retreat on the eastern front. But Hitler, sensing the vaunted Wehrmacht might collapse into a rout if allowed to retreat too far, ordered the German soldiers to stand fast. The battlefield conditions peculiar to that winter allowed the German forces to survive in this fashion - and Hitler's renowned instinct for successful battlefield action soared ever higher. As the tide of war turned more and more against Germany, Hitler became ever more rigid in his insistence on "no retreat!", and what had proved applicable in the winter of 1941 became a death sentence for German forces later in the war as they were denied the advantages of tactical withdrawal and regrouping. The culmination of this tendency to rigid defense was the increasingly often heard decree that such-and-such a city would become a Festung and hold out as long as possible.

The cities designated as Festungen were many and varied. Some housed forces with a strength equivalent to a regiment, others contained tens of thousands of soldiers cobbled together from a bewildering variety of sources. I have never seen a complete list of the Festungen, and would hesitate to compose one as I'm sure I would miss many entries for such a list. However, it would be useful to mention some of them, along with a brief description of their operational or strategic role.

On the western front, certain Festungen fulfilled a strategic role - that of denying allied forces the use of key ports, in an attempt to restrict the tonnage of supplies the allies could reliably bring onto the continent. In this category fall the fortresses of Brest, Lorient, Saint-Nazaire, Dunkerque, Cherbourg, and Marseille. Some of these fortresses were not reduced and others were destroyed only after the allies expended significant effort. During and after the operations in Normandy, the U. S. Army assaulted and forced the capitulation of the fortresses of Cherbourg and Brest. Both battles were expensive affairs, and Brest in particular has been criticized as a battle that should have never happened.

In the case of Brest, senior leadership of the U. S. Army allowed itself to become mesmerized by an objective, and then rationalized that the U. S. Army could not be seen as having abandoned an objective once the army had started moving upon it. The truth about Brest is that the subsequent fighting destroyed the port that the allies desired and distracted the efforts of an entire U. S. corps during a period when absolutely every combat soldier was needed during the pursuit across France and subsequent initial assaults against the Westwall. The Germans under the command of General Ramcke could have been bottled up in Brest with much less effort and allowed to sit out the rest of the war. The actions taken against the Germans in Brittany were symptomatic of a larger allied issue and that was the planning for the Normandy landings had focused almost exclusively on the landing itself with very little thought given to what should take place once the allies advanced into the heart of France. The action at Brest alone cost the U. S. Army almost 10,000 casualties and netted a bag of some 38,000 German prisoners. Along the way in Brittany, the allies also subdued smaller Festungen at Dinard and Saint-Malo. Subsequent to the battle of Brest, the allies abandoned plans to assault the Festungen at Lorient and Saint-Nazaire, as the arithmetic of such combat had become painfully obvious to them.

Dunkerque was deemed unnecessary for the operation of allied logistics, and so the German division garrisoning the city sat out the remainder of the war while being invested by the Czechoslovak Armoured Brigade and French infantry units. Marseille represented an unqualified allied success, primarily because French General De Lattre understood the need for rapid action and shock effect. Soon after landing in southern France, De Lattre ordered the forces of French Army "B" to advance on Marseille and seize the city. This they did with admirable rapidity and thus prevented the German defenses in the city from coalescing effectively. For the remainder of the war, Marseille served the allied cause as a major supply port.

After a stunning advance across France, General Patton's U. S. Third Army was forced to reduce the tempo of its operations for lack of gasoline. While allied logistics caught up with Patton's forces, the German Ersatzheer (replacement army) conjured up a new division from school troops, stragglers, Luftwaffe personnel, and specialized fortress battalions. This new division, destined to become known as Division Nr. 462, was given the task of defending the fortress of Metz. Despite the heterogeneous character of this new division, it proceeded to defend the approaches to Metz with great energy. German forces that had been manhandled by the Third Army during the advance across France suddenly stiffened their posture and resumed their old habit of immediate counter-attacks when ground was lost. Aided by other forces, Division Nr. 462 succeeded in halting Patton's advance during three bitter months of combat that doubtlessly marked the low ebb of Third Army's operations in northwestern Europe. But from the German point of view, Lothringen (Lorraine) was German soil, and would be defended to the death - with the old forts of Metz playing a significant role. Such powerful fortifications proved practically impervious to allied airpower and artillery; even direct assaults by U. S. troops led to deadly underground engagements for which the U. S. forces were unprepared. The wettest weather in decades turned small streams into churning rivers and created a sea of mud that restricted armored operations to paved roads. It was not an auspicious period for the United States Army.

Next: The strategic role of the Westwall and Festungen on the eastern front

The Festungen, Part II

September of 1944 brought what the Germans came to think of as the “Miracle in the West” . . . a reversal of failing German fortunes, a sudden stiffening of German resistance along the Westwall, and a sudden loss of allied momentum as overstretched allied supply lines brought armored and motorized columns to a halt.

But this was no true miracle so much as it was a predictable consequence of the laws of warfare – high rates of advance by a victorious force cannot be maintained indefinitely. Even so, the allied forces arrived at the German border with enough force, and supplies for at least limited thrusts, that a lack of German resistance could have spelled an early end for the Third Reich. Given that the German forces in the west had been severely thrashed in the fighting in Normandy (most particularly in the Falaise Gap), it is not immediately clear to the casual reader of history just which elements of the German forces so energetically manned the Westwall and barred an easy entry into Germany.

The German forces were a hodge-podge of ravaged units retreating out of France and Belgium, Alarm units rushed forward, hastily-formed divisions created from Ersatzheer (Replacement Army) formations, and, most significantly, something like 100 battalions of fortress troops. While not a war-winning team, these German units manned the Westwall with enough troops to prevent the allies from easily penetrating this fortified line in the late summer of 1944. Allied troops noticed the change quickly: whereas before their patrols had shown stretches of the Westwall to be unmanned, suddenly the bunkers had occupants and German troops were darting between positions in the trenches connecting bunkers.

The reality was that the German line was weak – but in this case, so were the allies confronting them. The allied forces were at the end of their logistical tether – short on gasoline, large-caliber munitions for artillery, and riflemen (the last shortage a consequence of faulty estimations of infantry casualties that would be incurred in Normandy). Allied vehicles were worn out after the pursuit across France, and in any case, direly short of needed gasoline. While the allies sorted out their logistical problems, and in some cases, bulled ahead against furious German resistance, the Germans worked to convert their patchwork manning of the Westwall into a cohesive line of resistance behind which the battered Panzer divisions took shelter so that they could rebuild their striking power.

About the time the allies finally reestablished solid lines of supply to all areas of the front line, a breakthrough occurred – but it was the German forces who were attacking, some 26 divisions strong, in the Ardennes! A grueling five weeks followed in which the German attack into the Ardennes was blunted and repelled, and in which a subsequent German offensive into Alsace resulted in very bitter fighting for the U. S. Seventh Army and the French First Army. These dual offensives by the German forces in the winter of 1944/45 would have seemed the wildest of fantasies to the allies as they approached the Westwall in September, 1944. The key to the transformation that occurred was the Westwall itself, and the fortress troops who contributed the equivalent of 15 divisions of German troops to securing the line. Behind this fortified shield, Hitler rebuilt his Panzer forces and then struck the allied line in places where the allied forces were thinly manned.

And the Westwall was not particularly mighty – most bunkers had been built for pre-war weapons and could not house the larger antitank guns being used by the Germans in 1944. But the Westwall could provide positions of reinforced concrete and large stretches of ground filled with antitank obstacles, whose efficiency was every bit as high in 1944 as they had been in 1939. Although the Germans lacked adequate mobile reserves to secure a fortified line in September 1944, the relative weakness of the allied forces confronting the Westwall meant the line could, in most cases, hold the allies at bay. And so, the Westwall bought Germany five more months with which to resist, for after arriving in front of the line in September 1944, it was not until February 1945 that the Westwall was penetrated in enough places to seriously endanger its value as a defensive work. Once again, an old technique of warfare, fortifications, had proved their worth in an era defined by the swift movement of armored forces and the high-pitched whine of dive bombers bearing down upon the enemy.

The fortress units themselves were slowly integrated into regular German divisions, and thus served as a ready source of combat replacements. From apparently nowhere, over 100 battalions of specialist troops had rapidly manned a fortified line – and bought the Reich enough time to muster powerful counter-strokes against those forces seeking to consign the Reich to the realm of history. It was not the first rabbit that Germany pulled out a hat during the war, and it would not be the last. For the allies, it was a bitter lesson that meant defeating Germany implied defeating the entire German army; school troops, cripples, teenagers, all – and not just defeating the combat elements of the regular ground troops.

Next: Festungen in the east

1944 - 1945: Military History of the Final Year of the War

By way of introduction, this weblog will have a distinct focus of discussion, and that will revolve around two topics. These two topics are military operations during the final year of the Second World War in Europe, and the organization and combat power of the military forces of the nations involved.

There is one unfortunate administrative note that I am compelled to discuss immediately. This weblog will in no way serve to advance the propaganda of radical political ideologies, whether they be or tend to be fascism or communism. This is not to say, for example, that topics like the death camps will be avoided. But, the political aspects of nazism and communism will only be touched upon as they relate to the two primary topics of the weblog. This only makes sense as discussion of the formation of units like the 1. RAD-Division would lack significant background if a reader was not aware of what the ReichsArbeitDienst had been. On a related note, I dislike what one could term "formation fan clubs". The end of the war in Europe saw hundreds of division-level units in action -- far too many to expend excessive bandwidth on only one of them or a class of them. In my view, an SS Panzer Division is only as interesting as a Guards Tank Corps, or, for that matter, the Guards Armoured Division.

On a more positive note, I hope to use this weblog to distribute some of the hard-won and often obscure knowledge that I've accumulated over years of study. In that sense, this weblog will be like many others in that the focus of the weblog will be driven by the owner. Discussion of the entries is welcome as long as it remains on topic and doesn't serve any of the varied ego trips that internet discussion seems to so strongly encourage. I hope it goes without saying that advertisements, attacks, political rants, and so forth, will be deleted as soon as I see them. In other words, my goal for this weblog is for it serve as a means of learning -- and that goal will unfortunately require me to exercise censorship at times.

I am no fan of ludicrous nationalism, and this leads me to a final administrative note. In the weblog, many geographical features and areas will be mentioned. In what I consider an instance of ludicrous national egotism, nations tend to have a habit of renaming cities, rivers, etc., in other countries to suit their taste. Thus, one may know a large city in southern Germany as Munich, Muenchen, or Monachiem, depending on one's nationality. My standard in this regard is to simply call the place as the locals call it -- thus, I will speak of the Rhein River and not the Rhine. In instances where I think this may cause confusion, I will add a local version of the name in parenthesis, i.e., Meuse (Maas). Finally, German Umlauts will be handled by the convention of adding an "e" after the vowel concerned. Slavic names will present other problems and I may have to develop other conventions for them.

Why host yet further discussion on the Second World War? After more than sixty years, has the war not been discussed as much as possible? In general terms, there has been a lot of discussion, writing, study, and so forth about this event. But after more than thirty years of studying the war, it has become apparent to me that the military operations that finally defeated the Germans are often ignored or covered only superficially. In some ways, western military history of the war seems to cover the Ardennes Offensive and the crossing of the Rhein as the closing events of the war, with everything else being basically a road march across Germany. Soviet military history is better in the sense that the final operations of the war are covered in as much detail as those operations that took place earlier -- but then, for the Soviets, the climax of the war was the Battle of Berlin in April 1945. Besides what I have judged as superficial coverage of the final operations, I have also come to realize that much understanding of why battles had the outcomes they did hinges on the organization of the opposing sides. Too often, standard histories throw around terms like armies, corps, and divisions, expecting the reader to have a detailed grasp of what these terms mean in terms of the militaries involved. Too often, stereotypes of armies pervade popular understanding of the war -- and I hope to address some of these and reveal a more factual, if more complex, mosaic of organization that made the units what they were.

With all that said, I hope to post another article soon. The topic I intend to address is the role and organization of certain of the German Festungen, probably with a lot of emphasis on Festung Posen, an example for which I have a fair amount of information.

Cheers!

When the war started in 1939, the infantry of all nations lacked powerful personal antitank weapons. Most armies had ineffective antitank rifles, which fired an armor-piercing round that ranged in diameter from 7.9mm to 20mm (the modern versions of these are now known as anti-material rifles). While armies experimented with antitank grenades and mines, the U. S. Army revolutionized the infantryman's antitank capability in 1942 by introducing a rocket launcher popularly known as the Bazooka. Weapons using the same principles were developed by other armies, and by 1944, had become a common feature of the battlefield. While German antitank rockets accounted for nine per cent of Soviet tank losses in the summer of 1944, this figure jumped to 22 per cent for the tank losses of the Soviet 2nd Guards Tank Army during the Berlin Operation in 1945.

Source for statistic: Red Army Handbook 1939-1945, S. Zaloga and L. Ness, Sutton Publishing Ltd., 1998