74OA said:

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JJMt said:

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Front line leaders were more willing to just let artillery hammer a position before pushing troops or even bypassing a known strong point to allow it to be hit with bombs and artillery and then mopped up by follow on units.

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My dad wrote a novel set in Germany during WW 2 (his main character was an Aggie!). My dad went to Germany in the 80s (I think) to do research on the settings and geography to make sure that he did not make any dumb mistakes. While there, he met an old German soldier from a Panzer unit and they talked for quite a while. The German soldier complained bitterly about exactly what you describe - he said that the U.S. forces wouldn't engage and fight like real men, but would hold off and simply pound the German lines with artillery.

It's my impression that artillery is one of the areas in which the U.S. has always excelled. I wait to hear, though, what the more knowledgeable contributors to this board have to say.

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As if the Germans wouldn't have done the same if they'd had similar resources at their disposal. Americans go into warfare with no intention of fighting fairly. That's for the losers to whine about.

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Exactly. One of the biggest "undoings" of most German campaigns was their inability to sustain initial successes because of material and manpower shortfalls. In the beginning, when no one was prepared, this wasn't so telling, but when the "unbeaten" finally were prepared, it began to tell more and more. They bet on a fast war and lost. Their industry didn't even go on a full war footing until after Stalingrad had fallen. Even though they were producing more equipment at the end of the war than they were at the beginning, they couldn't deliver it where it was needed, couldn't sustain it when it was there and could barely train any one to operate it.

Tactically and operationally very good to excellent up until the last months of the war, their logistical support was marginal to poor the entire time.

JJMt said:

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Any idea why that was? The Germans certainly aren't stupid and knew as well as we did that logistics wins wars. Why didn't they do better at it? Or we pretty good at cutting their logistics chains up with our air war?

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Same reason you don't let the Lance Corporal whose friends all got killed in the war and who is really, really pissed off about it be in charge of your country.

Serious answer: I suppose the Germans were counting on American isolationism to stay FDR's hand, and that they could reason with the British after knocking out the French. The German general staff types knew very well they wanted no part in a two front war , they figured they could settle things in the west, let the Brits keep their empire, then have the cataclysmic showdown to destroy communism once and for all in the east.

Hindsight is 20/20 and obviously they grossly misread the British willingness to keep the war going and of course FDR's zeal in defending the USSR. That said, even at the 11th hour when war with the US was only a pretext away, it was still a significant tactical blunder to gift FDR with the declaration. They should have made Roosevelt find some excuse (he would have) at least in an attempt to sow a little political division in the US.

There were a lot of reasons. Not sure that I can recall them all, but: inability to deal with poor transportation systems outside of Western Europe, insufficient mechanization, insufficiently robust logistical tail and we pounded what they had.

The German Army was built initially to be light, fast and to fight a Continental war (primarily in Western Europe). The Luftwaffe was a tactical air force and that never changed. Other than submarines, the Kriegsmarine was no factor and generally the OKW wanted to know why they were bothering to build surface ships at all beyond coastal protection. The distances in a Western Europe war are not so great. The robust logistical system to fight the war they ended up with was not developed, and when it was, it was too haphazard and late.

To gain and keep the German people's support for war, Hitler needed to continue to insure that their newly restored prosperity was not adversely affected by it. So industry did not go on a war footing, new and better weapons development was delayed, expansion of the Wehrmacht was slow, increased mechanization was slow, etc., etc. because all that took away from civilian consumer products and cost a lot of money. He believed the war would be won quickly and that it was not necessary to spend the money now to advance those systems.

There are a lot of other reasons tied to industrial politics, lack of genuine standardization, over-engineering, over-finishing, dispersion of money and time on too many projects that amounted to little or nothing, too many different systems to support logistically....

For insights into why the Germans did war the way they did, I highly recommend Richard Citino's The German Way of War.

What it boiled down to, in the 20th century, was that their tactical brilliance couldn't save their strategic stupidity.

Langenator said:

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For insights into why the Germans did war the way they did, I highly recommend Richard Citino's The German Way of War.

What it boiled down to, in the 20th century, was that their tactical brilliance couldn't save their strategic stupidity.

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The German front line officer had to get permission to make decisions, where the US front line officer was empowered to make decisions as the situation dictated

ABATTBQ87 said:

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Langenator said:

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For insights into why the Germans did war the way they did, I highly recommend Richard Citino's The German Way of War.

What it boiled down to, in the 20th century, was that their tactical brilliance couldn't save their strategic stupidity.

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The German front line officer had to get permission to make decisions, where the US front line officer was empowered to make decisions as the situation dictated

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Actually, the German army delegated considerable independent authority to lower echelons and front line leaders. The concept is called Auftragstaktik. It was developed long before WWII and was the foundation for German tactical excellence.

Langenator said:

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For insights into why the Germans did war the way they did, I highly recommend Richard Citino's The German Way of War.

What it boiled down to, in the 20th century, was that their tactical brilliance couldn't save their strategic stupidity.

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Yes, simply put, they bit off more than they could chew. Throughout, the German general staff repeatedly counseled Hitler that they weren't ready logistically to start the war, would be overstretched supplying a major force in Africa and did not have the resources to prevail in a two front war unless Russia collapsed in the first year. He ignored them.

74OA said:

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Rabid Cougar said:

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JJMt said:

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Front line leaders were more willing to just let artillery hammer a position before pushing troops or even bypassing a known strong point to allow it to be hit with bombs and artillery and then mopped up by follow on units.

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My dad wrote a novel set in Germany during WW 2 (his main character was an Aggie!). My dad went to Germany in the 80s (I think) to do research on the settings and geography to make sure that he did not make any dumb mistakes. While there, he met an old German soldier from a Panzer unit and they talked for quite a while. The German soldier complained bitterly about exactly what you describe - he said that the U.S. forces wouldn't engage and fight like real men, but would hold off and simply pound the German lines with artillery.

It's my impression that artillery is one of the areas in which the U.S. has always excelled. I wait to hear, though, what the more knowledgeable contributors to this board have to say.

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Said the team that infiltrated entire armor divisions through impenetrable forests, not once but twice (1940 and 1944) and attacked multiple nations without provocations or warning. Yep... fighting like real men.

Let's no forget using anti aircraft guns to shoot tanks before the tanks could get into range with their own guns.....and using the best site optics in the world... totally unfair.

Russians were no slouch with artillery either and were rather good at the good ol' massed "overwhelm you with numbers" assaults too.

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.......not to mention murdering defenseless civilians in their millions. Manly, indeed.

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Germans and Russians were masters of this, and did it at a level far above ours, but we murdered a half a million defenseless civilians in one night ourselves in the Tokyo napalm firebombing and then again had similar numbers firebombing N Korean cities about 5 yrs later. I'm guessing you find Curtis Lemay to not be very "manly, indeed" based on those same criteria.

expresswrittenconsent said:

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74OA said:

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Rabid Cougar said:

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JJMt said:

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Front line leaders were more willing to just let artillery hammer a position before pushing troops or even bypassing a known strong point to allow it to be hit with bombs and artillery and then mopped up by follow on units.

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My dad wrote a novel set in Germany during WW 2 (his main character was an Aggie!). My dad went to Germany in the 80s (I think) to do research on the settings and geography to make sure that he did not make any dumb mistakes. While there, he met an old German soldier from a Panzer unit and they talked for quite a while. The German soldier complained bitterly about exactly what you describe - he said that the U.S. forces wouldn't engage and fight like real men, but would hold off and simply pound the German lines with artillery.

It's my impression that artillery is one of the areas in which the U.S. has always excelled. I wait to hear, though, what the more knowledgeable contributors to this board have to say.

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Said the team that infiltrated entire armor divisions through impenetrable forests, not once but twice (1940 and 1944) and attacked multiple nations without provocations or warning. Yep... fighting like real men.

Let's no forget using anti aircraft guns to shoot tanks before the tanks could get into range with their own guns.....and using the best site optics in the world... totally unfair.

Russians were no slouch with artillery either and were rather good at the good ol' massed "overwhelm you with numbers" assaults too.

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.......not to mention murdering defenseless civilians in their millions. Manly, indeed.

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Germans and Russians were masters of this, and did it at a level far above ours, but we murdered a half a million defenseless civilians in one night ourselves in the Tokyo napalm firebombing and then again had similar numbers firebombing N Korean cities about 5 yrs later. I'm guessing you find Curtis Lemay to not be very "manly, indeed" based on those same criteria.

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Surely you do not conflate the state-sponsored murder of people in concentration camps, by deliberate starvation and mass execution with collateral damage while attacking legitimate targets of war with the technology available at that time.

Because of the nature of Japanese industrialization, Tokyo was riddled with hundreds of facilities directly supporting the Japanese war effort and were all legitimate targets. Only when precision bombing failed to be effective were area attacks adopted.

For military targets sited within civilian areas, the International Law of War assigns responsibility for any noncombatant casualties on those who placed those targets among civilians, not on the attackers.

"Whatever may be the moral ambiguities of the so-called democratic nations, and however serious may be their failure to conform perfectly to their democratic ideals, it is sheer moral perversity to equate the inconsistencies of a democratic civilization with the brutalities which modern tyrannical states practice."
(Reinhold Niebuhr, 1892 1971, theologian and pacifist)

USA*** said:

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JJMt said:

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Eisenhower, who was MacArthur's Chief of Staff, was extremely critical of him. As just one example of his criticisms, MacArthur refused to disperse his aircraft despite repeated warnings of a Japanese attack. As a result, his entire Air Corps was destroyed on the ground, if I remember correctly.

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The attack took place about 10 hours after the Pearl Harbor raid. Still, no real excuse for the lack of preparation with what forces McA had at his disposal and just as at pearl Harbor, sabotage was feared more than surprise attack. Probably wouldn't have made much difference given they were too few for the AOR, too piecemeal in makeup and in general too poorly trained and equipped.

The result of the "false economy of peacetime" or as it is called now the "peace dividend".

Brereton, McA's air chief, gets blamed for having his planes destroyed mostly on the ground, but that was mostly bad luck and unfortunate timing. The Japanese had already been making raids around the PI. He wanted to bomb Formosa, but was ordered not to bomb up his planes and only conduct a recce mission instead. So he launched the recce mission (3 bombers) and all the serviceable fighters and most the remaining bombers (stayed local). By the time the recce bombers had returned to refuel, the fighters where already on the ground refueling and the bombers had landed to finally bomb up for a raid. That's when they got caught by the Japanese. While there was a squadron of fighters up, they were low on fuel, outclassed and out numbered.

The unfortunate part of it was is that Bereton had launched them at the right time to avoid getting caught on the ground....had the Japanese raid taken off on time. They had been delayed by weather.

Obviously, this is a simplified overview.

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If my memory is serving me well, I'm thinking McArthur's air fleet of fighters consisted of nothing but old airframes - the Buffalo and the P-35, perhaps some P-26 Peashooters and P-36 Hawks. I'm not sure if there were any more modern P-40 Warhawks in the Phillipines at the time. But yeah, those Buffalos and P-35s would be chewed up by Japanese aviators in superior fighters such as the A6M2 Zekes, with those pilots having recent real-time combat experience.

One big thing about the difference in German artillery and American artillery is that the Germans were still using horse power to transport a fair amount of their guns And most of their ammunition train as to oppose to the American artillery was entirely mechanized And this was in 1944 and 45.

Actually, McA's fighter force consisted of mostly P-40s and some P-35s. The Philippine Army Air Corps had P-26s. None were a match for the A6M2 in the classic "turn and burn" dogfight. Which is why the successful Flying Tigers used tactics that played to the strength of the P-40 and didn't dogfight Japanese fighters ( though they faced few A6M2. That was almost exclusively a naval fighter and the China front was supported primarily by the Japanese Army)

Here is a good article from Air Force Magazine that covers it pretty well....

Disaster in the Philippines

Good article.

MacArthur did something in Mexico pre WW1 along a railroad from Vera Cruz that got him recommended

for the MOH ! Don't remember the details but will investigate.

For a good report on this go to historynet.

It was a recon from Vera Cruz in 1914 after the Mexicans had done something to the US who brought 7,000

troops to take Vera Cruz.

we had no RR engines so Mac-- went further into Mexico to try and get some . Lots of armed battles

resulted. He was recommended for the MOH but turned down due to politics.

CT'97 said:

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To the original OP, I had the opportunity to spend a week touring Normandy up through Falaise with a group of wounded British and US soldiers and marines. It was a British run program so had British staff and they brought along a couple of British history professors.

First and foremost the British have much more of a respect and understanding of WW1 and Montgomery's accomplishments there are where his support starts. This is also where the impression that the US is the johnny come lately that shows up at the end after the hard fighting is over, mop up the remnants of the German army and take all the credit. Of course we get the opposite narrative in the US, that the British and French were faffing about for years and the US shows up and shows them how it's done. Like all things the reality is somewhere in the middle.

The distinct difference between the British perspective and the US was noticeable. As far as Montgomery goes the overall impression was that at Normandy Montgomery was doing the hard fighting against the best Germany Panzer and SS units while the US was fighting old men and foreign conscripts. The historians corrected this to some extent, the US did face the Panzer Lehr division Germany's only fully mounted division, but still held to this primary opinion. On the stalled push to Caen they held to the opinion that he had to be cautious so as not to expose his flank to the heavy Panzer divisions to his north.

I think all the British senior officers felt the impact of the man power shortages and utter devastation that WW1 had on their country and were determined not to allow that to happen again. Even our own leadership admitted after the war to not fighting at the invasion of Germany the same way we fought at Normandy. Front line leaders were more willing to just let artillery hammer a position before pushing troops or even bypassing a known strong point to allow it to be hit with bombs and artillery and then mopped up by follow on units.

I also think it has to do with a very steady methodical way of British thinking that doesn't allow for a lot of aggressive out of doctrine attacks. That is a contrast to the leaders we hold in high regard who are aggressive and almost impulsive to a fault. So I think some of the differences in understanding comes from a different set a values being used to judge the person.

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DDay hardly showing up at the end !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In an attempt to stay on target and ask about possibly over-rated generals in World War II, what was Charles de Gaulle's most important accomplishment? Sure, the entire French government and military crumbled under the German blitzkrieg in 1940 and there was no one left to stand up against Germany except for de Gaulle. He rode the Allies coattails and claimed credit for the liberation of France. But he was a pain for Allied leadership more often than not.

Only recently from reading Ian Toll's trilogy, I learned that MacArthur had accepted $500,000 (approximately $8,000,000 in today's money) from Philippine President Quezon in January 1942 as "payment" for his pre-war service. Dwight Eisenhower was also offered money by Quezon, but considered it unseemly and declined.