What does the Battle of Shiloh have to do with this?Hornets nest, anyone?
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
We do know the French 'Dyle' plan envisaged the main German thrust being through Belgium as it historically was in World War One, so any German attack apart from the Ardennes would've come up against the mainstay of the French army. This would've at least prolonged the campaign if not ended in a stalemate.
I mean logistically Overlord was a nightmare due to the sheer amount of ships and men involved, it was a great feat that the Allies were able to ship over 2 million men in matter of months alone. Casualties were much lower in Dragoon because it was effectively a sideshow compared to Overlord.
Large number of German panzers heavily supported by aircraft pierce the Allied lines in one place and are followed by infantry. The Allies are caught totally by surprise by a quick and relentless German advance, expecting trench warfare instead. Several divisions are isolated in pockets or overrun and surrender near the Belgian-German border. The Germans reorganise their forces within two days and create an another pocket near the Belgian-French border, this time using double envelopment. The Allies are totally demoralised, the French leadership is paralysed by indecision. Within weeks, the Allied defence lines collapse totally.
Sounds possible? You can create as many scenarios as you want, the fact is that we only know the outcome of one scenario, i.e. the one that actually happened. If I told you that the Germans would make a breakthrough in the Ardennes and encircle the bulk of the Allied forces in Belgium before that actually happened, you would probably say that such an outcome was unlikely. One could just as easily create a scenario where the German advance is stopped in the Ardennes by hastily redeployed troops and the war lasts months or even years. The point is that we can only guess what would happen and predictions may be inaccurate.
In that case, I agree.
Last edited:
What does the Battle of Shiloh have to do with this?
Do you mean that the Battle of Shiloh wasn't fought near Kiev somewhere, and that Ulysses S. Grant wasn't a Waffen SS tank commander? Damn... I'm going to kill that guy from Wikipedia...
Just a few extra names to throw into the mix...
Gotthard Heinrici
Fedor von Bock
Semyon Krivoshein
I'm a big fan of these 3...
Gotthard Heinrici
Fedor von Bock
Semyon Krivoshein
I'm a big fan of these 3...
Further from Germany (and with supply lines going essentially only through the Rhone valley), well after Operation Bagration and at the end of the battle of Normandy. The Germans had to make some sort of strategic retreat, I guess (and morale was probably lower than in June). I don't remember reading that much about Fallshirmjager or other types of elite troops during operation Dragoon.
The second (or third) best generals of the napoleonian/ french revolution wars was the ARch Duke Charles of Austria, who almost lost all his battles (the third or second being the Field Marshall Davout who never ever lost one battles, he even won one just by being present, the Allied when learning he was in charge deciding simply to reply ...).
Funny it is not, to be so hightly ranked, while being a perfect looser. Fact is the man did give to military science almost as much as Napoleon itself, he simply did not the tools to use his theories at the moment (building the tools was what he did as minister).
Best generals for the ww2 is a ongoing discussion, while being an unclear question. Shall we judge them on the tactical level (a general have also to be a tactician), on the strategic level, or even Grand Strategic level?
For the later, no german would qualify; they were simply not understanding the concept of Grand strategy (only naval nations can produce individuals understanding it), and here we can safely consider people such as Mc Arthur, because he did have a Grand strategic vision of the war and of the world after the war (he is not the only one in thios category, but I used him as example).
For the strategy level, Manstein is a perfect example. Of all the german officers, he was one of the rare to always lay strategical goal.
On the tactical level, the french Jean de Lattre de Tassigny can be used as example : he was able to conduce a fighting retreat with an infanterie division that kept cohesion during the battle of france (rare indeed), and he even choosed where to fight, because of the possible touristic impact of the location (historical castle in the neibought, or place of the famous past battle). TO say he did have a crucial impact over the battle of France would be an overstatement, but on the tactical side his actions were decisive, often providing local victories. Shall he be put in a list of the 5 best? I doubt it.
SO the question is vast, and maybe it have to be reformulated.
Funny it is not, to be so hightly ranked, while being a perfect looser. Fact is the man did give to military science almost as much as Napoleon itself, he simply did not the tools to use his theories at the moment (building the tools was what he did as minister).
Best generals for the ww2 is a ongoing discussion, while being an unclear question. Shall we judge them on the tactical level (a general have also to be a tactician), on the strategic level, or even Grand Strategic level?
For the later, no german would qualify; they were simply not understanding the concept of Grand strategy (only naval nations can produce individuals understanding it), and here we can safely consider people such as Mc Arthur, because he did have a Grand strategic vision of the war and of the world after the war (he is not the only one in thios category, but I used him as example).
For the strategy level, Manstein is a perfect example. Of all the german officers, he was one of the rare to always lay strategical goal.
On the tactical level, the french Jean de Lattre de Tassigny can be used as example : he was able to conduce a fighting retreat with an infanterie division that kept cohesion during the battle of france (rare indeed), and he even choosed where to fight, because of the possible touristic impact of the location (historical castle in the neibought, or place of the famous past battle). TO say he did have a crucial impact over the battle of France would be an overstatement, but on the tactical side his actions were decisive, often providing local victories. Shall he be put in a list of the 5 best? I doubt it.
SO the question is vast, and maybe it have to be reformulated.
1. Zhukov
2. Guderian
3. Vasilevsky
4. von Manstein
5. Rokossovsky
Honourable mention - Konev
Rzhev was only Zhukov's blunder in the entire war, and in the end, it wasn't totally futile as Operation Uranus succeeded. He was consistently given toughest posts by Stalin, especially in the beginning and 99% of the time performed admirably, even in 1941-1942 with Stalin's consistent meddling. Operation Mars or no, a major Soviet offensive in 1942 was out of the question - inexperienced commanders and troops, too few advanced equipment, especially tanks
Vasilevsky is another general who consistently performed through the war with an encore performance in Manchuria.
Guderian doesn't need much explanation - guts to do what he did, even though most of his glory comes from his own work.
von Manstein - performed admirably until removed, with only a few, if any blunders, the same problem as Guderian.
Rokosovsky - another consisten general.
Finnish winter war generals weren't that great, they were simply good and the reason for their success was unpreparedness and bad command of Soviet troops.
2. Guderian
3. Vasilevsky
4. von Manstein
5. Rokossovsky
Honourable mention - Konev
Rzhev was only Zhukov's blunder in the entire war, and in the end, it wasn't totally futile as Operation Uranus succeeded. He was consistently given toughest posts by Stalin, especially in the beginning and 99% of the time performed admirably, even in 1941-1942 with Stalin's consistent meddling. Operation Mars or no, a major Soviet offensive in 1942 was out of the question - inexperienced commanders and troops, too few advanced equipment, especially tanks
Vasilevsky is another general who consistently performed through the war with an encore performance in Manchuria.
Guderian doesn't need much explanation - guts to do what he did, even though most of his glory comes from his own work.
von Manstein - performed admirably until removed, with only a few, if any blunders, the same problem as Guderian.
Rokosovsky - another consisten general.
Finnish winter war generals weren't that great, they were simply good and the reason for their success was unpreparedness and bad command of Soviet troops.
You don't need to be a good general when you have near infinite supply of a lot of stuff.
In regard to this, it is not true that the USA had inifite resources or at least it is only partially true... It was like that in theory, but in practice they actually had some problems with manpower (both in terms of quantity and quality - American infantry replacement system suxxed) and transportation (mostly during the early years, but even if you have enough transport ships, transporting and supplying troops and materiel all over the world and supplying all your allies with various stuff is still a logistical challenge). Just because sth was available in the USA didn't mean that it was available on the actual battlefield. They also lacked experience in pretty much everything and had to learn it the hard way. That's what it took so much time to unleash the US potential.
Germans didn't born with experience either. They started to get it by September 1, 1939.
So they had a head-start, since the USA entered the war in Dec 1941. Prior to that, they didn't really have many opportunities to gain real experience.
While I agree that the practical experience of the german army started on that day, you have to remember that the german army had a huge boon. Weimar was only allowed to keep a small army, and thus could afford to drill it to a very high standard and develop the seeds for the excellent NCO attitudes that almost won them the war. They could, and did afford to only recruit the best, and a good number of practical and theoretical people started out as weimarite soldiers. This very good, hands-on officer attitude never left the germans, and was an advantage the other sides simply did not have.
It seems they didn't learn well as in late 1944, they were still losing more men than Germans ( not civilians ) in spite of their terrific air supremacy. To this add chronic German lack of fuel, lack of reserves and lack of morale due to constant defeats. German Army that was on his knees in January 1945 almost brokethrough Allied Lines in Battle of the Bulge. It is quite interesting to see Hollywood producing a lot of heroic movies out of such an offensive.
I am pretty sure that US Army in the inter-war years was not that big either. As US didn't have compulsory military service, I would expect them to raise better quality officers.
The US Army was token during the inter-war period, but they didn't focus on the Army very much before 1941. In fact, military spendings were very small in general before 1940, unlike in case of Germany.
Compare the Operation Torch with the Operation Overlord and you will notice how much the Americans learned during that time. They were simply not ready for massive campaigns in 1942.
Not only France, US performance in Italy and NA is also poor compared to Germans. They couldn't defeat Kesselring until almost the war is over. Ok, Let's say, narrow geography of Italy was perfect for defensive warfare. Then look at NA, Germans devastated initial US forces in Tunisia. Then Patton who is above average general and infinite amount of US tanks, aircrafts, warships, supplies came in. With these Patton claimed a miraculous victory which he attributed to his genius for reading Rommel's so called book.
Please
So, it took the germans all of zero months to learn how to conduct a full-scale war against an entrenched and rather prepared enemy (Poland), while it took the americans almost a year to learn how to conduct a medium invasion against an already beaten and retreating enemy while having almost total local superiority in supplies, navy, and air? And still getting bloodied severely?
What are you trying to say, exactly? There is a general consensus that the German Army was the most efficient one during WWII and I do not doubt that. However, there were many reasons for this and one of them was experience and training. The US Army received little investment during the inter-war period and was in a rather sorry state in 1941, not to mention 1939. The Germans, on the other hand, invested heavily in their military prior to the outbreak of war. They also had the opportunity to test various ideas during the Spanish Civil War even before the invasion of Poland. By 1942, they had plenty of experience from Poland, Norway, the Low Countries, France, the Balkans, Africa, Russia etc., while the Operation Torch was practically the first real action of the US Army in the European Theatre. Patton was very critical of the performance of the US Army in Africa and there were good reasons for that...
What? Some of the Polish units had never even been fully mobilised... Anyway, the Germans learned a lot during Fall Weiss and used that knowledge in their future campaigns. Just look at the outcome of the panzer attacks on Warsaw when they were unsupported by infantry - this was a very important lesson. The Luftwaffe also learned a lot and was more effective at supporting the ground units in France than in Poland. The Germans could refine the Blitzkrieg strategy, while the Allies drew wrong conclusions from the campaign (they failed to realise how important force concentration was in case of armoured divs).
Last edited: