There’s the joke that the difference between Americans and Europeans is that Americans think a hundred years is a long time and Europeans think a hundred miles is a long distance.
I suspect it was the latter; even our own movies and documentaries pretty much only focus on Omaha Beach and Pointe du Hoc; Utah Beach, where the landing opposition was relatively light doesn’t really get much more notice than the British/Canadian landings at Gold, Juno and Sword beaches.
Damn, now I’ve got to go down to the basement and dig out my old Avalon Hill games!
Most US Armored Divisions had 3 battalions of tanks as per the 1943 TO&E, only two divisions (the 2nd and 3rd, both of which served in Normandy) maintained the 1942 “heavy” organization which included 6 battalions of tanks. British Armored Divisions also had 3 tank battalions, or to be precise, regiments (a regiment of armor, artillery, or cavalry was battalion size in the British Army). The TO&E of a 1944 Panzer Division was down to only 2 battalions; in theory one equipped with Pz-IVs and the other with Panthers.
I agree entirely with your conclusion and your other points, but I can’t agree with this. The only area the Western Allies had a superiority over the Soviets in mobility was the supply train of infantry divisions; like the Germans the Soviets still used horses extensively for this purpose. The actual infantry in the infantry divisions of all combatants marched on foot. In terms of trucks the US had supplied over 400,000 to the USSR via lend-lease. In terms of other equipment, the USSR out produced the US in tanks, artillery and all other categories of land equipment. Unlike the US which only used limited numbers of M-26 Pershings very late in the war, the USSR used heavy tanks throughout the war as well as heavy assault guns (ISU-122, ISU-152, etc) and heavy tank destroyers (SU-100). The allotment of automatic weapons was also higher in Soviet formations; over 6 million PPSh-41 submachine guns were manufactured during the war.
That was kind of my point. In 1940 there was only one fully motorized army in the world - the British. In 1944 there were two - the British and American. Given adequate roads, fuel and spares, the capability of motor vehicles to move ammunition and troops long distances in short periods of time significantly exceeded that of any army using horse-drawn transport. The germans knew very well that most of the tactical mobility of the USSR came from US vehicles, so it was a pretty fair bet that the US would have even more mobility. In actuality the petrol and roads proved a challenge, but that was not obvious at the outset.
I don’t think its reasonable to assume that the USSR was better equipped just because they had 6MM SMGs and the US only had a couple of million, without factoring in that the alternative for the USSR was a bolt-action rifle but a semi-auto rifle for the US infantryman. Despite the M4 getting a lot of flak for its design priorities, it was generally a more sophisticated piece of engineering and production than the T34. Similarly the US fielded heavier tanks as soon as they felt the need, i.e. when the tank destroyer doctrine faded away. Building something like a SU-85 or SU-100 would hardly have strained the US capabilities, but such vehicles were felt to be unnecessary by influential parts of the allied command.
Soviet equipment was designed with different priorities than that of the west, and distributed differently, and each party generally built equipment that suited their needs and capabilities. For the US that generally meant each unit had more stuff and more fancy stuff - radios, bridges, ambulances, prophylactics, the lot. Lots more non-combat and support units.
Which set of equipment was more effective is another matter, and one that is intrinsically tied up with the fact that by 1944 the Soviets had 5 years of hard-earned wartime experience whereas the US had two.
Excellent. I’ll remember this.
Watch any Brit Films or literature and they won WWII all by themselves, based mostly on the fact that they were in it longer. The Russkies have been claiming this since 1944, based simply on the fact that more of them died. It’s natural that you emphasize your nations contribution.
In reality the allies needed : British pluck and determination, Soviet manpower and America being the “Arsenal of Democracy”. All were equally important. Let us not forget the Dutch & Danish who were real mensch, etc.
The actual numbers involved in the Normandy landing seem to be:73,000 Americans, 61,715 British and 21,400 Canadians. As a % of their population, the Canadians did the heavy lifting there.
Assault on a Queen, though until I poke around in my loft I forget who had the bicycles (I’m remembering the word “commandeered” here).
That’s my point though - they were fully motorized only in the sense that they did not use horses for transport the way the rest of the world, including Germany and the USSR did. They were not fully motorized in the sense it is often understood, and the way armies are fully motorized today; that is there are enough trucks and motor transport outside of the logistical pool to move all of the infantry all at once. The percentage of total forces that could be classified as mobile - tank, armored, mechanized, motorized, motor rifle, panzer, panzer grenadier, etc - was roughly the same in the US, UK, Soviet, and German armies, ~15-20%. British and American infantry had to march on foot just like their Soviet and German counterparts. Once the breakout was achieved in Normandy after the horrible meat grinder of the months in the bocage, the race across France wasn’t any faster than the exploitation phase of Operation Bagration.
The alternative for the entire world was a bolt-action rifle; the US was the only nation in the world that used a self-loading rifle in WW2 as general issue. The British were still using the .303 Enfield. The point remains that the Soviets issued automatic weapons far more liberally than the US, but this isn’t the thrust of my point. You said the Western Allies were far better equipped than the Soviets. They weren’t. By the time of the closing battles of the war such as Königsberg and Berlin the Soviets were using an artillery density of 250 guns per kilometer of the front
Tank destroyer doctrine never faded away; and the US most certainly did not field heavier tanks as soon as they felt the need. Only a very small number of M-26 Pershings made it to the front to see combat in the closing months of the war; the US had first encountered the Tiger in Tunisia in 1942. The very problem was a heavier vehicle wasn’t felt necessary by influential parts of the US command.
[QUOTE=Dissonance]
Tank destroyer doctrine never faded away; and the US most certainly did not field heavier tanks as soon as they felt the need. Only a very small number of M-26 Pershings made it to the front to see combat in the closing months of the war; the US had first encountered the Tiger in Tunisia in 1942. The very problem was a heavier vehicle wasn’t felt necessary by influential parts of the US command.
[/QUOTE]
Which is a shame. The US Army made a few bewildering decisions in the ETO and this is one of them. They had experience in Africa and the Med. Two years and nearly 30 divisions worth. The had access to results on the Russian front .Yet they went with a design that was by 1944 outclassed and outgunned. Results would have been better if they had simply agreed to the Firefly upgrade…which they refused until September 1944, when the British declined in a fit of pique. And while we are at it, the system of replacements was ridiculous. Individual replacements for losses which meant that units actually became less experienced as they stayed longer in battle. At the same time, for some reason keeping battle hardened units and formations away from the theater at first, the US Army of June 1944 had plenty of battle experience, the US Army in Normandy…not much.
For some reason this afflicted the ETO. Not the Med or the Pacific.
Well since about (from memory) 80% of German military casaulties for the entire war occured on the Eastern front they probably have a point
Had a history professor in college who stated that the big reason the US military didn’t have a larger presence on the front lines in terms of boots on the ground was due to them having a much longer logistical chain. Evidently an American infantryman cost about a ton of supplies in terms of food, fuel, etc. for himself and the required logistics chain to get his supplies to him. A ton of supplies each month. Additionally, each troop, his supplies, his artillery, armored, and air support, all had to get to Europe (or Australia, Asia, or Oceana) from America. Most common method was to haul them by ship past the German U-Boats. The larger American bombers had to fly to Europe, via one of a number of rather dangerous routes which required well maintained planes, well trained crews, and attentive navigation, and more than a few aircrews were lost simply trying to get to England to join the fight.
Of course, the US also provided substantial logistical support to the other allies throughout the war (and used it’s naval and air power to deny logistical support to many of their enemies, a capability the Japanese forces in the Pacific learned of first hand). In the PTO, American forces were very likely to simply go around a large Japanese fortification, preferring to sever their supply lines and leave them to wither on the vine. Particularly effective in the island hopping campaigns of the Southern and Western Pacific where supplies mainly moved by sea.
+1
I’m trying to think of a better word to describe his actions, but for now I think I’ll go with JKellyMap’s descriptive term, incredible sums it up very well.
Joan Pujol Garcia must have been quite an interesting person. 
I have a hard time not picturing him with a trollface as he reported to the Germans, I must admit. Another interesting figure in the WWII spying business is Dusan Popov, who was basically a WWII James Bond, spying and playboying around for the British.
On the logistics of the ETO; a lot of this was due to the fact that prior to securing Antwerp (and even after) the supply chain ran all the way back to the beaches of Normandy, the Mulberry Harbours and Cherbourg via the famous Red Ball Express. Before D-Day Allied bombers had trashed French infrastructure, destroying bridges and the like, making life even more difficult. Patton in particular was characteristically narky about logistical problems, saying “My men can eat their belts, but my tanks have gotta have gas.”
On the Russians, Stalin was particular bitter about the comparatively small Allied contribution throughout the war. On entering the war he and Molotov pressured Churchill constantly for an invasion of Europe in order to relieve the pressure on the Eastern Front, “Second Front Now”. When Churchill explained that the Allies would be mauled in 1942 attempting a landing (no doubt true - there weren’t nearly enough landing craft) Stalin dismissed him saying that they shouldn’t be so scared of the Germans.
We did help the Soviets in other ways, though. The supplies sent to Murmansk via the Arctic Convoys (at great risk to the seamen) and overland through the Persian route gave the Russians much needed logistical capabilities via the massive quantities of the Studebaker truck sent. American radio sets boosted the communications ability. Jeeps and rations were also much loved by the Soviet officer and enlisted alike.
If anyone doubts the Soviet contribution to victory and why they regarded all western efforts as a sideshow; between June 1941 and December 1944, Germany suffered 2.4 million battlefield dead on the Eastern Front. The British and Americans in North Africa, Italy and north-west Europe killed 202,000 Germans in the same period (source; Hastings, Armageddon, p.112).
I’ve just started reading Stephan Talty’s Agent Garbo: The Brilliant, Eccentric Secret Agent Who Tricked Hitler and Saved D-Day. It’s out in paperback now, and it is definitely the most enjoyable and readable of all the books I’ve read about Garbo. Talty really delves into his family history and tries to show how he wound up doing what he did, from his boyhood love of Tom Mix westerns to his father dying of influenza thinking his son was a failure.
For yuks, I calculated this using Google Maps: 419 miles (6 hours 41 mins in ideal traffic)