German defensive tactics in WWII - excellent or foolish?

Great Debates
1

I’ve been reading various WWII histories recently, and almost all note that Germans were very aggressive on the defense. Rather than staying in their fortified positions, their tactic was to engage in myriad local counterattacks very quickly after the Allies had achieved a local objective.

The thing is, the various authors I have describe this tactic as either extremely effective and a major cause of slow allied advance, particularly in Italy and along the Western Wall, or as extremely foolhardy, wasting their advantage of prepared positions and allowing the Allies to fight them in the open.

Which view of German defensive tactics is the accurate one?

Sua

2

I’m just winging it, but I’d say that, given Germany’s servere disadvantage in terms of men and material, they made a huge mistake in not slugging it out from behind fortified positions. There was no way they could win by coming out in the open and trying to retake lost territory, especially when said territory wasn’t vital to their military operations. Maybe Hitler’s ego had something to do with their aggressive tactics?

3

I always thought the exact opposite.

My take on it was that since the Germans had such a disadvantage in men & materiel, quasi-manuever tactics like quick local counterattacks where the Allies weren’t expecting them seems like a very good way to keep the Allies slowed down and on guard, without having to engage in quite the war of attrition that fortified positions would be.

Plus, I don’t think the Germans ever had the troops to really set up defense-in-depth along the entirety of either front. It worked rather well when they did it locally (think Seelow Heights), but they couldn’t do that from the Mediterannean to the Baltic on both fronts.

Another thing to consider is that forces that have just finished attacking are frequently in a state of disarray, and attacking them then is very effective- they’re out of position for defense, tired, low on supplies, etc…

4

In the defense, you select positions so that they are mutually supporting. When you loose one position, the entire defensive system becomes weaker. Better you pick your place and keep those places. If you can.

Now when the Bad Guys overrun your position, they are at their most vulnerable in the moments after they halt their attack. They are swarming all over the place like a stirred up pile of ants. Then is the time to counterattack.

Then you reestablish your defense on the best possible terrain, right where you started from.

5

The two responses match exactly with the two positions I have seen taken by the authors. Those approving of German tactics said that it gave great advantage to attack troops just completing an assault for the reasons bump noted, while those disapproving said that Germany’s disadvantage in terms of men (and especially material) mandated staying in their fortifications.

Goes to show that Ph.D’s in history are completely unnecessary. :wink:

6

I was under the impression that German tactics of maneuver defensive warfare were excellent…that it took considerable skill to do and the Germans were capable of it even up to the end.

It was when they were forced to abandon such techniques by Hitler that they ran into more trouble.

7

Aggressive counter-attacking was the normal tactic of the Germans in WW1 as well as WW2 but I think there is a misunderstanding if you see the counter-attack as an alternative to sitting in prepared positions.

A proper defense in depth consists of seveal lines and you keep the bulk of your troops out of the front line specifically to counter-attack while the enemy are in disarray having broken through the thin forward crust. The alternative is to try to build a massively strong but very thin line of defense to stop the enemy breaking in, but all the experience of 20th century warfare is that this won’t work against a powerful enemy, you are just inviting the attacking artillery to destroy you. This was especially true for the Germans from 1943 onwards when the Western Allies and the Russians had overwhelming artillery superiority. The attacking infantry might have been sluggish and the armour technically deficient but the British and American artillery was excellent.

Once you accept the front line cannot be held you move to a series of lines set up to contain the intitial break in. but there is no sense in having multiple lines if you don’t counter-attack to restore the front. If the second line just sits in its trenches and bunkers it just invites the attackers to take one line at a time.

The difficulty for the Germans by late 1944 and 1945 was that the German army was not the force it had been, essentially because it had been ground down on the Eastern front. The tactic was still theoretically the correct response but the troops were often not well enough trained and equipped to carry them out. Then again it is difficult to see what alternative they had. First they did not have massive fixed defenses around the Reich - even the West Wall was only half built - and, second, as noted above, fixed defenses are not an alternative to counter-attack, they go together.

Having said that, I would be interested to know which authors see these tactics as “as extremely foolhardy, wasting their advantage of prepared positions and allowing the Allies to fight them in the open” without giving an explanation of why they did it.

8

Following up BlinkingDuck’s point there is a difference between “maneuver defensive warfare” and using counter-attacks to hold positions. Hitler’s obsession with not rereating certainly cost the German’s dearly (both in Normandy and on the Eastern Front) but they had to try and have fixed defense lines somewhere to stop the Allies. If you have a fixed defense line you need to counter-attack to hold it.

Sweeping defensive maneouvers require space and the ability to move rapidly. Certainly in the West the force to space ratio was pretty high and the ability of the German to maneouver was limited by Allied air power, destroyed infrastructure, and shortages of fuel.

9

Something to remember on this subject is what happened on the other side of the planet at the same time.

In the Pacific, the Japanese tended to fight it out from inside their defenses that were far more formidable than anything the Germans (typically) had time time put together.

Off the top of my head, I seem to recall that the typical island assault tended to give a casualty rate of about 3 Japanese to 1 American.

What was the casualty rate in your typical German battle?

-Joe

10

[QUOTE=MarcusF]
Aggressive counter-attacking was the normal tactic of the Germans in WW1 as well as WW2 but I think there is a misunderstanding if you see the counter-attack as an alternative to sitting in prepared positions.

A proper defense in depth consists of seveal lines and you keep the bulk of your troops out of the front line specifically to counter-attack while the enemy are in disarray having broken through the thin forward crust. The alternative is to try to build a massively strong but very thin line of defense to stop the enemy breaking in, but all the experience of 20th century warfare is that this won’t work against a powerful enemy, you are just inviting the attacking artillery to destroy you. This was especially true for the Germans from 1943 onwards when the Western Allies and the Russians had overwhelming artillery superiority. The attacking infantry might have been sluggish and the armour technically deficient but the British and American artillery was excellent.

Once you accept the front line cannot be held you move to a series of lines set up to contain the intitial break in. but there is no sense in having multiple lines if you don’t counter-attack to restore the front. If the second line just sits in its trenches and bunkers it just invites the attackers to take one line at a time.

The difficulty for the Germans by late 1944 and 1945 was that the German army was not the force it had been, essentially because it had been ground down on the Eastern front. The tactic was still theoretically the correct response but the troops were often not well enough trained and equipped to carry them out. Then again it is difficult to see what alternative they had. First they did not have massive fixed defenses around the Reich - even the West Wall was only half built - and, second, as noted above, fixed defenses are not an alternative to counter-attack, they go together.

Having said that, I would be interested to know which authors see these tactics as “as extremely foolhardy, wasting their advantage of prepared positions and allowing the Allies to fight them in the open” without giving an explanation of why they did it.
[/QUOTE]

Good post.

I would add that the German successes, both offensively and defensively were using maneuver. Low countries, France, Balkans early Russia etc.

Then they stopped and slugged it out in Stalingrad…what happened to maneuver warfare?

After Stalingrad, the winter looked dire for the Germans in South Russia…but they used excellent defensive maneuver warfare to bring the Russians to a stop.

Then Kursk… No maneuver there…just trying to batter.

Even in 1944-1945, the German army often did very well depsite the odds when they used maneuver warfare. When they didn’t because of Hitler reluctance to give up territory, they did well. Even in the last months of the war, the Germans had sting.

=========

WWI, however, I think that the doctorine did them bad…since the defense had such an advantage. Maybe they would have done better giving up territory and awaiting the next attack?

11

Yes, they seriously had no choice EXCEPT to counter-attack. The fact was that if they sat in fortifications and tried a war of attrition, they’d lose. They were deficient in airpower, landpower (certainly tanks and artillery, but also manpower), and seapower.

Fixed fortifications were already going to way fo the dodo by WW2, and functionally became useles therafter. Korea and Vietnam were the last puny gasp of them. Thing is, if your bases are fixed, the enemy can obliterate them at liesure. You have to keep him guessing, keep mobile, and be ready to take an advantage which comes to you. With mechanization, the enemy can often just flank you and avoid a fight if you stay still - and then watch as you starve until you surrender.

In WW2, the Germans would have simply been ground down if they had adopted fixed fortifications. The Allies would have simply rolled up, bombarded them to pieces with superior firepower point-by-point, or just circled round and contained them. They did use them in some cirtcumstances (D-Day) but it’s just no a major tactic of the era.

12

I have to confess that I have lately become a big fan of military strategy because of two recent radio interviews I heard.

The first involved the interviewer asking the expert about Hitler’s decision not to invade England. The expert explained that it was not really any decsion at all - the Germans had no serviceable navy, they would have had to tow the army there in barges and the British navy would have sent them all to the bottom of the channel. Turns out that despite the “common knowledge” that Hitler let the English off, the radio expert was right.

The other I will have to wait for. A former senior US officer in Vietnam was explaining the “absolute insanity” of a staged withdrawal from Iraq. He explained that fighting insurgents, unlike fighting an army, requires massive resources as the enemy has no “gravitatioanl centres” - there are no known concentrations of people, weapons or infrastructure to attack. He said that as soon as a staged withdrawal begins the insurgents will take the opportunity to pick to pieces the remaining forces. He insisted that the only way to get out without massive losses was to wake up one morning and run.

13

But the “staged withdrawl” doesn’t mean we’ll weaken our forces equally across the whole of Iraq. We’ll abandon province after province. Our forces will always maintain local superiority, we’ll just give up any pretension of controlling various areas. It’s not like we’ll leave 5 guys in a Humvee behind in Anbar province and pretend that we’re still controlling it, and wait for them to get picked off. Instead we’ll say that local forces are responsible for Anbar province from now on, and our forces will only return to Anbar province in force.

The insurgents can’t concentrate because our conventional forces can crush any open concentration. So the answer isn’t to thin and thin and thin our forces until they’re so weak that the local concentration of insurgents is strong enough to challenge them openly, it’s to withdraw from areas completely. That doesn’t mean we have to leave Iraq completely starting Tuesday and be finished by Wednesday, it’s just that if we withdraw from an area we have to really withdraw and not leave behind a token force.

Of course, this is predicated on the assumption that as we pull out of an area, the insurgents will quickly take that area over. And this is not neccesarily the case, at least for certain values of “insurgent”. Insurgent just means a local paramilitary that is attacking US or central government forces. If that local paramilitary cooperates with central government forces then they aren’t insurgents any more.

14

If we’re talking Eastern Front the Germans were outnumbered and their advantage lay in mobility. Their own experiences taught them that the 20th century battlefield wasn’t a place to dig trenches.

If we’re talking Western Front well than that’s just desperation, the Germans had been retreating for 6 months before the Western Powers provided the ‘western front’ Stalin kept screaming for. The Battle of the Bulge and the like we’re last ditch efforts to slow down allied supplies and press for better terms for surrender. The Germans had no intention of fighting to the last man by being flushed out of underground tunnels with flame throwers ala the Japanese.

15

[QUOTE=SuaSponte]
The two responses match exactly with the two positions I have seen taken by the authors. Those approving of German tactics said that it gave great advantage to attack troops just completing an assault for the reasons bump noted, while those disapproving said that Germany’s disadvantage in terms of men (and especially material) mandated staying in their fortifications.
[/QUOTE]

With all due respect to the dissenting opinions, passive defense has never been the preferred method of defense, and is usually employed only by an inferior force. Sitting still in manoevre warfare doesn’t really work.

The Germans were, by any account, tactically superior to all Allied armies they fought, at least up to a brigade or even divisional level of operations. A passive defense would have robbed them of their biggest advantage. Sitting back and waiting for the Allies would have been utterly pointless, since they were perpetually at risk of simply being overwhelmed by numbers. Fixed defenses simply allow the enemy to sweep around you, cut off lines of supply, cut off entire formations and choose the time and place of battle.

Truth is that the Germans were not beaten tactically, they were beaten strategically and logistically. The extent to which German troops conducted active defense is beside the point when they were so hopelessly outnumbered and, by 1944, were fighting blind, with almost no useful intelligence at the strategic level.

16

Well - No. The experience of every army throughout the 20th century was that the first thing you do, where ever you pause, is to dig a trench! Without a hole to dive into the poor bloody infantry are totally vunerable.

It’s true you won’t often see the massive trench lines of WW1 but if you are trying to defend a location - whether a base, a town, or key terrain feature - you have got to have some form of defensive works. Mobility and counter-attack are all very well but if you are not dug in well when the attacking artillery and air start raining down you are going to have nobody left to fight your mobile defense.

Again - No. The Winter offensive in the Ardennes was entierly Hitler’s conception and he had no intention of surrendering. As far as it can be said to have any rational purpose it was to split the British and American forces, giving them such a shock that they decided to make a separate peace and allow Germany to fight the Soviets on their own :dubious:

True in general terms but in the West in late 1944 and 1945 the British and Americans hardly ever swept round anything. Right to the end they were terrified of leaving exposed flanks that could be attacked by the Germans - partly from a learned respect for the powers of recovery of the German army, partly from a knowledge of the weaknesses of their own troops, and mainly through a failure of imagination in the Allied high command (British and American).

17

[QUOTE=MarcusF]
True in general terms but in the West in late 1944 and 1945 the British and Americans hardly ever swept round anything. Right to the end they were terrified of leaving exposed flanks that could be attacked by the Germans - partly from a learned respect for the powers of recovery of the German army, partly from a knowledge of the weaknesses of their own troops, and mainly through a failure of imagination in the Allied high command (British and American).
[/QUOTE]

You’re reinforcing what I said.

18

[QUOTE=Merijeek]
Something to remember on this subject is what happened on the other side of the planet at the same time.

In the Pacific, the Japanese tended to fight it out from inside their defenses that were far more formidable than anything the Germans (typically) had time time put together.

Off the top of my head, I seem to recall that the typical island assault tended to give a casualty rate of about 3 Japanese to 1 American.

What was the casualty rate in your typical German battle?

-Joe
[/QUOTE]

The Pacific theater was a horse of a different color the Japanese typically fought to the last man to satisfy their sense of honor (bushido). Germans on the other hand would surrender in mass if the situation dictated. The Krauts even tried to surrender to the Russians knowing full well the tender mercies awaiting them. The Japs had no choice but dig in, many battles were fought on small islands where mobility was little or no tactical advantage against naval artillery and in many instances there was no escape. Holding the fortified high ground was their only hope. Remember Japan directly attacked us with no declaration of war they ignored the Geneva Convention and held outright murderous disdain for their prisoners. None of this was forgotten by our troops after Midway. I have my suspicions the legendary battle tenacity of the Japanese was more due to the fact that we gave no quarter “they wouldn’t give up every time we shot ‘em they moved a little so we shot ‘em again”.

19

The Germans couldn’t rely on a defensive strategy. The Allies had far more resources; we would have just concentrated our forces against one area and broken through. The best plan for the Germans was maintain the threat of attacking Allied positions and therefore force the Allies to keep their forces divided up for defense.

20

[QUOTE=Below Me]
The Pacific theater was a horse of a different color the Japanese typically fought to the last man to satisfy their sense of honor (bushido). Germans on the other hand would surrender in mass if the situation dictated. The Krauts even tried to surrender to the Russians knowing full well the tender mercies awaiting them. The Japs had no choice but dig in, many battles were fought on small islands where mobility was little or no tactical advantage against naval artillery and in many instances there was no escape. Holding the fortified high ground was their only hope. Remember Japan directly attacked us with no declaration of war they ignored the Geneva Convention and held outright murderous disdain for their prisoners. None of this was forgotten by our troops after Midway. I have my suspicions the legendary battle tenacity of the Japanese was more due to the fact that we gave no quarter “they wouldn’t give up every time we shot ‘em they moved a little so we shot ‘em again”.
[/QUOTE]

I’d appreciate if you’d keep the Krauts and Japs to yourself here, thank you very much.

Besides that, it really is the case as noted above that in the Pacific, there was usually neither room, terrain, nor manpower for maneuver, and most of everything boiled down to a war of outposts – whether entire islands, such as Tarawa, Kwajalein, or the Marianas, or single airfields on islands, such as Henderson Field on Guadalcanal or Munda on New Georgia, or “to be established” airfields such as at Cape Torokina on Bougainville. There was never any real need or chance to maneuver an enemy army out of its position.

But in the Pacific, as most of everywhere else, when the enemy took one of your defensive positions, you strove to take it back – as the Marines did at Wake, the British did at Singapore (or at least contemplated to, knowing full well that it was either that or surrender), and the Japanese did on the various Pacific islands. Remember that even a static defense is static only in the operatinal sense, never in the tactical.