Special Forces were around in WW2; they mostly came out of WW2. The Germans had a number of successes with Brandenburgers and Otto Skorzeny’s exploits from rescuing Mussolini to staging a coup against the Hungarian government of Admiral Horthy who had been secretly negotiating with the Soviet Union by kidnapping the Admiral’s son to the infiltration of English speaking German soldiers wearing American uniforms during the Battle of the Ardennes are all rather famous. The British Commandos and SAS were both formed in WW2, and the US Rangers were created in their modern form in WW2; a joint US-Canadian unit, the 1st Special Service Force saw extensive action in WW2.
Things didn’t always go so fantastically well; the 1st and 3rd Ranger Battalions were destroyed almost to a man at the Battle of Cisterna at Anzio, only 6 of the 767 Rangers of the two battalions survived the battle and weren’t captured.
Pardon me for rearranging some text, but the meaning is completely unaltered, and I want to start of a positive note:
You are absolutely right about DeGaulle. It is an awful shame that he was not CIC from the start of the war, or, better, from long before the war began. Victory is a great motivator. Had a De Gaulle been in charge the German attack of 1940 might have been repulsed, and the French might have at least been motivated enough to hold the line and spare themselves four years’ occupation.
I am not sure what is meant by “understanding” but the Allies failed to appreciate the strategic possibility of having the center of their front run through by a German advance via the Ardennes. The Allies wrongly thought the terrain was impassible, and wrongly expected a reenactment of a flank attack through Belgium. The Germans played well to this bias with a diversion in force through Belgium which drew the British further away from the axis of the main attack.
This is incorrect. Allied doctrine consisted of defense and counterattack: they planned to sit and wait for the Germans to strike first and then to react. German doctrine, known to history as “Blitzkrieg” consisted of all-out offensive where artillery and aerial bombardment softened up narrow points of the enemy line targeted for penetration by mechanized units. Such mechanized units contained virtually all German armored fighting vehicles, which were not deployed in packets.
IOW a modern generao would have told the Allies to adopt German doctrine.
I had not heard of a British-French strategic schism in 1939-40. Do you mean to say that the British favored invading Germany while it was occupied in Poland. I am no expert, but I have read enough about the war to think this is a point I would have encountered.
There might have been some challenges there. Of course Generals are paid to lead not just issue orders so not impossible.
Germany more fully implemented ideas being written by Brits (JFC Fuller, and BH Liddell Hart). It fit with their historical military culture. They had a tradition of mission oriented orders and low level initiative dating back to the light infantry Jaeger tradition and Prussian reforms during the Napoleonic Wars. They innovated using those traditions and light infantry tactics late in WWI to great effect. The didn’t have the capability to exploit that success moving on foot though. They’d been on the receiving end of combined arms attacks though and paid attention to the evolving doctrine for their use. Melding their culture and mission oriented order traditions made it easier to incorporate the new weapons in what we saw as the Blitzkrieg.
The Prussian reforms also brought meritocracy to promotions and a trained, professional General Staff. Both concepts that their European neighbors pursued later and less aggressively. On top of that they got to avoid some institutional inertia since they largely were rebuilding from scratch. Additionally they REALLY needed to focus on doctrine and efficient employment of what they had since they were rebuilding and still weaker. As some pointed out earlier they took France in a Blitz despite having fewer and less capable tanks. Most of the Wehrmacht was still marching to battle with horse drawn artillery and resupply at that point. Nothing prompts embracing innovation like desperate need.
That’s what we pay Generals to deal with. Nothing would make inspiring change easier for a modern leader than a contemporary one… except maybe the extra drive of knowing the results if he fails.
There was near parity in armored fighting vehicle quality and quantity in 1940. The critical difference was that Fuller and Hart found their more effective disciple in the German Heinz Guderain, who was young enough to put theory into practice as a battlefield general par excellence. It was Guderain who spearjeaded the concentrated German AFV through the Ardennes and over the Meuse at the decisive point of the victorious German offensive. And the German psychology is best characterized as professional and confident rather than desperate. Desperation had to await events in the East beginning in December 1941.
Some people have argued that “special forces” are a bad idea. The kind of soldiers you put in special forces are a limited resource. Sure if you gather them all together, you have an elite unit. But others have argued that you’d be better off distributing these same top soldiers throughout your army where they would act as a force multiplier in dozens of units.
Can’t find a better cite than wikipedia right off and their cite is a book that I can’t dig up. That shows numbers at 3383 to 2,445. The Panzer I and Panzer II being called light tanks distort that. The Panzer I is basically a tracked machine gun carrier with zero anti-armor capability and armor that was hgihly susceptible to heavy machine gun fire let alone anything bigger. The Panzer IIs were a touch better but their 20mm was marginal against anything but the most obsolescent of the Ally armor. The Panzer III was only a small part of the count and it was a nice tank. The decision to keep it with the 37mm gun instead of the originally planned 50mm kept it from maximizing it’s advantages in design.
I grant the Panzers had better mobility and reliability in general than their competition. The more modern turret design in the IIIs and IVs allowed the TC to maintain situational awareness and allowed the crew to engage more rapidly and effectively. One the armor and firepower side at best they were comparable to the bulk of ally armor and overmatched against some like the limited production heavy Char B1 bis. I’d personally rather TC a Panzer III than a Somua S35 but there weren’t a whole lot of Panzer IIIs that crossed LD on that attack.
Guderian, one of those General Staff guys IIRC he described being accepted on to the General Staff as one of his proudest moments.
Let’s change “desperate need” to “seriously constrained choices.” I certainly didn’t mean some of the implications commonly associated with desperate. Even when not confident (or even actively convinced of defeat) late in the war many professional German senior leaders acted without the negative connotations of desperate.
This cite says it is 1077 Pz I and 2531 all other types for the Germans for a total of 3465 as of 5/10/40. However, I agree that my use of the word “parity” may be undercut by inclusion of the Pz I, which might not have seen combat even against Poland. On the other hand, do you know for sure that all Allied models were at least as good as the Pz II?
Although he was a staff officer in WWI, during WWII he commanded Panzer corps 1939-40 in Poland and France, and a Pz army in Russia in 1941. He was a fighting General of great ability.
The same choices were available to everyone regarding choice of weapons to build and doctrine to adopt. Why not just say that to begin with the Germans made more right choices than anyone else?
Perhaps. Either that, or, the success of the convoy system was the result of air coverage and breaking the naval code, entirely secret until years later.
Yes. French tanks at least were superior. Somua and Renault tanks were a match for the Pzr III and the Char B1bis was nigh inpenatrable.
Even more important to realise is that the French did have mobile tank divisions, comparable to the panzerdivision.
De Gaulle commanded just such a force ( 4e Division cuirassée) in his counter attack.
It wasn’t that they all were in “penny packets”. The allies were wrong footed because of the initial German attack to the north.
What you are describing is not “doctrine.” “Doctrine” is the proscribed general manner in which an armed forces plans to fight different types of warfare. The Allies did of course have doctrine for offensive warfare, and the Germans had doctrine for defensive warfare. The Allies CHOSE not to attack, but they certainly had doctrine for how to conduct attacks.
A general likely could not have changed the decision not to attack (beyond the initial French offensive.) That was a political, not a military, decision.
In the air, I’d think that two things would pay big dividends. First, don’t send the B-17s over Germany without fighter cover, which would mean drop tanks earlier (assuming our time-traveling general could advise on technological matters) or a longer-ranged fighter.
Second, a shift in targeting emphasis away from perceived “bottleneck” industries like say… ball bearings, and toward the goal of paralyzing German industry through destroying the transportation infrastructure and oil infrastructure (I know they did this) might have really put the Germans in a bind earlier in the war.
I do not see any inconsistency between your use of the word “doctrine” and what I have said. Allied doctrine led them to conduct the war in the 1940 West in the manner I described, and radically different German doctrine led them to conduct the war in a radically different manner.
I do not have any argument with the fact that the controlling politics weighed heavily against the offensive initiative which a modern general might be expected to recommend. However, the WWII Allied generals remembered as well as anyone the futile bloodlettings of all but the last of the great WWI offensives, and I am not aware that any, including De Gaulle, advocated offensive initiative as opposed to defense and counterattack.
The Pz-I certainly saw combat in Poland; it continued to serve as a front line tank in Panzer divisions despite its obvious obsolescence up through Barbarossa where 410 were fielded. At least 1/5th of the German armor in the Battle of France was composed of Pz-Is. Per Wiki:
As Latro said French armor was quite good and had a number of armored divisions formed (as well as light cavalry and light mechanized divisions). The British Matilda I, while like the Pz-I armed only with machine guns, was almost impervious to German 37mm anti-tank guns. The Matlida Is and IIs of the BEF’s 1st Army Tank Brigade were only stopped at Arras by 88mm anti-aircraft guns and 105mm howitzers used in direct fire.
Who argues that? It seems akin to arguing that tanks should be widely dispersed instead of concentrated in heavy-hitting groups, or spreading good hitters throughout the lineup instead of clustering them at the top. There’s a role for regular infantry, and a role for elite troops, but you can’t do elite missions with only one or two guys in a unit who have the right training…and the tactics that Special Ops are trained in don’t necessarily transfer to pitched battle.
Back on topic, what about horses? General 2014 shows up in Berlin, let’s say, in 1939, and notices all the four-legged troops. Urges immediate ramping up of production of motorized vehicles, fuel conservation among civilians, more coal gasification, confiscation of private autos, and the transfer of military drays to civilian uses like trolleys. Possibly helpful?
TY for info on Pz I in Russia. I could have sworn I read somewhere they were well on the way to complete phase-out by the start of the war. If I had looked more carefully at the cite I gave earlier I would have noticed their pretense in the model by model breakdown for the 1st ten Pz divisions.
Your wiki link notes that 500 of the French total consisted of WW One models. I would think those should be considered even more substandard than the Pz I. Also, another member cited another Wiki article crediting the Allies with 3383 tanks rather than 4000. Maybe the other cite omitted the WWI models (I wonder if any saw combat?). It would be nice to fully clarify both sides’ AFV quantity and quality.
IIRC he described being accepted on to the General Staff as one of his proudest moments.