Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire German Combat strength/effectiveness 41'-42' (prior to Stalingrad and Case Blue)

Interesting videos, thanks.

Steven Bungay in his book The Most Dangerous Enemy”

https://www.amazon.com/Most-Dangerous-Enemy-History-Britain/dp/1781314950

makes similar points about the Luftwaffe on the eve of the Battle of Britain. The Luftwaffe had suffered significant manpower and logistic losses in the campaign to take France, was a tired force at the outset, and the British far outstripped them in aircraft production.

Bungay points out too that the German practice of elevating Aces to superstar status could inhibit fighter staffel effectiveness as the emphasis on at least some missions was on affording the likes of a Molders or a Galland more opportunities to run up their scores.

The T-34 has a great on paper rep, but a tanker ,Chieftain, did a vid on Inside the Hatch on the T-34 . His view was it wasn't a great tank to fight with. What it was, was cheap to make.

Hitler went into little France with a large military
3.6 million, 2500 tanks, 5600 aircraft
then into the vast spances of the east with
a military manpower force not much bigger,
more tanks and artillery, but not more aircraft.




Everyone likes a hero, but the detriment of such
propaganda was that the bulk of pilots were not
so gifted yet many would try to emulate their
hero figures and get killed prematurely, thus
accelerating the loss of pilots...The personal
competitive nature of fighter pilots also drove
up the loss rate.

You should mention horses, between trains and horse drawn wagons was how their logistics moved..

Not really funny but I wrote a summation a while back of "The Forgotten Soldier" about fighting on the Eastern Front.

This place sure is big.
It's really hot and dusty here.
The Russians have a lot of artillery.
We mow down 1000 of them and 1000 more come at us.

This place sure is big.
It's really cold here.
We're hungry.
The Russians have a lot of artillery.
We mow down 1000 of them and 1000 more come at us.

Holy crap this place is big.
It's really, really cold here.
We're really hungry.
The Russians have a hell of a lot of artillery.
We mow down 1000 of them and 1000 more come at us.

Holy crap this place is fricken huge
It's really hot and dusty here.
We're really hungry.
The Russians have a hell of a lot of artillery.
We mow down 1000 of them and 1000 more come at us.

Holy crap this place is fricken huge
It's really, really, really cold.
We're really, really hungry.
JFC the Russians have a lot of artillery. I mean, a whole lot of artillery.
We mow down 1000 of them and 1000 more come at us.

The End.

The Germans were way under motorized for
Blitzkrieg in the east. Only about 20%. of the
army was such...and more wouldn't help coz
they didn't have the oil.
A train could transport the equal of some
1000+lorries... and they had the coal to fuel
them... but the management of the rail system
was a nightmare with trains tangled / banked up
on lines unable to reach destinations toward the
advancing front...operating at about 50% of rail
capacity.

When Case Blue failed in later part of 42" the
Germans were fortunate that it coincided with
the train backlog being cleared. There was so
much fuel on those trains that it allowed the
Germans to keep fighting for a number of months,
otherwise they would have been screwed.

When Case Blue started, at one point Paulus
had to wait two weeks for fuel, and 1st Panzer
( gruppe A headed for the Caucasus) ran out
of fuel..When 4th Panzer came to assist Paulus
in his push toward Stalingrad, it had supply issues
and was restricted in how it could help.

Hitler put enormous emphasis on how vital
success was for gruppe A/B to succeed in
Case Blue/Edelweiss or else Germany was out
of the war, yet even such a high priority 72 div.
taskforce could not be properly supplied.

Horses were slow and vulnerable to attack,
they didn't have enough of them and fueling
them was an issue, as fodder like gasoline
and ammunition had to be transported coz
the lanscape did not offer much.

=======

Spearhead Panzers/armored units that could
advance many km in short time, having to rely
on critical supplies by horse and infantry on foot
to hold and consolidate gains made... Hmmm

Hitler told others it would work, saying the soviets
were so weak that they would totally collapse after
Germany kicked their door in.

But when soviets showed strong resistance and
German intelligence and logistics failed.. things
went pear shaped for Hitler's rather audacious
roll of the dice dreams of conquest.

Russia used a wider gauge rail track to force any invader to reset a lot of railroad track.

What about the 6 million that went up the smoke stacks? Can't see how they were winners.

There you go again...messing up the antisemitic world with truth.

Jewish bankers could have been a problem for them in WWI, but not WWII. Think he got his wars mixed up.

Ahh, Maria Theresa. What a worthwhile rabbit hole of historical reading.


PS- She was the original Matchmaker of the gentry.

They never considered not having air superiority, either.

Gotta figure ethnic snobbery into all of this. Hitler weren’t joking about Germans being the master race. I grew up in a still lily-White England, we thought of each other as races.

Prob’ly Hitler and an awful lot of Germans thought they could kick the a$$es of any number of Slavs, logistics be damned.

In the same way Germany? Beat England? Even tho they were rightfully scared most Brits in their heart of hearts couldn’t see that happening.

And of course them little yellow Japs could never be a serious threat to America, meanwhile the Japanese fighting spirit was sufficient to defeat any number of those soft, cowardly, decadent Americans.

A part of reality as all parties perceived it in the 1930’s.

My Dad landed with first American troops in Europe. Spent whole war in combat. He said in an equal fight, Germans always won. In A battle 3 t o 1 Germans, he said they won. He said the only reason we won is that we overwhelmed them with more of everything.

https://ww2aircraft.net/forum/threads/wwii-tank-engine-longevity.50254/

Here's some really interesting thread about tank engine longevity, and it might surprise folks about how short a life tank engines had, especially the German heavy tanks. The transmissions weren't too good, either.

By 1944, Germans had some war experience, or their sergeants did.

TIK, on YouTube, is doing Stalingrad. If you are interested in the battle, it a worthwhile watch.

After Normandy,the Canadian troops had the task of clearing the low counties , then into Germany. A lot of the time the odds were even. This was one of Eisenhower and Montgomery blunders, It slowed the opening of the port of Antwerp .Montgomery even said so after the war. Dad complained the Germans when they retreated had always mapped out their range.

Nine parts at over 40 min. each, I viewed earlier
in the year.. Combat casualty rate on approach
to the city (eg: July/Aug) vs actually taking the
city in urban fighting is interesting... Paulus was
receiving the lowest rate of reinforcements
when casualty rate was the highest per month.
additionally, monthly reinforcement numbers
were lower than the loss rate.

The airlift to supply the encircled 6th is interesting
in that von Richthofen was upfront and said the
idea is not realistically achievable... but it seems
OKH kept stringing Paulus along with the idea.



And considering German divisions at Ardennes
were well under strength in men, machines, supplies.