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How much of the Rommel story is that he isn't associated with the barbarity of the eastern front fighting?
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Aug 15, 2012 00:21
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Ron Jeremy posted:How much of the Rommel story is that he isn't associated with the barbarity of the eastern front fighting? Well he never served on the Eastern Front. When the war began he was commander of the 7th Panzer Division, one of the first German forces to break through French lines and rush to the English Channel (he also took part in the invasion of Poland but did not see any combat as he was acting as commander of Hitler's escort headquarters). After that he was promoted to command of the Afrikakorps and Italian forces in North Africa, where he really made his name. He took sick and returned to Germany just before the Second Battle of El Alamein. With the North African theater lost Rommel was assigned to the overseeing of France's defense against an Allied invasion.
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Aug 15, 2012 00:33
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Ron Jeremy posted:How much of the Rommel story is that he isn't associated with the barbarity of the eastern front fighting? Maybe a lot. Or maybe not much. Does anyone remember Paulus for his connection with the brutalities? Of course not. When you say Paulus, I think "surrender". Which is unfair, but there you go.
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Aug 15, 2012 00:51
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I don't think any officer has ever been as over-promoted as Louis Mountbatton. He was the commander of a destroyer in 1934, a destroyer flotilla in 1939, became captain of an aircraft carrier in 1941, then became Chief of Combined Operations later the same year, and in 1943 (even after the disaster of Dieppe) was appointed as Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia Command. I think he may be the only destroyer captain in history to be a theatre commander within a decade.
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Aug 15, 2012 01:03
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Ron Jeremy posted:How much of the Rommel story is that he isn't associated with the barbarity of the eastern front fighting?
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Aug 15, 2012 02:26
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tallkidwithglasses posted:I really disagree about the disconnect- you're thinking in a globalist tradition while leftism in the Southern Cone tends to be very very regional. Che is revered everywhere, sure, but most countries in the area have their own native leftist movements that in many cases have been active for decades. The Zapatistas are an excellent example, as are the various rebel groups in the countries north of Amazonia. Not all of them were beneficiaries of Soviet aid, and the KGB presence in South America actually kind of mirrored the CIA/School of the Americas model, with lots of locals that would go off and get training from from foreign agents and then return to their home countries and continue developing their organization. I would think the Shining Path in Peru would actually support Bagheera's theory that there was a shift away from Soviet-affiliated movements and violence in the 1990s. The Shining Path has essentially been defunct since 1992 and rejected by the vast majority of Peruvians, which suggests a move away from violence as a political means and away from an organization affiliated with global Communism/Marxist-Leninism/Maoism.
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Aug 15, 2012 02:48
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gradenko_2000 posted:It really depends. Just because you were involved in the Eastern Front doesn't mean it's a loss of prestige in the eyes of history: Manstein's Backhand Blow is one of WW2 history's great what-ifs, for example. The Soviet generals were not averse to brutalities, either, and are well noted by anyone with an interest to history. But more to the point, I think what sets Rommel apart is that he's (as far as I can tell) risen to a wholly different level. There were many 'mansteins' in the east and west fronts but there was only one Rommel who led the Deutsches Afrika Korps. To the public eye Rommel has that special aura and recognition like perhaps only Zhukov, Monty and Patton - and Eisenhower, naturally - hold.
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Aug 15, 2012 09:02
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Ron Jeremy posted:How much of the Rommel story is that he isn't associated with the barbarity of the eastern front fighting? Reading the wikipedia article, it says that he actually refused to have commandos and Jewish POWs killed and also refused to deport the Jews while he was in France. If true, he should be commended for actively curtailing atrocities.
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Aug 15, 2012 11:03
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Nenonen posted:The Soviet generals were not averse to brutalities, either, and are well noted by anyone with an interest to history. But more to the point, I think what sets Rommel apart is that he's (as far as I can tell) risen to a wholly different level. There were many 'mansteins' in the east and west fronts but there was only one Rommel who led the Deutsches Afrika Korps. To the public eye Rommel has that special aura and recognition like perhaps only Zhukov, Monty and Patton - and Eisenhower, naturally - hold. The complete opposite of this if anyone interested in this case with Philippe Pétain
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Aug 15, 2012 11:16
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Frosted Flake posted:I don't think any officer has ever been as over-promoted as Louis Mountbatton. He was the commander of a destroyer in 1934, a destroyer flotilla in 1939, became captain of an aircraft carrier in 1941, then became Chief of Combined Operations later the same year, and in 1943 (even after the disaster of Dieppe) was appointed as Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia Command. I think you're being a little harsh there, although I've no doubt you're right about the destroyer captain to theatre commander point. He was in a mid to senior command position position 5 years prior to world war 2, anyone with that experience was going to get a massive bump in position purely because of the rapidly increasing size of the Navy. Chief of Combined Operations was likely to go with someone younger at that point as well, given Churchill's eagerness in using the new Commando doctrine. Most other Generals of note saw similar rises - go back to world war one and you've got 30 year old brigadiers. Major General Gavin was 37 during Operation Market Garden.
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Aug 15, 2012 13:39
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I really think Petain gets the worst of it sometimes. He was an 80 year old man put in one of the worst possible military and political scenarios. The Germans were knocking at the door, the British were basically threatening to shell their ports and put a starvation blockade in place, and the war was unpopular with the French people.
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Aug 15, 2012 14:48
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Red7 posted:given Churchill's eagerness in using the new Commando doctrine. Can you extrapolate on what this is?
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Aug 15, 2012 14:52
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At the very least Petain was no Vidkun Quisling, who was a big fanboy of Hitler even before the war.
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Aug 15, 2012 14:54
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KildarX posted:Can you extrapolate on what this is? Basically, the beginning of British Commando and guerilla tactics and training that would birth the SAS, SBS and SOE.
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Aug 15, 2012 14:55
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coolatronic posted:I would think the Shining Path in Peru would actually support Bagheera's theory that there was a shift away from Soviet-affiliated movements and violence in the 1990s. The Shining Path has essentially been defunct since 1992 and rejected by the vast majority of Peruvians, which suggests a move away from violence as a political means and away from an organization affiliated with global Communism/Marxist-Leninism/Maoism. There was a Shining Path resurgence in 2003-04, for what it's worth. And I'd argue that losing their international affiliation kind of proves my point that leftism in Central and South America is fairly indigenous and has its own distinct character apart from the Soviet bloc.
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Aug 15, 2012 15:00
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SeanBeansShako posted:Basically, the beginning of British Commando and guerilla tactics and training that would birth the SAS, SBS and SOE.
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Aug 15, 2012 16:29
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Frosted Flake posted:I don't think any officer has ever been as over-promoted as Louis Mountbatton. He was the commander of a destroyer in 1934, a destroyer flotilla in 1939, became captain of an aircraft carrier in 1941, then became Chief of Combined Operations later the same year, and in 1943 (even after the disaster of Dieppe) was appointed as Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia Command. This is a bit unfair. Patton got command of a brigade in 1941, a division less than a year later and a corps two years after that. Bradley commanded the Fort Benning army base in 1941, got a division in 1942, a corps in 1943, the US 1st Army in 1944 and had 1.3million men under his command by 1945. There was another quite famous US general who entered WW2 as a staff officer, having never commanded anything larger than a batallion (and even then it had been fifteen years before). Within a year he was Commander-in-Chief Allied Forces North Africa... and we all know the rest. It would be difficult to suggest that Mountbattons appointments were down to nepotism; plenty of officers in WW2, on both sides, shot up the ranks despite their relative lack of experience or age. They didn't even need to be natural soldiers - in warfare there is just as much need for diplomats. Commander of SEAC was almost a "diplomatic" appointment; Field Marshall Slim cleared Burma virtually by himself, but he wouldn't have been able to do that if all the other services from all the other Allied countries hadn't been working with him (which included Britain, India, China, the US and the Burmese Army). It took a man like Mountbatton to ensure they were; just as it took a glorified clerk in 1941 to do the same in Europe in 1944-5.
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Aug 15, 2012 23:29
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I'm wondering if anyone has any knowledge of if there have been periods in time where purges of military chain of commands actually led to improvement of the military and in what ways?
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Aug 16, 2012 02:11
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Uh, I can only think of that being the case if the high command is made up primarily of old farts whose methodology was very outdated. Doing so during WWI would have likely saved many lives. Commanders still yearned for the glorious cavalry charge and used massed infantry tactics against devastating artillery and machine guns. However because many of these commanders were from aristocratic backgrounds it was often difficult to dislodge them for the simple crime of getting lots of men killed. 
Darkman Fanpage fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Aug 16, 2012 |
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Aug 16, 2012 02:18
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If the French weren't so obsessed about the Cult of the Offensive at the start of 1914 I wonder if they could have won the war much earlier.
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Aug 16, 2012 02:21
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The French were pretty well hosed I think. Not only were they obsessed with offensive actions but they were also obsessed with tradition. When the French parliament began debating among itself about the possibility of reforming the French infantry uniforms there was a huge backlash from the officers corp, some of them going so far as to threaten resignation. The Franco-Prussian War really hosed the French military up.
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Aug 16, 2012 02:30
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:If the French weren't so obsessed about the Cult of the Offensive at the start of 1914 I wonder if they could have won the war much earlier. Probably not. Von Falkenhayn realized as early as 1915 you can't destroy million man armies easily. A lengthy war was pretty much a given as soon as all the major players got involved.
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Aug 16, 2012 03:03
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DasReich posted:Probably not. Von Falkenhayn realized as early as 1915 you can't destroy million man armies easily. A lengthy war was pretty much a given as soon as all the major players got involved. Well the French still could have probably avoided half a million casualties in the first year of the war.
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Aug 16, 2012 04:14
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As I see is there was no way the French weren't going to try to retake Alsace-Lorraine as soon as war broke out. The Franco-Prussian war had such a profound effect on the French national psyche that I can't see a situation where the first thing they do in August 1914 is anything but head right for it. Of course between the failed offensive and the Frontier Battles, there's your half million casualties.
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Aug 16, 2012 05:24
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They also had to try to do something, or at least they felt that way. Letting a huge war drag on indefinitely is expensive poo poo (and could cost in the long run more lives than a shorter, bloodier assault), public morale declines if your army doesn't appear to be in control of the situation, if France didn't commit to defeating Germany then Russia might also feel less enthusiastic, etc. Still, I wonder at what point the senior French generals started thinking to themselves: "What if we're doing things the wrong way?"
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Aug 16, 2012 10:14
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Reading about the French high command, the Grand Quartier General, is about the most depressing thing you can do (next to reading about the actual battles). The French soldier must fight for every inch of ground, never retreat. The French soldier must immediately counter attack once the enemy has appeared. Trenches? The French soldier is not built to sit in the ground! Replace the red trousers? But they enhance out fighting spirit! Machine guns? Hmm I can't really see when they'd be useful. Heavy artillery you say? The glorious French infantry will be moving so fast the 75 is the only piece we need. You say 2 Frenchmen died in this attack? By our mathematics that means that 3 Germans must have been killed! Fortresses are useless to the French, they discourage his offensive spirit! Strip them of weapons! We'll eventually defeat the Germans through lots of small nibbling attacks. Get your toy aeroplanes away from me sir! In some ways the French were very ready to fight the next big war, the problem was theirs was a war of fantasy. I'd almost think the massive casualties were unavoidable as nobody had fought industrial warfare on this scale before and nobody knew what to expect going into it. Certain sins of the GQG though, are unforgivable and basically stem from them clinging to their pre-war ideologies like a sinking ship.
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Aug 16, 2012 11:20
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Rabhadh posted:Reading about the French high command, the Grand Quartier General, is about the most depressing thing you can do (next to reading about the actual battles). The French soldier must fight for every inch of ground, never retreat. The French soldier must immediately counter attack once the enemy has appeared. Trenches? The French soldier is not built to sit in the ground! Replace the red trousers? But they enhance out fighting spirit! Machine guns? Hmm I can't really see when they'd be useful. Heavy artillery you say? The glorious French infantry will be moving so fast the 75 is the only piece we need. You say 2 Frenchmen died in this attack? By our mathematics that means that 3 Germans must have been killed! Fortresses are useless to the French, they discourage his offensive spirit! Strip them of weapons! We'll eventually defeat the Germans through lots of small nibbling attacks. Get your toy aeroplanes away from me sir! The thing is, the French adapted far better to that kind of warfare than the British did, especially under Petain. Their only real arms shortage early in the war was heavy artillery, they had plenty of machine guns. Their defenses were considerably superior to the British lines(though this has more to do with the fact that the British never had to deal with a major offensive until 1918), using defense in depth. At the Somme, they actually used advanced infantry tactics and made their objectives relatively easily, too. I guess it's best to talk about pantalon rouge and all that, though. Petain was easily the best high level commander who fought in the West in World War I.
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Aug 16, 2012 12:27
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I'm not saying the French in general were terrible, just their pre/early war high command. Joffre managed to stall the Germans but was he capable of the defeating them? It wasn't until after his like was replaced that the real success started happening.
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Aug 16, 2012 12:58
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It took the French army mutiny in 1917 to get any real change. The Nivelle Offensive showed how out of control GQG was because he didn't stop the offensive when it failed to meet the objectives the government specified and turned into a horrific casualty factory. After that Petain was put in charge and for all the accusations of defeatism managed to make the French army into a somewhat formidable fighting force.
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Aug 16, 2012 13:25
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I'm way out of my depth here, but wasn't French trench doctrine (as in the physical construction of them) rather terrible? Poor quality with little shelter for the soldiers? I read that Germany built excellent trenches, as they were on French soil and were content to fight there, while the French, anticipating a quick and successful counterattack, built to a far simpler standard?
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Aug 16, 2012 13:26
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meatbag posted:I'm way out of my depth here, but wasn't French trench doctrine (as in the physical construction of them) rather terrible? Poor quality with little shelter for the soldiers? I read that Germany built excellent trenches, as they were on French soil and were content to fight there, while the French, anticipating a quick and successful counterattack, built to a far simpler standard? The short answer is they didn't want their soldiers getting too comfortable in their trenches. In their minds, the soldiers would get too used to being in well prepared defensive positions and then not vigorously pursue the suicidal bayonet charge into the teeth of German machine guns and howitzers.
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Aug 16, 2012 13:44
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One thing that the French did quite a bit in their (badly constructed) trenches was dig man sized cubby holes into the sides of the trench to get out of the rain. This was explicitly banned from British and German trenches, as its a great way to get buried once the shells start falling.
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Aug 16, 2012 14:20
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Did the Germans ever get to do anything with their tanks on the same scale as the Cambrai, Villers-Bretonneux or Amiens? The design of the A7V always puzzled me - slow as a Mark I, but without the all-around tracks necessary for climbing through trenches, although I guess I have to take into account how they were losing the war already by then.
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Aug 16, 2012 14:55
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gradenko_2000 posted:Did the Germans ever get to do anything with their tanks on the same scale as the Cambrai, Villers-Bretonneux or Amiens? The design of the A7V always puzzled me - slow as a Mark I, but without the all-around tracks necessary for climbing through trenches, although I guess I have to take into account how they were losing the war already by then. No. They didn't really develop armor because to some degree they didn't feel the need to develop a wonder weapon when conventional ones were working relatively well. Cambrai doesn't hold up because of the breakdown rate and the amount of armor knocked out by enemy fire. That and a counterattack erased any gains made.
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Aug 16, 2012 15:05
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DasReich posted:No. They didn't really develop armor because to some degree they didn't feel the need to develop a wonder weapon when conventional ones were working relatively well. Cambrai doesn't hold up because of the breakdown rate and the amount of armor knocked out by enemy fire. That and a counterattack erased any gains made. Actually some Austrians came to von Falkenhayn in around 1915/16 with designs for a tank, but he flatly told them it was no use.
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Aug 16, 2012 15:14
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The problem with early tanks was the absurd power to weight ratio. A large hunk of metal traversing a moonscape at walking speed tends to become a large target once the shock factor wears off. Early tankers learned the hard way that dying in a tank is one of the most horrible ways to go.
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Aug 16, 2012 15:25
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DasReich posted:The problem with early tanks was the absurd power to weight ratio. A large hunk of metal traversing a moonscape at walking speed tends to become a large target once the shock factor wears off. Early tankers learned the hard way that dying in a tank is one of the most horrible ways to go.
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Aug 16, 2012 15:35
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The thing is that in 1914/1915 everybody had terrible trenches. In the Frontier Battles and Mons for example, the British and French would dig scrapes, or use ditches and berms for cover. People remember the stalemate of 1916/17 they forget how fast moving the first stage of the war was. It's about 170 km from Mons to Marne, and the Germans covered that distance from August 23 to September 5. That's almost 12km a day. There wasn't time for anyone to dig trenches, the Germans were attacking as quickly and they could and the British and French were fighting frantic delaying acitons. Both sides were routinely caught in the open, which is when people first discovered how effective and terrible the new weapons were. Even at the Marne, troops would either find existing cover, or dig shallow fighting positions.    I know that after the Race to the Sea, both sides started digging shallow trenches for the first winter of the war, but after that my knowledge of entrenchment techniques is pretty shakey.
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Aug 16, 2012 15:40
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DasReich posted:The problem with early tanks was the absurd power to weight ratio. A large hunk of metal traversing a moonscape at walking speed tends to become a large target once the shock factor wears off. Early tankers learned the hard way that dying in a tank is one of the most horrible ways to go. Being in one of those early tanks was one of the most horrible ways to be alive. 
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Aug 16, 2012 15:44
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Crasscrab posted:Being in one of those early tanks was one of the most horrible ways to be alive. Wasn't it mostly a massive engine with just enough room to squeaze some guys in at the sides to shoot and the front to drive?
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Aug 16, 2012 16:09
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