Infantry Training Doctrine

> notion that the German Army stood head and shoulders above > every other Army perpetuated by Gudmundsson in particular.

So the fact that Germany controlled most of Euope by the end of 1941 was an act of God?

> > The only reason the British managed to contain > > Rommel was through superior resources. > > Rubbish. There was a process of progressive improvement in > logistics, training, doctrine, command and equipment in the > desert army from 1940-1942 all of which played a role in the > containment and then utter rout of the Axis forces at 2nd > Alamein. While the British did (eventually) have superior > numbers, that wasn't in itself the main cause of victory. > Bad logistics on the part of the Axis were important, for > example.

To sum up: The British got more resources.

> > Without the Americans, the British would > > have had to teach their infantry how to > > fight German style. > > What, precisely, is 'German style'?

They would have to train their infantry to fight. They would have to train their men to show initiative. They would have to slim down the rear and put more men into the fighting line.

They would have to concentrate their officer training on tactical skills. British officer training were mainly strategic.

A German officer who wanted to advance would have to prove his military skills since the entrance exam to the war college (or whatever it was called) consisted mainly of tactical problems.

> > With the officer material the British had, it is > > not likely that they would have managed to > > change their doctrine in such a way that > > they could resist the Germans. > > How do you explain that an infantry doctrine which enabled > British and Commonwealth troops to repeatedly defeat German > troops, even the elite German troops, in Europe was actually > formulated and in place by 1942-43?

They could do that because the American were giving them the stuff they needed. Remember the Sherman tank. Trucks, heavy artillery.

> You have yet to either establish this lack of basic fighting > skill or to enumerate British industrial capacity. In fact, > this is all uninformed speculation.

It is not. You need to read up on who produced what.

> Slim was an exceptional general, but he fought a very > different war than that fought in Europe. Battles against > the Japanese in Burma usually consisted of fighting > fanatically tenacious battalion-sized infantry units backed > by small amounts of artillery and poor quality AT guns and > armour, in a jungle environment with fragile LOC. Defeating > them required an infantry (and indeed armoured and air) > fighting doctrine very different to that required against an > enemy operating in urban and rural locations in mobile > brigade and division-sized units with strong armour, AT guns > and artillery and relatively secure LOC. It is not apparent > that importing the doctrines that worked against the > Japanese in jungle fighting would greatly assist, for > example, 2nd British Army in Normandy.

You must be joking. Almost every tactical skill learned in the jungle would have been applicable to Normandy. What made the Germans so successful was their ability at small scale fighting. What they did in the small they repeated in the large.

I don't see people trained to be aggresive and resourceful walking across fields in a skirmish line. I don't see them not posting guards or not sending out scouts to find the enemy. I don't see them stopping because they encounter resistance. I see them tenaciously probing for a weak spot to push through.

> > Much the same the Germans did in 1914-15 when > > they discovered that their infantry doctrine did not > > work. They had too many losses. > > I'm afraid you will need to expalin this further.

You claim you have read Gudmunsson?

> > > The Germans sought a tactical solution to their problem. > > The British wanted a technical solution. The problem > > is that the technical solution is horrificly expensive > > and requires a lot of industrial capacity. > > The British Army sought to and succeeded in giving infantry > units greater punch and strength by mechanisation and the > provision of heavy weapon support on a lavish scale. The > Heer could not afford to do this except for key units, being > critically short of vehicles. (By way of illustration, in > 1941, half the entire Barbarossa invasion force -77 > divisions - was reliant entirely on horse-drawn transport). > It sems pointless to laud the Heer for not doing something > which they couldn't afford to do in the first place.

And this is supposed to contradict that the British sought technical solutions to their lack of basic fighting skill?

> > The German tactical solution meant that they > > got more from their men than enybody else > > in Europe. Their enphasis on a tactical solution > > did not help when they ran out of resources. > > The German tactical solution which you seem to admire was > forced upon them by lack of resources.

No. It was forced upon them because they found their lossess unacceptable in the early stages of WW1. The solution was to apply their system of command and control one more level down. The smallest unit which operated independently in the German army was the squad.

They improved on that system for WW2.

> > Montgomery's strategy was to make the Germans > > run out of resources by launching one attack > > after another on different parts of the German lines. > > This is called dispersing the enemy and is a basic > operational skill. It does not mean that British infantry > doctrine in 1942 was inferiorto that of the Heer.

It is called unbalancing the enemy. Nobody is complaining about the overall doctrine. But it caused the basic lack of skill of the British soliders. It is not that they lacked potential, because they had that in spades. The problem was that the British doctrine required a very rigid chain of command. There was no place for initiative except at the highest level.

This basic lack of skill in the entire chain of command forced Montgomery to fight his battles as set piece battles. He still believed in the basic doctrine so he still supressed initiative. His main contribution was that he made the doctrine workable.

We still see this problem as late as the battle of Goose Green in the Falklands. Only after the batalion commander got killed did the British get their act together and exploit opportunities as they arose. Exploiting opportunities is everything in infantry combat.

Slim threw the basic doctrine overboard and therefor he managed to get a fighting force which could take on the Japanese and win.

It is easy to ridicule that Japanese because they had inferior equipment, but they compensated to a large extent by having good basic fighting skills. E.g. their trenches were covered so that they could call in artillery fire on their own positions.

> > In the end, the Germans ran out of reserves > > and he won the battle. > > In the end, the British beat the Germans into a rout. Go > figure.

The withdrawal was fairly orderly if my memory serves me right.

No, the Heer in 1940-41 had many major advantages in terms of equipment, training and doctrine. But by 1944, those advantages were minimal. I'm not persuaded by the discredited notion that the German Army always stood head and shoulders above every other Army.

It is rather pathetic to ignore substantial comments and merely parrot your original claim. To repeat: there was a process of progressive improvement in logistics, training, doctrine, command and equipment in the desert army from 1940-1942 all of which played a role in the containment and then utter rout of the Axis forces at 2nd Alamein.

British Army training by the end of 1941 had been revolutionised from pre-war days. The 64 regimental training centres were merged to form 25 Infantry Training Centres, and all recruits received standard primary training and then standard infantry training. The Reserve Training Divisions (48, 76, 77 and 80) were formed at the same time to provide a vehicle for continuing specialised training for graduates from the ITCs.

This expansion of training coincided with the introduction of new standardised battle drills of the sort long used in the German army: communal tactical training for all members of a section, platoon or battalion in all aspects of modern war. Coupled with field exercises on the grandest scale and new Standard Operation Procedures, these drills enabled the mass-production of professional well-trained soldiers.

You have previously ignored these detailed remarks in favour of parrot-like repetition of old and discredited prejudice.

Try reading 'Infantry Tactics 1939-45', Farrar-Hockley (1976) or 'Training in the Army', Gibb (1976).

Why? Why abandon the massive advantages that accrue from belonging to resource-rich nations to adopt the more primitive fighting methods of poorer nations?

Complete rubbish. A GHQ Battle School was established in November 1941 to standardise and develop specialised junior officer training for modern war; in November 1942 it was re-named the School of Infantry. It dealt solely with tactical training. In February 1943 over 44,000 sub-standard NCOs were weeded out of the Infantry and an Infantry NCO training school established, again dealing with matters at the tactical level. The Small Arms and Heavy Weapons Schools were expanded and attendance made compulsory. In August 1942 an Advanced Handling and Fieldcraft School opened to teach officers and NCOs about the *tactical* use of mechanised formations and infantry weapons.

You have previously ignored these detailed remarks in favour of parrot-like repetition of old and discredited prejudice.

So you don't even know how German officer cadets were trained, obviously.

Are you seriously suggesting that the successes of the Commonwealth Army in WW2 were solely due to the availability of lend-lease equipment?

To repeat. Battles against the Japanese in Burma usually consisted of fighting fanatically tenacious battalion-sized infantry units backed by small amounts of artillery and poor quality AT guns and armour, in a jungle environment with fragile LOC. Defeating them required an infantry (and indeed armoured and air) fighting doctrine very different to that required against an enemy operating in urban and rural locations in mobile brigade and division-sized units with strong armour, AT guns and artillery and relatively secure LOC. It is not apparent that importing the doctrines that worked against the Japanese in jungle fighting would greatly assist, for example, 2nd British Army in Normandy.

Perhaps you would like to address those detailed issues.

In very broad terms, and on the level of individual soldiers, perhaps. But not in terms of section, platoon or battalion tactics. If you disagree, give some specific examples of tactical doctrines at the small unit level from Burma which would have been useful in Normandy.

This is sufficiently generalised as to be meaningless. State what you mean in more detail, please.

All this is true of some units in all Armies in WW2, Heer included. These vague complaints are not detailed specific evidence of the sort needed to substantiate your prejudices.

Yes.

You have not established that there was a lack of basic fighting skill. Neither can you seem to comprehend the fact that resource-rich nations like the BCE and US could afford to fight in a different way from resource-starved nations like Germany.

How can losses in WW1 have anything to do with a basic shortage of motor vehicles in WW2? Or have you not grasped that logistics are at least as important as tactics in modern warfare?

Well, you don't seem to have a clue what doctrine is. Which doesn't help.

soliders.

You have not established that there was a lack of basic fighting skill.

This is prejudice, not fact. If you look at the actual accounts of battles fought by Commonwealth troops in WW2, you will see that - with the usual exceptions - initiative was exercised at all levels within the constraints of resource-hungry mechanised warfare. For example, did the officers of Kings Own Shropshire Light Infantry display aggression, resource and initiative when they decided, despite the lack of their vehicles, artillery and armoured support, to advance inland on Caen from Sword beach on the afternoon of D-Day?

battles.

When facing determined resistance, set-piece battles are essential. Witness the Heer's use of them (when they could afford them) in both the West and East.

Produce your evidence for this statement.

This is sufficiently generalised as to be meaningless. State what you mean in more detail, please.

In 'Defeat into Victory', Slim doesn't say this. He specifies a number of Japanese-specific, terrain-specific and theatre-specific tactical doctrines which enabled troops largely trained either for desert warfare to win.

When, of course, they had artillery.

right.

That wasn't what Rommel himself said. Go look it up, and check the respective operational strengths of the two sides 14 days after 2nd Alamein too.

There is some true in the first accusation. I know more about Japanese air operations than land warfare; it does seem that in dealing with a three-plane flight of Japanese fighters, their tactics were indeed rigid. It was on a higher level that they showed amazing flexibility and willingness to risk everything, as for example landing at just-evacuated enemy airfields in the hope (usually justified) that they could find the gasoline that would enable them to take off again.

Time and again in the first year of the Pacific War, the Japanese beat a larger defensive force, notably at Singapore in February 1942.

That, and their willingness to die in huge numbers rather than surrender. The rule of thumb on the Pacific islands was that the Americans would suffer one casualty for each defender, and that virtually all the Japanese would die.

all the best

:>and once the initial shocks had passed the only thing that kept :>the Japanese Army from being handily defeated was logistics :>and communications.

Of course it should be pointed out that, correct or not, this is what many German officers said about the US Army.

Montgomery attacked prepared positions with a 2:1 superiority in troops and more than that in other equipment.

That's not all that much. You can attack with a 2:1 overall superiority and still lose, as the Union discovered during the Civil War, as well as both sides during WWI.

The great improvement compared to Brevity and Battleaxe was that Montgomery's force wasn't wiped out at practically no cost to the Germans.

Compared to Crusader, El Alamein had the British remaining focused, and concentrating their armor - not always as well as they wanted, particularly with 10th corps, but still effectively enough. Compared to Crusader and Gazala, Montgomery never lost control. He dictated the tempo of the battle, knew what he was doing, had a plan, and retained the initiative.

The British also had a numerical superiority at Crusader and Gazala, yet they won a marginal victory (Crusader) and lost big time (Gazala). So you have to give Montgomery some credit.

> During the first days of the

So what ?

On the northern face of the Kursk salient, the Germans attacked with an almost 2:1 numerical superiority (more than that in tanks and aircraft) and yet they achieved none of their objectives with enemy troops still resisting. The same holds true of the southern salient, although some authors claim that the Germans 'won' there. Be that as it may, I think it clear that Montgomery's victory at El Alamein was more marked than Manstein's 'victory' at Kursk. Both times these were attacks against strongly-entrenched defenders.

British superiority doesn't seem to me to have been substantially greater than at Gazala, yet the outcome was clearly different.

I don't think it's a problem with British high commanders - although neither Cunningham nor Ritchie were nearly as good as the better German field commanders like Rommel - but rather with the British army not being as good a tactical instrument as the Wehrmacht.

Montgomery was using a blunter tool than Rommel, you musn't confuse leadership with army performance, i.e. Rommel would probably have done better than Cunningham had he been at the head of the British forces at Crusader, and he would almost certainly have done better than Ritchie. But the German army with a good leader would still have beaten a Rommel-led British army in a mobile battle, everything else being equal, in 1940-42.

Most of the army that was at El Alamein was destroyed, what remained was in no position to continue the fight.

I would disagree with 'utter rout' myself because the Axis forces weren't routed - Rommel didn't lose control - on the other hand the troops which put up 'a stout resistance in Tunisia' were more than the El Alamein remains.

Best regards

Sure. However, there's one important difference.

There was nobody better at logistics, communications, artillery, and air support than the US, and the only forces equal in some of these areas were fighting on the same side.

There were plenty of armies with better logistics, communications, and firepower than the Japanese.

This meant that when the Japanese ran into a heavier force, they had nothing to fall back on except an unusual willingness to die for their country (and see Patton's comment on the usefulness of that). When the US ran into a heavier force, well, that really didn't happen much, and was rectifiable.

Given the horrendous casualties the Japanese inflicted upon the Americans in the Pacific campaign, that willingness to die was hugely effective. Typically the Americans took one casualty for each defender, and the defender died. Apart from the loss of front-line soldiers (at least for a time) the Americans had the problem of littering the casualty back, evacuating him, and caring for him. If the Japanese had simply surrendered, the bother of caring for him would have been trivial by comparison.

(And he was of course lost to the Empire in any event.)

all the best

The combination of fortifications and the willingness to undergo severe hardship and death for their country was much more effective, as it nullified much of the US firepower advantage.

Whatever.

My point was that this did not constitute tremendous superiority against opponents fighting from strong defensive positions which was the case of the Axis at El Alamein.

Montgomery should get credit for winning that battle, he could have lost it. The Italians had a greater superiority than that in 1940, and they made no progress against the strong French defenses in the Alps. The Soviets attacked with 3:1 superiority at numerous points against the German Army Group Center and failed. The Germans had local superiority of over 3:1 at different points of the Kursk battle and failed.

The difference between Montgomery and previous British commanders is precisely that Montgomery knew what he was doing and was good at making his forces understand what he wanted them to do.

So a tactical setback didn't translate into either a cancellation of the attack or into subordinate commanders pulling in different directions, as had been the norm before.

I'm afraid that doesn't have much to do with things.

The original idea was that 30th (with plenty of armor attached) would be a breakthrough corps, while 10th would be a pursuit corps 'corps de chasse' Montgomery called it. The splitting of roles at the operational level (with essentially infantry and armored corps) says nothing about tank-infantry cooperation.

Because the initial infantry attack didn't work as planned, Montgomery was forced to engage his exploitation force to complete the breakthrough. In that he had the same problem as the Soviets of the time. That's still a vast improvement over previous British armored practices. British infantry fought El Alamein with tank support, contrary to what had been the norm before.

Sorry, but this has nothing to do with things.

Either you consider your 'mostly' important, in which case you recognize that British armored units had infantry - just like their German counterparts - or you don't in which case I'll point out that there were tank and infantry units under the same divisional commander in both armies.

The Germans, like the British, organized their corps into infantry corps (practically everyone), and armored forces (DAK and the 21st Italian corps with Ariete and Littorio).

The British fought a combined-arms battle at El Alamein. It wasn't a dashing operational victory - but then nobody produced dashing operational victories against entrenched Germans with good troops and commanders - it was a setpiece battle. But it worked. In 1940-42, fighting a successful combined-arms assault had been beyond the British ability: see their performance in Battleaxe, Brevity, Crusader, and Gazala.

British performance had looked good in late 1940, but only against the Italians where combined arms were not really necessary (usually, having a Matilda unit coming up to reinforce British infantry was enough).

The Germans lost Kursk strategically. Now looking at the scale of El Alamein - a very small part of Kursk, which was about ten times as big a battle as El Alamein - I was providing the example of the German initial assault in the northern face of teh salient. It was checked, and got nowhere, despite local attacker superiority. In other words, Model had more or less the same problem as Montgomery (attacking entrenched defenders with a 2-3:1 superiority) but he didn't do as well as the British 8th Army.

The begining of Kursk wasn't brilliant either. And that was with attackers under Manstein, Hoth, Model, Kluge facing Soviet troops. For Montgomery to have done as well as these four against German veterans under Rommel is good enough I'd say.

Perhaps you should add Crusader to break the line, then.

There's also the fact that Montgomery's victory at El Alamein was going to be final, even if Torch hadn't taken place.

(snip)

Your meaning had been clear enough, but my understanding is that these units were reinforced and therefore comprised more than El Alamein remnants.

It made the Japanese troops at least somewhat effective; had they been 'normal' troops with good morale, mostly they would have surrendered.

At the same time, their fixed belief that self-sacrificing bravery trumped all led them to squander manpower in frontal charges against machine guns.

On Guadcanal, the Ichiki Force destroyed itself in a futile frontal assault across the Tenaru River. One US Marine gunner remarked afterwards that 'the poor dumb bastards didn't even have enough sense to keep down.'

Guadalcanal: US losses 1,600 dead, 4,700 wounded. Japanese losses 24,000 dead.

Tarawa: US losses 1,009 dead, 2,100 wounded. Japanese losses 4,700 dead.

Marianas campaign: US losses 4,600 dead, 14,000 wounded. Japanese losses 40,000 dead.

Iwo Jima: US losses 4,600 dead, 14,000 wounded. Japanese losses 21,000 dead.

Okinawa: US losses 12,500 dead, 37,000 wounded. Japanese losses 130,000 dead.

Philippine campaign: US losses 14,000 dead, 48,000 wounded. Japanese losses 450,000 dead or captured at end of war.

Only at Tarawa and Guadalcanal did the Japanese approach a 1-to-1 casualty ration. In both cases the Japanese were defending a very small, very heavily fortified island.