game balance

[Jeremy Pritchard]

Hi, I did an entire University Unit on the concept of Military Incompetence. Basically, the overriding concept of what makes a good military commander (at least until the 1970's) was EXACTLY the same thing that makes a good field soldier. Honour, Strength, and Masculinity were seen as the overiding concepts of importance in generals in command. They rose through the ranks in peace time (where MOST high commanders from ANY war come from, rarely has anyone raised through the ranks like Mountbatten!), where men were promoted not necessarily through merit, as there was nothing to judge them on merit (since there were no wars!).

The main way of promoting commanders was through the preconcieved idea about what makes a good soldier (ie. the very Masculine, Strong and Honourable men). Traits that suit good strategins do not necessarily follow those that make good soldiers in peace time. There were THOUSANDS of commanders of Major General/Rear Admiral/Vice Air Marshal and higher in WW2, but only about 100 that are notable. Most of the others were barely competent, if not incompetent. Many commander's foul-ups were lost in history, or blame placed totally on the C-in-C. Many commander's victories were due to inevitability, or of the situation (they could not fail!), and many were in situations where they could not suceed.

MacArthur defended the beaches due to a concept of honour and misplaced faith in his troops to follow him to the death (because he commands them means they will succeed). Percival refused to shore up defences because it would possibly lower morale. The Japanese did not build a large ASW fleet because it was too defensive. The OKW did not supply the army with winter clothes because it refused to believe that the Soviet Army could survive into the Winter of 1941. The Allied perception that the German build up in the Ardennes in 1940 and 1944 was not a signal that they will attack through there, especially in 1944, they would never do the same thing that they did 4 years ago that was so sucessful.

Most wars are actually won due to one side being less competent then the other, not one side having a much more competent military. The military that screws up less tends to win, or the military that can afford to screw up more than another tends to win. Remember, the Allies had more total casualties then the Axis powers, even though we won. We could just afford to stupidly lose more then the Axis.

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by Rasputitsa
but my point was that if the US higher command had accepted the gift of ?Hobarts Funnies?, the collection of British specialised armoured vehicles, the loses may have been much reduced.

The US already had its own version.

The presence of the SS PZ Divisions at Arnhem was probably well known.

From what I've read, it wasn't common knowledge.

The plan called for the Arnhem bridge to be held for 2 days, even with the PZ divisions there, it was held for 5 days.
/B]

All the more reason to wonder why it took the ground forces all that time to get there. Either they didn't know about the SS or they grossly underestimated the forces needed to get to Arnhem, or the paratroopers and subsequent critics were right that the ground forces were not aggressive enough in their advance. The paratroopers did their job despite the SS, so why was the ground forces so far behind?

[Jeremy Pritchard]

The XXX Corps was forced to advance on a limited front, with flanks to protect and only one main road to move along.

It was not like they were just sitting around with no Germans in front of them. The terrain did not suit a fast advance, there were many great places for roadblocks, especially when the Germans learned the route the British were taking (there was only one road to defend, with about a single division in the vanguard. This was not a very big front to allow for a speedy advance.


The Allies did recieve intelligence that there were 2 SS Panzer Divisions refitting in the area, but chose to take this as misinformation. The information was from the Dutch Resistance. On the surface this appears to be a stupid move (since there were 2 Panzer Divisions there!), but how many other time had this intelligence been proved wrong? Should they scrap an entire plan due to a few reports from a relatively unorganized resistance group? Possibly, possibly not. It was a coin tossup.

However, if any fault does go to anyone it should be to Montgomery. He was the one who OK'd the plan, even though he was not responsible for every detail, he must have been aware about the poor transportation network, as well as the possibility of bad weather, delaying reinforcement droppings, along with ignoring outright without any further inquest regarding the positioning of 2 SS Panzer Divisions in the area.

Indeed, military incompetence showed in the planning, that the concept that nothing can go wrong, where many things did actually go wrong. But what was amazing, that after all that did go wrong, how close to success the plan actually was. It was not quite the disaster, since a great number of the 1st Division got out. Little do people remember, that Market Garden (just like Little Bighorn!) were not 100% defeats with total losses.

[Ranger-75]

Ed,

You are wrong about the US having its own "funnies", the specialized armoured vehicles that the British 79th Armoured division had. The 79th was specially formed for the Normandy assaults and Gen Percy Hobart (who was originally the leader of the British experimental armoured units in the 30s) was brought out of retirement with the expressed mission to train the 79th for the upcoming assault. Bradley, being the bigoted american that he was, refused any of the British specialized vehicles except for a small number of DD sherman tanks. This hurt the US at Utah.

Read "Six Armies at Normandy" for details.

Earlier threads:
Poland:
The Polish 1st Armoured division was one of the best units in the British 21st Army Group. The Polish Infantry divisions in Italy were also superb units. Poland sufferred severely at the hands of german occupation (longer than any other country by the way) with over 1 million polish Jew killed and nearly the same non-jews killed - civilians that it. Their Army was exterminated in the prison camps too. It was awful, cant even express how terrible it was for the people of Poland. I'm glad that they were the first to throw off the yoke of communisim.

Market Garden:
Market Garden's failure must rest with its commander, Montgomery. If a unit I'm commanding fails, I get held responsible. The plan was too hastily created, and depended too much on everything going the planner's way. For a parallel, that had far more disastrous results for the planners, look at the IJN Midway planning. Maybe it wasn't Horrocks' fault the XXX corps had only line of advance, bit it sure as hell was somebody's fault - Montgomery's.

Codes:
The US broke the IJN codes, not the Japanese. They did it as early as 1920 during the Washington Naval treaty. What a flap that caused (it got out and severely embarrassed the Japanese, one more reason for them to hate the US.)

Further, the code broken before the war was referred to by the US as Purple and it was the Japanese DIPLOMATIC code, not their military codes. Before the war, the Japanese Naval codes, JN25 and its derivatives, was not broken until early 1942, again by the US.

Read "The American magic" for more details. It also has fascinating chapters on the sub offensive against Japan.

The US Army in WWII:
We went from a strength of 131,000 in 1931 (200,000 in Jan 1942), to over 8 million by 1945. we went from nearly zero divisions to 90 fullly motorized divisions, 16 of then Armoured. All were formed by mid 1943. A former CoS admits to a generally minimal level of pre-deployment training, because he admitted to being one of the barely trained lieutenants! he said something like "we gave new lieutenants just enough training before sending them overseas to avoid the process being accused of a national disgrace"

It is correct that there was a shortage of trained infantry replacements by early 1945, primarily due to the drubbing we took in Ardennes battles. We did take troops from newly arriving divisions to bring units in the line to full strentgh, but only in 1945 where most units were alrady on line. One of my former division, 76th Infantry (now deactivated) had this happen to it, but it still in the line at full strength by Feb 1945. Corrections in the US to favor infantry replacements corrected the problem. It wasn't a manpower shortage, it was a planning mistake. We hasd some 21 soldiers in service and support for each fighting soldier (armor infantry , artillery branched) in the combat units. The planners messed up.

We also had the equlivelant of almost 100 divisions worth of independent battalions and regiments / groups that could have been formed into units. Bottom line, the US divisions were kept very close to full strength through the campaign while the British army was almost completely out of all trpye of replacements by this time (they managed by avoiding casualties) while the Germans were fielding battalion sized "divisions". I'm not even going to get started on the soviets.

The statement about soldiers leaving their units going into a "general pool" is correct, but soldiers usually only left their units as a result of being evacuated because of injuries or severe illness. They weren't going anywhere for a while.

The men learned, and quickly. They also learned that Artillery really helped ease the going. (artillery did most of the killing, infantry did most of the dieing as far as battle deaths are concerned). So what, we had the finest artillery in the world; the best guns, the best control doctrine (every 2nd Lt must be able to call in and adjust fire not just infantry officers, i know). and we had more of it. Too bad for the Germans and Japanese.

25th Infantry division:
I thought that this was a pacific theatre division. That's why it ended up in Hawaii as its permanent home.

That's all for now.

[Lokioftheaesir]

Originally posted by Jeremy Pritchard

However, if any fault does go to anyone it should be to Montgomery. He was the one who OK'd the plan, even though he was not responsible for every detail, he must have been aware about the poor transportation network, as well as the possibility of bad weather, delaying reinforcement droppings, along with ignoring outright without any further inquest regarding the positioning of 2 SS Panzer Divisions in the area.....

jeremy

I believe Montgomery KNEW that 2 (9th and 10th?) SS Pz Divs were postioned around Arnhem. Why did he continue with the plan? because to cancel it lost him face and would have defaulted the supply initiative to the despised americans.
Continue with the plan and if the 1st AB (under the excellent commander Urquhart) got wiped well he could always blame it on the 1st AB. (who were adventurous 'wags' in any case who should get a good drubbing as there commander was not 'one of us')
Montgomery killed 2/3rds of the 1st para Div. That is the bottom line. I would not put the man in charge of a toilet.

Call me an 'armchair general' if you wish, but 20 years of studying war i think gives me the same credentials as many WW2 generals, if not more.
I certainly 'know' i could do a better job at preserving lives and attaining objectives than the so called 'hero of El Alemain' (such a destiction to win in the defence when you outnumber the attacker by 5 to 1, and do it in such a heroic maner from the rear areas)

Loki

[Lokioftheaesir]

Originally posted by Ranger-75
Ed,


25th Infantry division:
I thought that this was a pacific theatre division. That's why it ended up in Hawaii as its permanent home.

That's all for now.

Ranger

As the 25th ended up with garrison duties in japan after the war then i'd say it was based in Hawaii.
And of course it ended up being 'reforged' in Korea.

Loki

[Lokioftheaesir]

Originally posted by Ranger-75
Ed,


Poland:
The Polish 1st Armoured division was one of the best units in the British 21st Army Group. The Polish Infantry divisions in Italy were also superb units. Poland sufferred severely at the hands of german occupation (longer than any other country by the way) with over 1 million polish Jew killed and nearly the same non-jews killed - civilians that it. Their Army was exterminated in the prison camps too. It was awful, cant even express how terrible it was for the people of Poland. I'm glad that they were the first to throw off the yoke of communisim.

That's all for now.

Ranger

I agree, the Polish peoples are the archetypes of strength that most western nations have been lucky
to avoid. Would the US/UK/Australia have stood up to such atrocity and survived to reforge their nation?
Who knows.
But if we ever find ourselves in such a situation as the Poles during '40 to '44 then we can point to them and say.
"They had the strength to resist, so can we"

Loki

[Jeremy Pritchard]

Originally posted by Lokioftheaesir


jeremy

I believe Montgomery KNEW that 2 (9th and 10th?) SS Pz Divs were postioned around Arnhem. Why did he continue with the plan? because to cancel it lost him face and would have defaulted the supply initiative to the despised americans.
Continue with the plan and if the 1st AB (under the excellent commander Urquhart) got wiped well he could always blame it on the 1st AB. (who were adventurous 'wags' in any case who should get a good drubbing as there commander was not 'one of us')
Montgomery killed 2/3rds of the 1st para Div. That is the bottom line. I would not put the man in charge of a toilet.

Call me an 'armchair general' if you wish, but 20 years of studying war i think gives me the same credentials as many WW2 generals, if not more.
I certainly 'know' i could do a better job at preserving lives and attaining objectives than the so called 'hero of El Alemain' (such a destiction to win in the defence when you outnumber the attacker by 5 to 1, and do it in such a heroic maner from the rear areas)

Loki

Hindsight is 20:20. I am not sure that Montgomery knew 100% that there were 2 Panzer Divisions there. Reading most accounts of the battle show pre operation maps determining that Arnhem was only lightly defended. The only mention of the 2 Panzer Divisions was by Dutch resistance, and as I mentioned, with such comparatively unorganized units such as these, information was not as readily believed.

Frankly, a lot of your attack on Monty seems to be conjecture. 2/3 were not killed, most were captured. He never professed to blame Urquhart for the failure of the mission in any account of the battle that I have found, it more or less was never really 'dealt with', i.e., there were no scapegoats. Should they have "Kimmeled" someone?

Also, the ratio at El Alemain was more like 2/3:1, only around 5:1 in tanks, 2/3:1 when you add up all forms of military equipment (troops, guns, tanks, aircraft). No commander in their right mind will attack a well entrenched foe with less than 2 or 3 : 1 odds.

Studying war for 20 years, 30-50 years after the fact makes you (and me, although I am a few years behind you) good armchair historians who could do better than others at the time because we know what the enemy would do before the fact. Of course the Germans will attack through the Ardennes in May 1940! What idiot would think otherwize!! Give us a teleporter, and wipe our minds of the next 4 years of history and I bet you we would probably not only have lost France, but England as well!

You also forgot to notice how close the operation came to succeeding, even with all of the events that went against the allies! XXX Corps reached the 1st Airborne just after the loss of the bridge, and time enough to safely evacuate the survivors. Sure, there is no second place in battle, but I would hardly say that the plan was 100% wreckless, as if it was, it would have had zero chance of success. Why is it Market Garden (that nearly succeeded) is signled out, but the German attack at Kursk (which had no chance of success) is seen as stragegically sound?


I really do not like Montgomery, but see him for what he was. By late in the war, the top Allied Generals all became politicised, and competitive. Patton, Montgomery and MacArthur were all competing against their own allies in order to win the war with their troops, usually at the cost of them and their allies. I agree that Monty lost sight, like the two other commanders, of the real goal (defeat of Germany, Italy and Japan). I would attack him, but not single him out. There were plenty of incompetent Generals that hid behind history.

[RickyB]

Originally posted by Lokioftheaesir
I certainly 'know' i could do a better job at preserving lives and attaining objectives than the so called 'hero of El Alemain' (such a destiction to win in the defence when you outnumber the attacker by 5 to 1, and do it in such a heroic maner from the rear areas)

Loki

And I believe the defensive battle was fought using Auchinleck's plan of defense. It was Auchinleck who stopped Rommel at El Alamein and almost destroyed the Germans, if his planned attacks had been carried out better by his subordinates, and who replaced Cunningham during Crusader with Ritchie to prevent him from calling off the 8th Army attack.

Maybe if Auchinleck directly commanded the army forces in the field throughout, rather than having overall command of the Mideast, Rommel would have been stopped at Gazala, and Montgomery never given the chance in the North Africa???

[czerpak]

Originally posted by Lokioftheaesir


Ranger

I agree, the Polish peoples are the archetypes of strength that most western nations have been lucky
to avoid. Would the US/UK/Australia have stood up to such atrocity and survived to reforge their nation?
Who knows.
But if we ever find ourselves in such a situation as the Poles during '40 to '44 then we can point to them and say.
"They had the strength to resist, so can we"

Loki

Ranger,
thanks for saying what I couldnt say ( someone could call me "nationalist" or something like that)

Nick,
thats the best compliment I ever heard from a foreigner.

BTW We do remember here that in concentration camps in Poland there were also killed people from other countries, not only Poles.

Maciej

[RickyB]

Originally posted by Jeremy Pritchard

You also forgot to notice how close the operation came to succeeding, even with all of the events that went against the allies! XXX Corps reached the 1st Airborne just after the loss of the bridge, and time enough to safely evacuate the survivors. Sure, there is no second place in battle, but I would hardly say that the plan was 100% wreckless, as if it was, it would have had zero chance of success. Why is it Market Garden (that nearly succeeded) is signled out, but the German attack at Kursk (which had no chance of success) is seen as stragegically sound?

I agree about the closeness of Market Garden. Regarding Kursk, I don't know too many people that thought it was a sound attack after the fact, but in all reality the Germans came close to winning a tactical victory in the south that could have made the attack worthwhile. When Hitler called off the attack in the south, it was due to problems with the Allied landing in Sicily, and strong Soviet pressure around the Mius river at the south end of the front. The battle of Prokhorovka had just been fought, and does not appear to have been the German disaster as commonly thought until a few years ago.

Manstein wanted to continue the attack but with much more limited objectives, namely to destroy 2 Soviet tank armies that were blooded and weak, before they could be rebuilt. There was an entire fresh Panzer korps in reserve, and based on Manstein's analysis of other situations, his recommendation to continue and destroy these armies must have at least some weight given to it as being doable. If it succeeded (a big if, but still with a good chance), the Soviet offensive in the Kursk/Kharkov area would have been halted for a long period of time. This would have been at the cost of problems in the far south along the Mius.

Instead, Hitler's orders led to a small pullback from the gains made in the south of Kursk, but not a full withdrawal to the defensive lines, the sending of most of the panzer forces south to stabilize the front, the beginning of a Soviet offensive to take Kharkov in early August (only a couple of weeks after the German offensive was called off) by the forces that Manstein thought he could chew up, the return of the panzers from the south and the eventual fall of Kharkov, which led to the withdrawal to the Dnepr river anyway. The Soviets had the manpower to rebuild the tank forces that had been beat up stopping the German attack, but if they had suffered more heavily, it would have taken much longer to rebuild them into effective fighting forces again, buying time for the Germans.

Still not a worthwhile attack strategically, but it still came close to being a minor success, I think.

[Jeremy Pritchard]

Had the Germans not attacked at Kursk, and waited for a Russian attack in the area, many of the bugs of the Panther I could have been worked out. Most of the Panther I losses were due to mechanical breakdown, then getting nailed by the Soviet Air Force.

Of course, this would have just delayed the inevitable like you said...

[Lokioftheaesir]

Originally posted by Jeremy Pritchard



Hindsight is 20:20. I am not sure that Montgomery knew 100% that there were 2 Panzer Divisions there. Reading most accounts of the battle show pre operation maps determining that Arnhem was only lightly defended. The only mention of the 2 Panzer Divisions was by Dutch resistance, and as I mentioned, with such comparatively unorganized units such as these, information was not as readily believed.

Frankly, a lot of your attack on Monty seems to be conjecture. 2/3 were not killed, most were captured. He never professed to blame Urquhart for the failure of the mission in any account of the battle that I have found, it more or less was never really 'dealt with', i.e., there were no scapegoats. Should they have "Kimmeled" someone?

Also, the ratio at El Alemain was more like 2/3:1, only around 5:1 in tanks, 2/3:1 when you add up all forms of military equipment (troops, guns, tanks, aircraft). No commander in their right mind will attack a well entrenched foe with less than 2 or 3 : 1 odds.

Studying war for 20 years, 30-50 years after the fact makes you (and me, although I am a few years behind you) good armchair historians who could do better than others at the time because we know what the enemy would do before the fact. Of course the Germans will attack through the Ardennes in May 1940! What idiot would think otherwize!! Give us a teleporter, and wipe our minds of the next 4 years of history and I bet you we would probably not only have lost France, but England as well!

You also forgot to notice how close the operation came to succeeding, even with all of the events that went against the allies! XXX Corps reached the 1st Airborne just after the loss of the bridge, and time enough to safely evacuate the survivors. Sure, there is no second place in battle, but I would hardly say that the plan was 100% wreckless, as if it was, it would have had zero chance of success. Why is it Market Garden (that nearly succeeded) is signled out, but the German attack at Kursk (which had no chance of success) is seen as stragegically sound?


I really do not like Montgomery, but see him for what he was. By late in the war, the top Allied Generals all became politicised, and competitive. Patton, Montgomery and MacArthur were all competing against their own allies in order to win the war with their troops, usually at the cost of them and their allies. I agree that Monty lost sight, like the two other commanders, of the real goal (defeat of Germany, Italy and Japan). I would attack him, but not single him out. There were plenty of incompetent Generals that hid behind history.

Jeremy

Yes you are quite correct about hindsight and also of singling him out.
In truth, if all my reading has taught me one thing it is that i would abhore the responsibillity that high command places in your hands, that every decision may kill men.
But those who take that load are responsible to their men and should do their utmost to reduce the risks to them.
Having reports (or even rumours)of Pz units in the drop area of a light division like the parras should have lead to more recce of the area.
Not simply forging ahead.
Actually i have not read anything on market garden
for 15 years or so, it's all from memory. If my figures for casualties are off then i am sorry, all i remember was that the unit was decimated and remnants withdrew south.
Pretty much the same goes for El Alemain.

I simply do not like Montgomery and this colours my perceptions of his acts. Like MacArthur, there was the element of the struting peacock about him that i find distastefull in the extreme in a man that holds other mens lives in there hands.
If he was a superior commander it would not matter so much, but......

Loki

PS
I never suggested Market garden was'nt strategically sound, it was a good plan.
It is the drama that singles it out, like the Bulge.
Kursk on the other hand was i think a waste of men and material. Even if the germans had of succeeded in the southern element of the attack, overall the idea that pinching of the salient would lead to further(and final) victory was a pipedream.
IMO a better strategy would be a flexible defence that bled the USSR so much that it would not have the strength to enter central Europe.

[Possum]

My mistake, the example I was refering to should have been the 28th "Keystone" Division; And not the 25th "Lightning" Division, which never left the Pacific theater.