Comments by "John Burns" (@johnburns4017) on "TIKhistory"
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@cavscout888
Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the reason why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak".
The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 8 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men in the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself. XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge.
If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin. Even the US Official War record confirms this.
Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm
The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
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@cavscout888
Some facts for you. The British were the single biggest agents in the defeat of Nazi Germany. They were there from day one until the end. They never entered the war because they attacked another country or were attacked, they went in on principle. The so-called "invincible" Germans army tried and failed, with their allies, for two years in WW2 to defeat the British army in North Africa. The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein
♦ March 1943 - Medenine
♦ June 1944 - Normandy
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Montgomery moved over 1,000 km in 17 days from El Alemein to Tunisia, the fastest advance for such a distance in WW2. The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 Lorraine casualties. Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British with Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
Then the ignored British naval blockade on the Axis economy, which was so successful the substantial Italian navy could not put to sea in full strength, or even at all on some occasions, because of a lack of oil. Then the British bomber offensive on the German economy, taking the war right into German cities, wiping out Hamburg in one night.
You need to give respect where it is due.
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@bigwoody4704
Rambo, the smell of that gun polish has gone to your head.
Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the reason why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 8 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men in the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.
XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.
Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm
The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
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“Patton finally began receiving adequate supplies on September 4, after a week’s excruciating pause”
- Harry Yeide
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp. In thinking this Ike was wrong."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
“ It was commonly believed at Third Army H.Q. that Montgomery's advance through Belgium was largely maintained by supplies diverted from Patton. (See Butcher, op. cit., p. 667.) This is not true. The amount delivered by the ' air-lift ' was sufficient to maintain only one division. No road transport was diverted to aid Montgomery until September 16th. On the other hand, three British transport companies, lent to the Americans on August 6th " for eight days," were not returned until September 4th.' “
- CHESTER WILMOT
THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE. 1954
P 589
"Despite objections raised to Montgomery's plan of an assault on a 40 division front, it was more sensible than Eisenhower's insistence on the entire front being in motion at all times, for no better reason than he could not abide the thought that the two American army groups would not participate as entities in the anticipated victory. Not only did Eisenhower fail to heed Montgomery's suggestions, but also he never seemed to understand the possible benefits. He was evidently unable to understand that to supply 40 divisions attacking on one front would have been an easier task than to supply first one army and then the other as each in turn went over to the offensive. It was this concentration of effort which Eisenhower failed to understand and to implement"
- Eisenhower at the Art of Warfare
by DJ Haycock, page 182.
Land supplies were not taken from Patton and given to Monty. It is a complete myth to claim otherwise. Monty didn't even have a full army for his attack at Market Garden, just a Corps and supporting elements, with much flown in from England.
Market Garden was not a very large ground operation. It was limited in size. The US advance on the Hurtgen Forest by First US Army 9th Infantry Division began on 14th September, 3 days before Market Garden began, and was continuing to try and advance into the Hurtgen even when Market Garden began 3 days later, but it was halted by the Germans.
This was soon followed up by a larger advance by the US First Army towards Aachen at the start of October. Market Garden didn't make a notable dent in allied supplies seeing as the US was able to put on a LARGER ground attack right afterwards. According to Bradley in his own book there was parity of supplies between the three allied armies, Second British, First and Third US by mid September 1944 and according to the official US Army History as cited in Hugh Cole's book, The Lorraine Campaign page 52..."by 10th September the period of critical (gasoline) shortage had ended". This was a whole week before Market Garden took place. The gasoline drought was the end of August/beginning of September. It was over by the time of Market Garden.
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111,000 British troops were involved. Two shambolic US armies had to be given to a proven competent commander - there was only one, Montgomery. British officer Whiteley & American officer Betts of SHEAF visited the U.S. First Army HQ after the German attack, seeing the shambles. Strong, Whiteley, and Betts recommended that command of the armies north of the Ardennes be transferred from Bradley to Montgomery. Unfortunately only the two British officers approached Beddel Smith of their recommendations, who immediately fired the pair, claiming it was a nationalistic thing called the two "sons of b****s". The next morning, Beddel Smith apologized after seeing the gravity of the situation, saw the three officers were right, recommending to Eisenhower to bring in Monty.
After the Bulge debacle, the British were told to shut up about their involvement, allowing the Americans to claim it was all their victory. An official hush order was given. The idea was to keep the Americans quiet and happy and get on with the war. Dr Mark Felton covers this well enough.
The reality was that Eisenhower, Hodges and Bradley should have been fired from their positions. After the battle Eisenhower gave Bradley an award. No kidding.
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@TheImperatorKnight
Hodges, fled his HQ from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. Monty's liaison officers went to Spa but found the HQ empty. They had to ask civilians in the village where they had gone. They pointed up a road to Liege. So they raced up trying to find them. You couldn't make this up.
The USA retreat at the Bulge was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements.
The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south, who never relieved Bastogne - even the US commanders of the 18,000 inside emphatically say so. They pretty well walked out. Patton, this so-called master of lightning armoured warfare, was so slow. Decades later, Eisenhower recalled how Patton would telephone with frustrating progress reports, saying: “General, I apologize for my slowness. This snow is God-awful. I’m sorry.” It took Patton three days to get thru one village and totally outnumbering the enemy.
The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about, and under Monty performed very well. The commander of the Ninth, General Simpson, has near been written out of US military history, as he went hand in hand with Monty for the common good. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship. The Ninth never suffered such attrition rates.
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@TheImperatorKnight
Eisenhower should have been given just the political role, dealing with Chiefs of Staff, presidents, PMs, other forces leaders, etc. The ground control should have stayed with Monty.
Hodges and Bradley should have been fired for sure.
I will let the Germans have the first say on the Bulge:
General Hasso von Manteuffel:
‘The operations of the American First Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough’.
Montgomery on hearing of the attack immediately, without consulting Eisenhower, took British forces to the Meuse to prevent any German forces from making a bridgehead, securing the rear. He was prepared to halt their advance and attack them. This was while Eisenhower and Bradley were doing nothing.
On 20 December, Montgomery had sent a signal to Alanbrooke regarding the US forces:
"Not good... definite lack of grip and control. I have heard nothing from Ike or Bradley and had no orders or requests of any sort. My own opinion is that the American forces have been cut in half and the Germans can reach the Meuse at Namur without opposition."
Bradley, commander of the 12th Army Group, did very little:
16 Dec, the first day, for 12 hours did nothing.
16 Dec, after 12 hours, he sent two armoured divisions from the flanking Ninth and Third Armies.
17 Dec, after 24 Hours, he then called in two US airborne divisions from Champagne.
18 Dec, he ordered Patton to halt his pending offensive in the Saar.
18 Dec, he had still not established contact with the First Army, while Monty had.
19 Dec, he withdrew divisions from the Aachen front to shore up the Ardennes.
19 Dec, he had still not produced an overall defensive plan.
19 Dec, the Supreme Commander intervened directly late in the day.
20 Dec, Eisenhower telephoned Montgomery telling him to take command of the US First and Ninth Armies
While all this dillying by Bradley was going on, German armies were pounding forward into his lines. Bradley should have been fired immediately. Hodges ran away from his command post.
During the Battle of the Bulge Eisenhower was stuck self imprisoned in his HQ in des-res Versailles near Paris in fear of German paratroopers wearing US uniforms with the objective to kill allied generals. He had remained locked up more than 30 days communicating little with Montgomery, and that is when he thought he was doing ground control of the campaign, when in effect Montgomery was in control as two US shambolic US armies had to be put under his control after the German attack, the US First and Ninth armies.
And yet biased American authors said that Eisenhower took control of the Bulge and made the battle his veneering it as an all American victory. Ambrose completely falsified history. The only thing Eisenhower did was tell Monty to get control of two out of control US armies, tell the US 101st to go to Bastogne (who were in northern France after the buffer Market Garden was created) and men under Bradley to counterattack. That is it.
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@brucenadeau1280
1985 US Army report on the Lorraine Campaign.
Patton does not come out well.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a211668.pdf
Combat Studies Institute. The Lorraine Campaign: An Overview, September-December 1944. by Dr. Christopher R. Gabel February, 1985
From the document is in italics:
Soldiers and generals alike assumed that Lorraine would fall quickly, and unless the war ended first, Patton's tanks would take the war into Germany by summer's end. But Lorraine was not to be overrun in a lightning campaign. Instead, the battle for Lorraine would drag on for more than 3 months." "Despite its proximity to Germany, Lorraine was not the Allies' preferred invasion route in 1944. Except for its two principal cities, Metz and Nancy, the province contained few significant military objectives." "Moreover, once Third Army penetrated the province and entered Germany, there would still be no first-rate military objectives within its grasp.
The Saar industrial region, while significant, was of secondary importance when compared to the great Ruhr industrial complex farther north."
Another Patton chase into un-needed territory, full of vineyards like he did when running his troops into Brittany.
"With so little going for it, why did Patton bother with Lorraine at all? The reason was that Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, made up his mind to destroy as many German forces as possible west of the Rhine."
In other words a waste of time.
"Communications Zone organized the famous Red Ball Express, a non-stop conveyor belt of trucks connecting the Normandy depots with the field armies."
They were getting fuel via 6,000 trucks.
"The simple truth was that although fuel was plentiful in Normandy, there was no way to transport it in sufficient quantities to the leading elements. On 31 August , Third Army received no fuel at all."
In short, Patton overran his supply lines. What was important was to secure the Port of Antwerp's approaches, which Eisenhower deprioritised. Montgomery approached the US leaders of the First Airborne Army who would not drop into the Scheldt.
"Few of the Germans defending Lorraine could be considered First-rate troops. Third Army encountered whole battalions made up of deaf men, others of cooks, and others consisting entirety of soldiers with stomach ulcers."
Some army the Americans were going to fight
"Was the Lorraine campaign an American victory? From September through November, Third Army claimed to have inflicted over 180,000 casualties on the enemy. But to capture the province of Lorraine, a problem which involved an advance of only 40 to 60 air miles, Third Army required over 3 months and suffered 50,000 casualties, approximately one-third of the total number of casualties it sustained in the entire European war."
The US Army does not think it was a victory. Huge losses for taking unimportant territory, against a poor German army.
"Ironically, Third Army never used Lorraine as a springboard for an advance into Germany after all. Patton turned most of the sector over to Seventh Army during the Ardennes crisis, and when the eastward advance resumed after the Battle of the Bulge, Third Army based its operations on Luxembourg, not Lorraine. The Lorraine campaign will always remain a controversial episode in American military history."
It's getting worse. One third of all European casualties in Lorraine and never used the territory to move into Germany.
"Finally the Lorraine Campaign demonstrated that Logistics often drive operations, no matter how forceful and aggressive the commanding general may be." "Patton violated tactical principles" "His discovered that violating logistical principles is an unforgiving and cumulative matter."
Not flattering at all. And Americans state Patton was the best general they had. Bradley stated later:
“Patton was developing as an unpopular guy. He steamed about with great convoys of cars and great squads of cameramen … To George, tactics was simply a process of bulling ahead. Never seemed to think out a campaign. Seldom made a careful estimate of the situation. I thought him a shallow commander … I disliked the way he worked, upset tactical plans, interfered in my orders. His stubbornness on amphibious operations, parade plans into Messina sickened me and soured me on Patton. We learned how not to behave from Patton’s Seventh Army.”
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Nice one TIK. I have quoted Tooze who I think you are not keen on..
The German army attacking the USSR......
The Germans thought they had formulated a version of Blitzkrieg in France that was a sure-fire success. If the belt broke the whole movement stopped. They used this in the USSR, just scaling up forces. They did not have the intelligence to assess properly, that the reason for their success in France was allied incompetence not anything brilliant they did.
The Germans vastly underestimated the quality of design and make of Soviet weapons. The T-34 took them by surprise and they knew they were fighting an army they had hopelessly underestimated in all aspects. The Germans did not take into account the British supplying the USSR - 40% of the tanks used at the vital battle of Moscow were British supplied. The USSR had more tanks than the rest of the world combined in 1940.
The Germans underestimated the Soviets so much they decided to attack them with no reserves, all the German forces were involved in Barbarossa, lack of proper logistics to re-supply, short of steel, rubber, oil, an industry that could not re-supply at the rate required, short of fuel for industry and the forces, etc, etc. The Germans were so inept at assessing the Soviets they did not envisage fighting in the Russian winter in 1942/1942 thinking they would have overcome the USSR in three months. When they did not break the USSRs back they did not have enough winter clothes and equipment designed for such low temperatures. It was not just the logistics of getting to the troops, they just did not have the equipment. The Germans thought the Soviets could field 360 divisions, they fielded over 600.
Soviet industry was large and had moved to the east. Much was in the east anyhow. This was working 24/7 to re-supply. The T-34 tank by Dec 1941 was well established and available in numbers. The Germans first faced The T-34 in October 41, reducing a German division to a few tanks. The Soviet counter-attack in Dec 1941 was well supplied, and heavily with T-34s. There was still 1,400 Soviet aircraft available in Dec 1941. Glantz is a little out. Lend-Lease only really became "significant" in 1943 onwards. In 1942, the critical year, the USSR outproduced the USA.
A Soviet mistake after Moscow was counter attacking on a broad front and not aiming at the the weakest point and pushing them right back, nevertheless they mauled the Germans. By Dec 1941 the Germans were exhausted in fuel, men and equipment. They could do no more. As early as In July 1941, many German armies were at the end of their effective supply lines. As Prof Tooze emphasises, most say the Germans failed to take Moscow, the reality was that they could not as they were on their last legs. The large Soviet air force was still attacking German supply lines as well, exasperating the situation. The Germans foolishly thought most supplies could be taken along three very long rail tracks, which were easily ripped up by the Soviets and bombed via the air. Thousands of German rail men worked to get lines partially operation. The Soviets evacuated lots of rail trucks.
Prof Tooze: Wages of Destruction, page 453:
'Halder wrote, Barbarossa needed speed and motorized transport for supply. No waiting for railways. The Germans planned for three rail lines and 740,000 horses.'
...the Germans never had enough motorised transport to supply all the fast moving armies. Pre June 1941, they were considering de-motorising because of a shortage of rubber inflicted by the Royal Navy blockade.
Tooze: page 454:
'Three rail lines were used. The existing Soviet rail network was not even good enough to supply the German army if taken intact. It was also of a narrower gauge too. The retreating Soviets took most wagons with them and destroyed the rail infrastructure on retreating.
The Soviets had taken massive losses, but being so big they could absorb so many losses. The Soviets also had inflicted great losses on the Germans by Dec 1941. The only large power Germany conquered was France. This gave them a sense of superiority - their technique was now known, so succeeding twice was unlikely.'
They largely dropped the blitzkrieg of coordinated air and ground attacks.
Tooze: page 487.
'In July, all three German Army groups had reached the limit of resupply and stopped. The Soviets had taken devastating losses but not defeated. The Soviets saw the halt of the German armies and the re-supply problem and launched 17 armies against them forcing the Germans to dig in and defend.'
The UK & US can be forgiven in underestimating the Red Army, which they did, not so the Germans as they would have to assess this force in detail as they were to fight it, unlike the UK & US. Soviet industry was turning out the arms and to advanced designs. I don't want to go into what ifs, but if the T-34 was in place in summer 1941 the Germans would never have had such initial spectacular progress. Stalin knew what was being produced. They knew once the weaponry was in place, they could defeat the Germans who would be operating over 1000kms along a few supply lines they could not fully supply.
Apart from Stalingrad, which the Germans and the Soviets had an obsession with, the Soviets became less reckless as the UK and USA were in the fight and arms, and some well advanced arms, were building up. The Germans would not win, and the Soviets knew that. Once a western second front was in place on the ground, it was clear the Germans would quickly crumble, and they did. On D-Day 1944, the Germans were still way inside the USSR. The end came quickly once the German army was hit from both sides. It can be argued that the Soviets should have pushed the Germans out of the USSR by 1943 or even 1942, however they did display ineptness in most levels after reorganisation from 1942 onwards. But the Soviets knew in a war of attrition the Germans were doomed. As Stalin said, "quantity has a quality all of its own."
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@garynash7594
The US media, of which the US high command was very conscious of, needed a hero. They personify a lot. For e.g., they would call a TV sit-com by the leading actors name - the Dick Van Dyke show. Something that would never happen in the UK. A lacklustre US general in Sicily became infamous for hitting two sick men in hospital beds. So the US public knew his 'name'. Top US generals were of film star status in the USA at the time.
In Normandy nothing much was happening as the allied forces stayed pretty static, with the British drawing onto themselves German armour to grind it up, while keeping it away from the US forces. The British destroyed 90% of German armour in the west. The US media needed a hero and movement as that creates good stories to sell newspapers and newsreels.
Patton was late into Normandy. He was first to breakout after in Cobra, of which he had no part, after the US First Army did the work, so the US media hailed him as some sort of armoured warfare genius as territory was being gained after many weeks of no movement. As we know the British enabled the breakout, as part of MOnty's plan, but that is not how the US media portrayed it.
They now had movement and a name, which people knew, to hang it on. It was easy to laud this man as he accommodated the media gladly, looking after them. Bradley criticized Patton for having teams of cameramen following him, of which he encouraged, of which Cornelius Ryan was one.
So the US media had a hero - a goodie. The hero in typical Hollywood fashion could only be seen to be doing good. He even wore cowboy guns and a chrome tin hat to fill the hero role, so the visuals were good. They also needed a 'baddie', so they made one up as well. The evil Monty. Everything fell into place. The US media had all the ingredients they wanted and some they made up. Anything bad about the goodie was spun the other way.
The leading US media hero who happened to be in a position in Monty's plan to gain ground was kept a hero come what may. It was all of the goodies doing, not Monty's. No other US general did anything of note, so Patton stayed the hero, even though he failed to breach the Westwall, suffering horrendous casualties against 2nd to 3rd rate German opposition. Patton also moved 10 miles in three months at Metz. But he took north east France in a matter of days - the fact no Germans were there was not emphasized and it was more a triumphal procession than a military advance. When facing German opposition at the German border matters were different.
Patton was wayward in Sicily slowing down the operation, so Monty thought how do I play to this guys ego and get him back in the battle, which was letting him to Messina first. Patton was too slow reaching Bastogne, not relieving the 18,000 men inside - even the US 101st commander inside said so. He apologized to Eisenhower for being too slow. But Patton was fast and relieved them according to the US media.
OK, in wartime for home propaganda and morale purposes a hero was created. A government does not like its people to know it was telling them lies and never admits to doing so. The British spun it so a few Oxbridge RAF pilots won the Battle of Britain with it being a close thing. Backs to the wall and all. The reality was what they spun was wrong on both counts. So post war the governments just forget it.
The people post war still believe the war propaganda angle spun to them. The film industry and book publishers saw there was money to be made in WW2, so they pick up the propaganda then run with it. The US people were led to believe they won the war, well without them the Axis would have won. And also they supplied most of it. Which is all false. All totally wrong but telling them what they want to believe, and believed since children, sells.
So we are in a situation where a few historians are actually stating history as it was by looking at archives and actual accounts. They do not make much money though. If you are a writer, then the huge US market is where the money is. British authors Hastings and Beevor are guilty of towing the US WW2 propaganda media line, to make huge sums.
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@garynash7594
What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton:
▪ for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton].
▪ on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army.
▪ There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities.
▪ In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality”—a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes.
▪ But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents.
▪ General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’”
▪ The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent.
▪ the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war.
▪ posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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seth1422
Read Poulisson and Magry on Market Garden. The 82nd took all its bridges with ease, as few Germans were around. The 82nd should have taken the largest bridge, the Nijmegen bridge, but took 7.5 hours after being ready to march to launch an attack. In those 7.5 hours the Germans came south reinforcing the bridge and town. If the 82nd had gone to the bridge immediately, they could have walked onto it as it only had 18 guards. There was no barbed wire, tank traps or any defences set up around the bridge.
The 82nd fought no panzers. XXX Corps secured the town and seized the bridge, not the 82nd. Once XXX Corps entered Nijmegen they were in command.
"The 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Shields Warren, was charged with taking the road bridge over the Waal at Nijmegen: a prime task of Operation Market was being entrusted here to just one battalion from an entire division. According to the US Official History, there was some dispute over exactly when the 1st Battalion should go for the bridge. General Gavin was to claim later that the battalion was to ‘go for the bridge without delay’. However, Colonel Lindquist, the 508th Regimental commander, understood that Warren’s battalion was not to go for the bridge until the other regimental objectives — securing the Groesbeek Ridge and the nearby glider LZs, had been achieved: General Gavin’s operational orders confirm Warren’s version. Warren’s initial objective was ground near De Ploeg, a suburb of Nijmegen, which he was to take and organise for defence: only then was he to ‘prepare to go into Nijmegen later’ and these initial tasks took Lieutenant Colonel Warren most of the day. It was not until 1830hrs that he was able to send a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small, just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a radio — say forty men."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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