Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "Military History Visualized"
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PanzerIV was a tank that entered service in 1935 so of course the tank would become outdated as the war progressed. And with out outdated I mean that it would become clearly inferior to the best versions of the M4 tank and hoplessly inferior to the IS-2 tank on the eastern front.
And the 76mm on the Sherman didn't have any problems dealing with most German tanks, including the PanzerIV that you claim to be so superior.
"While the 76 mm had less High Explosive (HE) and smoke performance than the 75 mm, the higher-velocity 76 mm gave better anti-tank performance, with firepower similar to many of the armored fighting vehicles it encountered, particularly the Panzer IV tank and StuG assault gun vehicles. Using the M62 APC round, the 76 mm gun penetrated 109 mm (4.3 in) of armor at 0° obliquity and 1,000 m (3,300 ft), with a muzzle velocity of 792 m/s (2,600 ft/s). The HVAP round was able to penetrate 178 mm (7.0 in) at 1,000 m (3,300 ft), with a muzzle velocity of 1,036 m/s (3,400 ft/s)"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/76_mm_gun_M1
The PanzerIV variant had 80millimeters of armour at its best protected area of the tank, and the Sherman 76mm gun could go through 109mm of armour. So PanzerIV was no match for a m4.
That doesn't say that armour is completly useless, since it can give protection against some guns, and from long distances and certain angles it can also protect against some of the bigger guns. But this armour protection that Panzer IV H had came at a price, since all extra armour doubled the weight of the tank and made life difficult for the engine, which in turn slowed the tank down and possibly increased the risk of an engine failure.
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I do not see the point in puttinger Panther and Tiger I into service when countries are developing newer tanks that are better.
Retraining crews takes time. And USA, Britain, Germany and Russia all used different sizes for their ammunition. The germans used 150mm howitzers, while the Americans used 155mm and Russia 152mm.
Germany used 88mm guns while the American used 90mm guns and the russians used 85mm guns.
So getting a tank for which you do not produce any ammunition creates problems. And a tank without ammunition is worthless. Just look at the Ukraine war today and you see that Ukraines biggest problem they have is the lack of ammunition.
The german tanks were also built for German doctrine, while the American tanks were tailor made for American needs and logistical apparatus to be carried on ships, being transported on american railroads and being able to use american military bridges. Those things were not solved as well by the germans as their panther tanks were typically too heavy even for their own military bridges.
So the option would therefore be to borrow the best ideas from various countries and from the germans in particular to make a new tank. A tank a bit like Centurion with a powerful gun, good mobility and armor, and maybe the suspension from the panther, IR gun sights and good optics.
Personally do I think that Panzer IV was hopelessly obsolete in the 1970s. Indeed this vehicle was clearly inferior to the new allied tanks such as M4A3E8, Comet, Centurion and T-34/85. And even more so compared to T-55 and M60 Patton. Its short 75mm gun already had much problems fighting the most powerful allied tanks in 1944 so it would not be a tank I would want for an European army in the 1950s and 1960s.
It would only be a tank to consider if you couldn't get your hands on anything better. Finland used StuGIII after the war at that was truely a capable machine excellent for defensive warfare during the 1940s and 1950s but then it came too weak to fight allied tanks. However Switzerlands long use of Hetzer is in my opinion a bad budget choice. Hetzer was a good tank if you needed a cheap vehicle that could be produced fast. But in the cold war there was no longer any need for that which is why turretless vehicles as a class soon died out. Firepower, mobility and a turret was more important.
Swedens S-tank was a succesfull improvement of the StuGIII idea. But it when gun stabilizers came and chobham armor did this vehicle become obsolete. Swedens use of world war 2 tanks was not that impressive either. After the war it wanted to buy surplus M4 Shermans from the demobilizing USA, but USA offered older variant, and batches of small numbers of this or that model instead of allowing Sweden to buy large numbers of one modern variant to make logistics easier.
Britain refused to sell any tanks, but then the country got into economic problems and decided to sell some Centurions to Sweden to get some cash. But this was in the early 1960s so Centurions was clearly no longer the best tanks in the world so to say. Sweden made some upgrades to them. And they were okayish as 2nd line tanks I guess. But not so fun to use against T-72 or T-80 I guess.
Sweden did however do upgrade its own old WW2 tanks quite succesfully, Stridsvagn 74 did become something like Swedens M41 Walker Bulldog that was built on a M24 Chaffee chassi.
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@erikakurosaka3734 Your ignorance is mind-blowing. Sweden have made world class weapon system in area after area: submarines, AA guns, tanks, IFVs, SPGs, fighter jets, motorcycles, anti tank weapons, combat boats... you name it.
But how come that Sweden have not had an export success in proportion to the quality of their products?
-The answer is that Sweden is not a Nato member.
Nato countries prefer to buy products from other Nato countries. There do you have the reason why F16 have been sold to so many countries in Europe, despite that plane was not superior to non-Nato aircraft's like Viggen or French Mirage F1E (France was not a Nato member back then). Belgium would have preferred to buy the Mirage because of its cultural ties to France and because it was a better plane than F16, and they also preferred Viggen over F16. Denmark's favorite choice was to buy the Viggen, but they ended up buying F-16 instead. So countries prefer to buy inferior products to support other Nato members arms industries.
USA have also actively worked to sabotage arms sales for other countries with unfair play. Like for example when India was interested in buying Viggen from Sweden, and the Americans responded with forbidding the sale of components for the engine in order to block this arms deal from taking place.
For producing weapons in such a small number (and thereby with high unit costs, since there are no export market that can help reduce the cost of production) I would say that Sweden's arms industry is the most impressive in the world. It have punched above its own weight in area after area.
Gripen, Gotlands class submarines, archer artillery, Combat vehicle 90 are all playing in the top of the list of the league of the best weapons systems in the world.
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The army was under-sized for a country like Germany to begin with, and it was also always secretly planned that the army would expand one day - which it did. Germany had large amounts of men in paramilitary formations before the army began its expansion in 1935.
But the fast expansion was not easy, not even in peace time. The industry could not deliver all tanks the führer wanted so many of the new divisions lacked equipment. The theft of Czech weapons did help a little bit, but much problems remained.
And while the leadership and doctrine of the new army was excellent, so was there still much to wish for in other aspects. A large part of the German army's soldiers had no more than 2 months training when the war on Poland began.
This fast growth of an army would normally be unsustainable. Hitler wanted to grow his army and he was prepared to throw the German economy under the bus to do so. The costs were rising at unsustainable rates. All foreign currency reserves was being used up as Hitler used all dollars, pounds, krona, zlotys and what have you to pay for importing rare raw materials from other countries.... and when he would run out of money he would be unable to import anything.. not even oil to fuel tractors and machines, so of course was economists very worried.
And the industry wanted to increase exports to other countries, but Hitler said no to that, because he wanted all steel to be made for German tanks and battleships instead. So German trade balance was put on an unsustainable course.
Hitlers rapid expansion of the army created resource shortages everywhere, which caused prices to go up, so inflation became more and more of a problem. And meanwhile did Germany produce less things of economic value - so more money chased fewer goods - which is the definition of inflation.
But Hitler managed to conquer Europe before his country got high inflation and went bankrupt.
And he could steal oil supplies from other countries.
Hitler was also in an unique position when he got into power that allowed him to do his crazy military expansionism without pissing off the public opinion with his wasteful military spending.
When he took power in 1933, had Germany suffered hard from the hyperinflation in 1924 and the economic crash of the Great Depression 1930. So unemployment was high and people were starving and standard of living was low.
So there was large amounts of people that were unemployed and now could become soldiers or industrial workers for the industry. The German government did have it easy. If the German government would try to make the same huge expansion of its army today, then people would protest.
People would not want to leave their well paid jobs in the private sector to work for the military, and if you would want people to do so voluntarily, then you have to increase wages. And that means higher costs for the government and higher taxes - which would be unpopular.
The German population in 1933 did not have any jobs, so they were happy for every kind of job they could get, so they did instead become very happy when the army grew and needed manpower.
And the starving German people became happy that Hitler gave them a job with a wage that could allow them to feed themselves and their family, even if it wasn't the best well paid job in the world - People did not have high standards after all economic crashes.
But if Germany in year 2021 would try to expand its army and raise taxes, cut standards of living to allow an expansion of the army then it would make many persons very unhappy instead. And rationing would not be met with the same understanding by a people who is used to living a life in plenty.
So without the Great depression would Hitlers expansion of the army had been impossible. And without Hitlers conquests he would not have been able to expand his army so fast and keep it as large as he did.
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"The Wehrmacht was made up of some of the best equipped, trained fighthing men in the world."
The German army was not the best equiped. The British, American and French Armies had much more trucks, while the Heer had to use horses. And many weapons experts would say that the Americans had the best rifle of the war while the German 98k had multiple flaws. And overall did the French have better tanks than Germany in 1940, which had tanks with weak armour, sluggish underpowered engines, and tiny guns.
So no, the person who says that the German Army was better equiped just doesn't know what he is talking about.
And not was the German army the best trained army in the world when the war began either.
The overwhelming majority of the German troops only had undergone a pair of months military training when the war begun. So the German army was hardly consisting of any supersolidiers with superweapons.
It was rather the contrary.
It was an army which relied on horses and conscripts and weapons from the 1930s. That might dissapoint some wehraboos, but personaly that only makes me more impressed by the German achievements since it shows the superiority of the German doctrine and tactics - of auftragstaktik, of close co-operation and coordination with the air force, of the kampfgruppe tactics, of the deep defence tactics, of the idea of the kesselschlacht... plus all the superb education videos that can be found on youtube on various topics from sniping, to how to make counterattacks, or how infantry can knock out tanks.
The German army was the best in world war1, and it improved throughout that war and past on much of its knowledge to the Wehrmacht.
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Stalingrad was the last nail in the coffin for the Axis hope to win the war.
Midway, Guadacanal, El-Alamein, USAs entry into the war, the Allied victories at sea in the western theather, the bombing of German cities... and then came Stalingrad.
All that was won in 1942 had been lost. Germany had lost her best Army. The reputation of the invincible German military was from now on shattered. The Axis had lost momentum, and now the allies rolled forward in Asia, in Africa, over the skies, and on the Eastern front where the south was about to fall apart.
Everyone, including Hitler, now realized that the war on the eastern front was impossible to win rapidly.
And things didn't look good. The Axis was fighting against the largest country on earth (UK), and the country with the largest Army in the world (USSR) and at the same time they were also fighting against the largest economy on the planet (USA).
And on top of that had the Axis now had loss after loss.
The invincible Afrika Korps had been rolled back. The japanease had been stopped and lost unreplaceable amounts of skilled pilots, and the Navy had lost so many ships that Japan would never again have an upper hand in the pacific. And Germany had compensated lack of military and economic strenght, with having superior tactics and better troops. But much of that advantage had been lost when the 6th Army was destroyed. And the Russian airforce simply copied the German tactics and used it against them, and bit by bit did the Russians get better and better, while Germany lost more and more of their battlehardened troops.
It was no coincidence that Hitlers friends were starting to lose hope about the war after Stalingrad. His Axis partners started negotiations with the Allies to disengage from the war. And Spain started to take home their troops from the eastern front in 1943.
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The western allies had 50% larger forces and 4 times larger industrial production and they were generally more technologically advanced. The superior allied Air force would probably have bombed the Russian railroad network into ruins - and the only way to fix this problem for the Russians would have been to import locomotives from America.
And without supplies and reinforcements the Russian forces would have been an easy prey for allied troops.
America also had nearly 900 atomic bombs in stockpile in 1949, and their bombers could reach basicly every city in the Soviet empire and turn into ruins.
During the late war was the Soviets very much relying upon American imports. Of trucks, of tanks, of planes, of locomotives, on uniforms, machinery, explosives, food rations and so on. And without this help the Soviets would have been forced into a dilemma - should they decrase the army to increase the production of the economy? or should they increase the army with the economic output falling as a consequence?
America was the richest country on the planet and never had such a problem during the war. It put 16 million men in uniform, and expanded both the industrial and agricultural production during the war. And its war economy wasn't even running at 100% of its full potential. Already in late 1943 decisions were made to cut back war production.
Meanwhile Russia was fighting for her life in a life and death struggle, and she never had the privilegie to have an ocean protecting her land - so 13.000 villages and hundreds of towns fell into German hands and much of the industry got destroyed during the war and millions were killed.
Russia would never have a postwar economic boom like Italy, Germany, UK and USA because her industrial base was weaker than before the war - unlike the other countries mentioned.
Russia would probably also soon run out of explosives in a war with the west. Not because she didn't make any of it herself during the war. But most of it was done with US made machinery made by US blueprints, and the chemicals in the production process was imported from America. And in addition so was much explosives imported from America direcly.
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"One could argue that, if Germany had developed a fully functioning wartime economy they would have a lot more to work with in the field in '41 and '42."
Germany was not a peacetime economy in 1939-42, it was in the greyzone between a wartime economy and a peacetime economy in that period. And it was only in late 1940 that Hitler choose not to use the full industrial capacity of the military industry when he decided to cut back on ammunitions production after the fall of France.
So a total war in 1941 would just have a marginal effect because Germany didn't have the extra factories to produce the extra tanks that you dream about. It was only in the late war years Germany was able to catch up with the Americans in massproduction thanks to the new larger factories and a higly trained labourforce that gained skill throughout the war.
So would the path of history have changed with a German wartime economy in 1939? No. My impression by reading "The Economics of World War. II: Six Great Powers in International Comparison" is that Germany couldn't get their war economy started for real until 1942-43. Maybe Germany could have waited to attack USSR 2 years, but then things would be very different on the other hand...USSR would recover a bit from the purges and the army would probably be better equiped, while Japan probably would have stayed out of a the war against America.
"With regards to Hitler as a military commander I am baffled why you would defend him."
I would flip the question, and saying why should we blindly believe in self-serving biographies of military commanders? (Especially when they are blaming a dead person who can't defend himself).
It was true that Germany had geniuses such as Manstein, Kesselring, Halder and Guderian. But not all German generals were that great, and Hitler didn't always make bad decisions. It was he who gave Guderian and Manstein a chance to make a career, while the old school retards in the Army did not want anything of it. It was Hitler who saved the Ostheer in 1941, and it was he who made the decision to go for the oil.
He wasn't perfect, but neighter was his Generals. Manstein never admitted that he never understood the economic importance of Ukrain, and Rommel constantly exhausted his supplies and wasted his forces and then demanded reinforcements, while Germany was needing every man they could spare on other more important fronts.
Wehrmacht wasn't all super competent through and through, as Von Paulus is a good example of, and neighter was the Waffen-SS only led by complete idiots, as Paul Hausser is recognized by many as a very talented leader.
Things aren't black and white, competence and incompetence. And Germanys resources was very limited, and her allies industry were weak.
"With regards to Dunkirk...Hitler could have easily overturned the decision of one of his generals."
So now of a sudden you blame him for not micromanage things after you said (to pharaphrase) that his micromanagement costed Germany the victory?
It was Hitler military who convinced him to support the decision that Küchler made, and the battlereports over the losses confirmed his decision. People who blame Hitler makes it very easy for themselves.
This thing of blaming Hitler for the loss in WW2 and the popular opinion and politicians for the loss in Vietnam is just history repeating itself with stab-in-the-back myths.
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Wars are basicly the same as in the past. An encircled army is doomed unless it breaks out, and this is as true today as thousand of years ago, because an army still needs food and supplies to survive regardless of how many super-tanks it got. And the principle of concentration of force and "getrennt marschieren vereint schlagen" is as true today as in the past. And attacks on the flanks is as big of a threat today as in the past.
And deception may have taken new forms today with stealth aircrafts and dummy tanks, but it still plays just the same important role as in the past, since it can confuse an enemy to misalocate its forces and abondon their strong defences and getting lured into ambushes and getting entire armies destroyed.
On a general level one can say that all the good commanders in history have applied the same recipies behind their successes. They have first of all commited themselves to achieving a clearcut goal - instead of acting confused in trying to achieve a multiple number of changing goals.
Most of them have been skilled in the art of the element of surprise, and constantly taken the advantage over their confused enemies, and acting with such speed and aggressivness that the enemy does not have any time to make any well organized counter-measures.
They have been good at playing the game of taking calculated risks. And they have been good at concentrating their own forces so they can fight the enemy with a superior force.
They have been masters of co-ordinating armies so they close enough to support each other if the enemy starts an attack, but still they move independently enough to not clog up the roads with long supply trains so troop movements gets slowed down. And when a good oppurtunity of fighting the enemy appears, then multiple armies can attack him simultanuously and inflict huge losses on the enemy - something that was as true in Cannae 216 BC as in Königgrätz in 1866 two-thousand years later.
I don't consider military history a waste of time, because I think there are lot to learn from the past. And even if some things do change over time, I still think there are lots of things that can be learned from recent wars. Tomorrows wars will not be much different from the wars of today, and the wars of today will have much in common with wars recently fought yesterday.
Studying Vietnam, the Balkan wars, Chechenya, Iraq, Afghanistan can tell us a lot about the effectiveness of different modern weaponsystems - from tanks, to planes, and helicopters.
Just as the armies in World war 1 that learned from the history lessons of the past wars (Manchuria, the Boer war, the American civil war etc) did better than those armies who didn't. The Brits and Germans understood the importance of digging trenches and using uniforms with colours that blended in with the enviroment - while the French didn't, and they therefore suffered enormous losses thanks to their colourful red-blue uniforms and their lack of training to use a spade, and their proportionaly low amount of engineer troops compared to the German army.
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A good example of an organizational reform, was the germans decision to hand over more decision making from the high level to the NCOs. That improved decision making by taking the burden of analyzing information for the high level, and people on the lower level got more freedom to act upon first hand information.
Chiefs at the higher level would simply be unable to have a good overview upon EVERYTHING happening on the battlefield... The fighting morale of his men, the combat strenght of the enemy, having knowledge of if a logistics transport have been halted by a mine... all those small details that make up a greater whole of a military operation.
By this model information can be faster interpreted, and transformed into action.
Having a centralized organization can work in a factory, but in far you have a time factor for your decision making, and not everything works as anticipated. And your enemy makes everything he can to mislead you, and whenever he can he will also surprise you.. and sometimes he will also probably succed. And other factors aren't known as well, you don't know how well your untested weaponsystems will perform. You don't know how fighting morale will be affected by the unique circumstances at the moment.
So therefore you can't plan everything into the smallest detail, so some flexibility and improvisation is needed. But of course you also need to set up a larger strategic goal in your war, but there must be some flexibility to act upon the circumstances to fullfill your plan.
This flexibility gave the germans a great advantage in both the world wars. And the NCOs felt a greater personal repsonsability when he was not just a cog a in a machinery, but a man with responsability for his own unit.. to make sure that his assault is succesful and that objective is captured, that the logistics runs smoothly, and that coordination functions properly.
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T-34 was a great tank. But as Blah said, it did have many flaws as well and it wasn't designed for long lasting peacetime or a comfertable space for the crew. Not only were they crampy, and the gun had a hard recoil that the crewmen had to avoid, it was also the loudest tank in world war 2. For good and bad of course, not so good for surprise attacks but better for psychological warfare.
T-34 was a tank that was built to be powerful in combat. It was built for being each to produce for unskilled labor, and at low cost, and at short period of time.
An average life expectancy for a Soviet tank in the hard fights on the easternfront was just 6 months, so russian engineers considered it waste to use expensive and time consuming components if they lasted much longer than 6 months. It was more important for the russians to replace the huge losses in tanks in 1941, and to outproduce the germans with numerical superiority. And for training tank crewmen with tanks that did needed to last longer and didn't have to see combat, the soviets used allied tanks such as the valentine.
And the tank was indeed excellent in combat. It had no problems with crossing terrain that most german tanks without wide tracks couldn't. Its protection was excellent compared to most tanks in its days. And in 1941 it also had the most powerful gun of any medium tank of its day. And it was mobile as well. And it was reliable in that sense that the crews could fix the tracks and most other stuff in the field. But of course, when it took a penetrating hit it was game over. I think that about 80% of the russian tank men died in the war, and there was a 80% chance of dying in the tank if it took a hit compared to a 80% chance of not dying if the same happened to a german or west-allied tank.
In my opinion was it without doubt the best tank in world war 2. A poor country had outproduced a mighty industrial nation with occupied Europe's industrial capacity at its disposal. They have built a tank that outclassed most of the tanks that Germany had. It was the tank that more than any other allied tank won the war.
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The thing is that time was not on Japans side so a deleying war could never be won. We all know the enormous industrial superiority America had over Japan with all carriers and planes it produced. But there was also a large technological advatage it had over Japan.
Japan only had a good Navy in 1941-42 while the A6M Zero still was the best fighter plane in the world and its pilots was were battle hardened veterans. And all this was lost, all the carriers, all the skilled pilots and planes just a few months after the war had started with the battles of Midway and Guadacanal.
But I don't think that Japan could have won a long war even if it had won at Midway and Guadacanal. Simply because it never had the ability to replace its losses of pilots and the aircraft production was so small that the Zeros could never be replaced with something better to combat the best American planes such as Corsair and P51H. Japan could simply not produce anything compareable in the numbers needed.
Winning early victories in the pacific against an oponent with outdated planes (such as the Buffalo) and which had prioritzed the best resources to fight the nazis instead does not say much of Japans combat capabilities.
The real test would come once America had started to gear up for war for real.
Japans industry was not up to western standards once the war began. It could conquer much lands, but it lacked the transport ships needed to move all plundered resources (oil, sugar, coal, copper, rice, cotton etc) to Japan.
The empire was overstretched and it didn't have the transport ships needed to supply all garrisons it had put out everyware. The war in China was also meatgrinder without any victory at near sight, or at sight at all.
And fighting China, USSR, USA and Britain was not something Japan win in the long run.
It build tanks in extremely small numbers, and the few they made were shitty and getting outdated more and more for each year - just like its fighter planes which were getting outclassed by western planes so much that kamikaze attacks finally became the most effiecent way of using their old junk.
Had Japan been more victorious, then America would not have started to demobilize its economy by 1944. The Montana class battleship would not be canceled for example, and in a real national crisis America could still mobilize its economy for war much more than it actully did. It was in fact the only major allied power that never full-heartedly commited everything it had to this conflict.
And Americas most battlehardened best equiped troops from Europe would be transfered to this less prioritized front. And if that wouldn't end Japan, then some nukes would.
Japan was overstreched in 1942, and it didn't have any tranport ships for a large land invasion of the USA. And grabbing India was also very unrealistic. So where could Japan deliever a knockout punch?
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