IronDuke_slith
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ORIGINAL: Culiacan Mexico
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ORIGINAL: Kevinugly
… those commanders we wish to elevate to 'greatness' need to show they apply other principles too…
Finally, Patton never fought a battle where he didn't have materiel superiority on the ground and the air, where he was fighting a battle where he had to hold ground rather than take it. It's very difficult to make a case for him to be compared with WW2 commanders like Manstein and Slim who showed their capacity to successfully apply all of the principles of warfare even in the most adverse of situations. It's even more difficult to place him with the greats of all military history.
Interesting. I disagree in some areas.
The Germans did well when they had air superiority and numerical/qualitative superiority, and when they didn’t they faired poorly. So what? Should the accomplishment of the Germans in 1940 against France be dismissed because they attacked second rate troops with overwhelming force, while having air superiority?
In my opinion, German commanders as a group are overrated by most people, and Erich von Manstein is no acceptation. He understood the nature of armored warfare during this period, a rarity among German commanders, but was not a miracle worker. When in a tactically disadvantages situation he achieve no radical victories, and while his handling of Panzer forces was very good, his command of infantry forces was adequate. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t brilliant, just that his victories were achieved under similar circumstances you dismiss so easily in your post.
1. He did well with 56th Panzer Corps in 1941 with a superior force and air superiority, against a surprised and poorly lead Soviet troops.
2. His handling of 11th Army in the Crimea can best be described as adequate, but before Sevastopol fell his Army was spent.
3. His action while commanding forces attacking Leningrad can hardly be called brilliant.
4. His command of Army Group Don was not successful.
5. The counter attack in the winter of 1942/43 was excellent, but it was concentrated German armor against an exhausted, strung out and poorly supplied Soviet force.
6. His commander of Army Group South consisted of a failed offense and endless retreat.
"Field-Marshal von Manstein had proved the ablest commander in the German Army. He had a superb sense of operational possibilities and an equal mastery in the conduct of operations, together with a greater grasp of the potentialities of mechanised forces than any of the other commanders not trained in the tank army. In sum, he had military genius."
Captain B.H. Liddell Hart
PS. I am not comparing the abilities of any general, just pointing out that the “circumstances” that are dismissed when helping an Allied victory were also used by the Germans.
Stirring the pot. 
Not at all, a post that challenges one of the standard lines about WWII is always welcome, particularly when backed with good examples. (I only pulled out of the Patton thread, if someone hijacks it to discuss something more interesting, I reserve the right to get involved )
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The Germans did well when they had air superiority and numerical/qualitative superiority, and when they didn’t they faired poorly. So what? Should the accomplishment of the Germans in 1940 against France be dismissed because they attacked second rate troops with overwhelming force, while having air superiority?
I think the point is that they didn't have these things. There was no real superiority in terms of numbers. I thought if anything they deployed marginally fewer divisions into the field than the combined numbers arrayed against them. The Wehrmacht in the west deployed almosty 142 divisions, 28 of which were held in OKH reserve. They faced 144 divisons of the French, British, Dutch and Belgian armies.
In tanks, only the french and British fielded armour against them from what I can see. The french seem to have deployed around 3250 tanks to the Germans 2600. In addition, the majority of the Germans tanks were I or IIs fielding machine guns of 20 MM cannon. The majority of the french models carried 37MM or 47MM guns and were generally better armoured. There was no advantage in armour, therefore, the Germans had fewer tanks, and they were undergunned and underarmoured compared to the French designs.
The Germans were outnumbered 2:1 in field guns but had maybe a 5:4 advantage in aircraft. The Germans did not have the aircraft to attain air superiority, did not have better weapons and did not outnumber their opponents. There were a number of divisions in the French armed forces that were considered category B and perhaps less capable than the category A, but most of these seem to have been protected by fortifications that left the category A divisions to advance into Belgium when the war started.
Therefore, the reason the German defeat of France was one of the finest victories of it's type, was that they created the conditions for the victory themselves. They correctly anticipated the battle plan of the enemy, (The Breda variant), then struck along the Meuse in overwhelming strength, massing their own forces (land and air) to create a battlefield on which they did have superiority, in the middle of a war in which they didn't.
Personally, I think the plan was first class, reminds me a little of Napoleon's victory of Austerlitz where he sets his forces up so as to evoke a certain response from the enemy, before attacking at precisely the required point to cut off that response.
A number of the french troops at Sedan were considered second rate, but they were behind a river in pillboxes, and better forces were in the area.
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In my opinion, German commanders as a group are overrated by most people, and Erich von Manstein is no acceptation. He understood the nature of armored warfare during this period, a rarity among German commanders, but was not a miracle worker. When in a tactically disadvantages situation he achieve no radical victories, and while his handling of Panzer forces was very good, his command of infantry forces was adequate. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t brilliant, just that his victories were achieved under similar circumstances you dismiss so easily in your post.
I'd take the opposite track to this. I thought the Germans seem to have produced any number of good commanders. I think the reasons date back to the inter war years and the Reichswehr, but after five years of war the Germans were still producing good Senior Commanders (Balck, Heinrici etc). Rundstedt, Bock, Guderian, Manstein, Rommel, Model, Kesselring, the list seems endless, and all I think would have shone in Allied colours, given the advantages they had late war.
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1. He did well with 56th Panzer Corps in 1941 with a superior force and air superiority, against a surprised and poorly lead Soviet troops.
No argument, although I wouldn't overplay the advantage of air superiority in an environment as large as Russia. He also went a long way, it's easy to downplay but German casualty returns from the first six months indicate that however badly led and poorly trained, the Russians had a lot of fight in them.
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2. His handling of 11th Army in the Crimea can best be described as adequate, but before Sevastopol fell his Army was spent.
Quite the opposite, I think. Sevastapol was a formidable fortress, and he didn't have control of the sea. The forces at his command were very limited, and often reduced as Army Group South pushed eastwards and stripped him of formation. The Russians also invaded the eastern Crimea themselves whilst he was outside Sevastapol. Operation Bustard Hunt was a stunning success, and he eventually took Sevastapol. I don't think it could be described as merely adequate at all.
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3. His action while commanding forces attacking Leningrad can hardly be called brilliant.
Don't know much about this, but I never thought he was there very long. A few weeks at most.
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4. His command of Army Group Don was not successful.
This is one of those comments which hides more than it reveals. Many commentators rank his defence whilst in command of this Army Group as his finest moment. It culminated in the victory at Kharkov, but with limited forces, he held major Russian formations at bay whilst German forces escaped from the caucasus, and found time to attempt to free the forces in Stalingrad (with only two understrength Panzer Divisions). I think his command here was exemplary. So whilst one could say, all he did was stabilise the front, he stabilised it when it had no right to be stabilised.
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5. The counter attack in the winter of 1942/43 was excellent, but it was concentrated German armor against an exhausted, strung out and poorly supplied Soviet force.
Yes, but it was partly strung out because he manouevred onto it's flanks, rather than block and stop it. He was fighting in the depths of winter, and the formations that destroyed the Russian spearhead had previously defended Kharkov itself so had spent some time moving arouind in the field themselves. It achieves some notoriety as the last German victory of real fame in the east, but was the culmination of a magnificent campaign.
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6. His commander of Army Group South consisted of a failed offense and endless retreat.
A reference to Kursk and then the Russian summer and winter offensives that broke in to the Ukraine I'm guessing.
Re Kursk, well, he walked into the most heavily defended real estate the world has ever seen. In the north, they were halted after just three or four miles. He advanced steadily for eleven days, and was within striking distance of his objective when ordered to withdraw. His forces fought off the largest armoured counterattack in history around Prokhorovka and inflicted huge casualties. A defeat yes, but again I think he did better than should have been expected. It is also a unfair battle to criticise anyone over, it was a soldier's battle. Little or no manouevre, just gruesome attrition. It is to the Divisional and Regimental Commanders that the credit for what gains were made must go.
As for the defensive battles thereafter, I think they tell us several things. I think there was a decline in the fighting abilities of the Wehrmacht, and an improvement in the operational abilities of the Russians. Coupled with the overwhelming numbers they could put into the field where they chose, and the writing down of so much of the German armoured force at Kursk, I am not surprised his magic ran out. There were only a few short months between the last of these battles and Bagration, which perhaps show that the Wehrmacht was at the end of it's tether by late 43. His performance as commander of Army Group Don may have been magical, but he was not a miracle worker, and the strategic situation 8-12 months later was beyond everyone, not just him.
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"Field-Marshal von Manstein had proved the ablest commander in the German Army. He had a superb sense of operational possibilities and an equal mastery in the conduct of operations, together with a greater grasp of the potentialities of mechanised forces than any of the other commanders not trained in the tank army. In sum, he had military genius."
Captain B.H. Liddell Hart
I'd agree, particularly about the grasp of operational possibilities.
Regards,
IronDuke
< Message edited by IronDuke -- 7/19/2004 10:42:56 PM >
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RE: Why was Patton so great? - 
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