GoodGuy
Posts: 1506
Joined: 5/17/2006
From: Cologne, Germany
Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: Jakerson
In think Soviets learned this well when 300 000 of their troops where surrounded at Kiev only becouse stalin said that retreat is not an option. Germans learned this at Stalingrad. These might be some different pairs of shoes, like we say.
1941
I think you've got the Kiev cauldron (1941, September) in mind here. The German High Command (OKW) officially registered (they claimed that at least) 665,212 Russian POWs from the Kiev cauldron, which displayed a real desaster for the Red Army: The Troops at the Russians' South West front, with 4 armies (and the main bodies of another 2 armies), had been destroyed or captured and a strip of around 400 km had been ripped open - through the embracement of these troops.
In October 1941, a double battle (the battles of Wiasma and Briansk) took place, resulting in a final cauldron in each battle. The german encirclement strategy used here was a novelty, because the germans formed 2 rings, during the embracing operations: An inner ring, consisting of Infantry (almost exclusively) - transforming the pocket into a cauldron, and an outer ring consisting of armoured/mech. units.
Unlike the Kiev cauldron (which was anything than "airtight", as small groups - even 2 Marshalls and a Commissar - could escape after the cauldron got formed), these new cauldrons were way tighter. These 2 embracement-battles resulted in approx. 660,000+ Russian troops facing a POW life.
Although there might have been an order from Stalin to hold Kiev, it rather looks like that the german pincer movements were so fast during each of these operations, that Stalin's order or even a mass escape (if ordered) couldn't be executed at all. I've seen interviews with german vets, who reported that mostly unarmed Russians (in parts of the cauldron) tried to "storm" the german lines (they ran outta ammo), also, he estimated that several times up to 1000 troops were conducting such "attacks", because they were so desperately trying to get back to Russian lines. Also, there was a kind of mass movement to give up and just stop fighting, with vast numbers of Russians preferring to be POWs, 'til after these embracement-battles. Even many Russians joined the German Army (we're not talking about troops who were forced to join) after these battles, and this wasn't limited to volunteers from the baltic region.
So I don't think that Russians had been in Berserk mode in any of these early battles.
quote:
Germans learned this at Stalingrad.
Stalingrad
This was indeed more like a berserk thingy. Both sides regarded Stalingrad as a symbolic battle, where Hitler aimed at Stalin's archetype of a socialistic city, and maybe at the river Wolga's transport capacity (he thought he could cut off supply lines by controlling Stalingrad) as a secondary objective. In fact, it was rather a propaganda vehicle than a military target of importance, for both sides, and might have been a German AND a Russian berserk thingy in many ways.
The battle used to bind vital german troops and around 90 Russian divisions in the entire process, especially with the grim city fights later on, where both sides kept pumping several hundred thousand troops into the city fights (with like 95% of the city in german hands eventually).
Around 22 Divisions (Germans, Italians, Romanians, other axis nations, etc.) with around 330,000 troops got encircled, and the support for the cauldron ate up vital resources (still insufficiently supplied by the german air force though), where 90,000 faced war captivity when General Paulus surrendered later on. Around 6,000 of these POWs survived captivity, and returned to Germany up to 10 yrs after the war in Europe ended.
From a military pov, the loss of the 6th German Army in Stalingrad wasn't as bad as the loss of the Russian Armies in '41 described above, since the loss of the 6th Army did not enable the Russians to make a broad breakthrough, in particular it "just" threatened to cut off the German units in the Caucasus, and endangered the South front in general. The germans had to take back the lines and escaped, and the 6th Army could be seen as sacrifice to stabilize the entire southern front. After the battle, the rather propagandistic battle, with the 6th Army holding out in that cauldron, turned out to be a stabilizing factor and might have avoided a (partial - complete) collapse of the german east front as early as 1943.
There's an interesting book about "Russia's War", from Richard Overy.
quote:
Also if you are in defence and only want to harrass attackers advance with artillery bombardment its wise idea to do it low ROF to conserve artillery ammo. This way you could shoot much more harrassing bombardments with same number of artillery ammo.
If you're facing strong enemy units with good morale and strength (let's say you play Allies and you face a Pz/PG Division) LoF won't do that much, unless you increase the amount of time to shell these units, which might result in the same amount of rounds u'd have to spend using normal rate or RoF eventually, in order to achieve a decent effect. That said, short bursts of combined arty fire do an excellent job here, and may even halt/slow down armoured attacks.
< Message edited by GoodGuy -- 8/22/2006 12:47:45 PM >
_____________________________
"Aw Nuts"
General Anthony McAuliffe
December 22nd, 1944
Bastogne
---
"I've always felt that the AA (Alied Assault engine) had the potential to be [....] big."
Tim Stone
8th of August, 2006
|
Printable Version
Berserkers - 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread