1944-1945 Western Europe Campaign in Perspective

[AJFFM]

Hello to you all

From June 6th till May 7th the major effort of western powers was projected in France, the Low Countries and Germany proper. The battle in Italy began almost a year before but was limited in its effects and so was the fighting in Greece and NA.

My goal here is to put the campaign in Western Europe for 1944-1945 in perspective as compared with the Eastern Front during the same period and the Western Front of 1918 in terms of numbers committed on both sides (men and material) as well as casualties suffered in men and material.

For the Eastern Front the numbers are pretty solid and have been discussed in this forum numerous times so repetition is of no use. However I have yet to see a discussion on what happened on the western Front on a macro scale between 1944-1945 except for a thread on tank losses which lead to no where as far as I remember.

Now for the numbers. I would like to see the following:

Total number of Divisions and Battalions committed by each of the combatants and their types (especially the number of battalions since a large number of them were directly subordinate to Division and Corps HQ instead of Brigade\Regiment HQ).

Total number of Tanks\AFVs committed.

Total number of Aircraft committed.

Casualties in personnel especially breakdown between services. This is especially interesting to me with respect to western allies who seem to have not updated their MIA casualties. As far as I have found there were 800k casualties taken overall by all allies yet as I understand it French militias\partisans are not included. If we take the breakdown things get even more chaotic with Americans according to their official stats (1947 report) claiming 589k total casualties while other sources put it at a lower number and others higher. British losses are even more chaotic to me since numbers swing even more wildly. 1st Airborne was entirely lost with nearly 8k PoWs yet it seems that only 14k men were reported as PoWs during the entire campaign. Normandy casualties do not make any sense because of the heavy fighting nor do they make any sense when compared with overall casualties across the war.



The goal here is to have a sense of how brutal was the campaign in the west really was. Everyone talks about the Eastern Front and the Soviet sacrifices there which is all good and true but the western allies facing 3rd rate German troops (compared with 1941) took massive casualties despite enjoying total air superiority and like the Germans in the east had to take forced stops because their divisions were being savagely mauled with almost no replacements left. Indeed they were left by April 1945 scraping the bottom of the barrel as one person said which is why I hope this thread would shed some light on.

[steverodgers801]

Its not quite a fair comparison since the allies were also fighting the Japanese at the same time.

[Gary Kennedy]

Well I've got figures for British deployments if they're any use to you.

10 Inf Divs; basic total of 90 Inf Bns, 10 MG Bns and 10 Recce Regts
3 Armd Divs; basic total of 12 Armd Regts, 3 Mot Bns and 9 Inf Bns
1 Inf Bde; 3 Inf Bns
4 Armd Bdes; basic total of 12 Armd Regts and 2 Mot Bns
3 Tk Bdes; basic total of 9 Tk Regts

2 Abn Divs; total 12 Para Bns and 6 Air Landing Bns

Overall I have 108 different Inf Bns, allowing for various changes in Bdes and 5 Mot Bns. I've then got 30 different Armd Regts plus 16 different Tk Regts, but that includes 79 Armd Div, which had units in a variety of roles. If memory serves 5 different Armd Car Regts served in NWE overall.

Very basic figures for Canada;

3 Inf Divs; total of 27 Inf Bns, 3 MG Bns and 3 Recce Regts
2 Armd Divs; total of 8 Armd Regts and 2 Mot Bns
2 Indep Armd Bdes; total of 6 Armd Regts
2 Armd Car Regts
1 Para Bn (counted in British totals)

Also;

Poland; 1 Armd Div with 4 Armd Regts, 1 Mot Bn and 3 Inf Bns
Czech; 1 Armd Bde with (eventually) 3 Armd Regts and 1 Mot Bn (?)
Belgian; 1 Bde (actually a Battalion Group?)
Dutch; 1 Bde (actually a Battalion Group)

If you're trying to count non-Div RA/RCA Regts, it gets quite tricky. Atk Regts at least were one per Corps, so 4 RA and 2 RCA.

Gary

[Sheldrake]

It is difficult to make like for like comparisons on the basis of battalions and divisions, either between armies or between the first and second world wars. Nor is combat power or strength simply a matter of counting bayonets or gun barrels. The availability of ammunition and replacements made a big difference.

In absolute terms the land battles of 1918 were much larger than the forces deployed in 1944-45. By the end of WW1 there were around 2 million US soldiers, 2 million British and By 1945 the Western Allies had around the equivalent of 90 divisions on the western front, around 3.5 million.

The Italian front cannot be divorced from the rest of the Western front. This was part of a contiguous operation by the western allies against the Germans. It did not matter whether the 15th PG division was fighting Americans in Italy or France.

However, the armies were substantially different with mechanisation resulting in a higher proportion of support troops for greater mobility and fire power. Furthermore, strategic air power meant that the campaign in the West in WW2 was waged in greater depth than in WW1.

I am not sure what point you are trying to make about the relative "brutality of the war in the west" I suspect war is by its nature brutal to the combatant casualties and civilian victims. What scale are you proposing as an objective measure of "brutality"?

It is generally accepted that the treatment of prisoners by both sides on the western front made life less brutal for combatants, but it is hard to separate out the strategic bombing of Germany, and free rein given to "transportation targets" from the land campaign in the West. Life was pretty brutal for German civilians in the west.

I'll give you another comparison. The battle of Wagram took place on 5-6th July 1809. Around 350,000 soldiers took place supported by some 800-900 cannon. There were around 70,000 casualties. This is in the same order of magnitude as the first day of the Somme, if the number of soldiers exposed to fire are counted. At this time Europe had only one quarter of the population it had a hundred years later. Of course the big difference was that by 1914 industrial states had the capacity to sustain a battle like the somme for 143 rather than merely two days, but within that campaign there were only a limited number of "big battle days" such as 1 & 14 July 15 September. But was war more savage for those who took part in 1809 or 1863 than in 1916 or 1944?

[AJFFM]

It is difficult to make like for like comparisons on the basis of battalions and divisions, either between armies or between the first and second world wars. Nor is combat power or strength simply a matter of counting bayonets or gun barrels. The availability of ammunition and replacements made a big difference.

I actually do not think it is impossible to compare between the two wars especially in infantry battalion level. At the tactical level infantry battalions in 1914 had about the same fire power as their counterparts in 1945. Semi-Automatic weapons and sub-machine guns were quite rare and even then it was used in selective fire mode instead of auto-mode according to more than one source I read.

Yes motorisation was better but it was more felt on brigade\division levels instead of battalion levels and even so let us not forget that motorisation was a phenomenon limited to the western front. In the east both armies were 80% on foot.

In absolute terms the land battles of 1918 were much larger than the forces deployed in 1944-45. By the end of WW1 there were around 2 million US soldiers, 2 million British and By 1945 the Western Allies had around the equivalent of 90 divisions on the western front, around 3.5 million.

So was the opposition (1918 that is). My hypothesis is that the break in 1918 had about as much to do with sustainability of combat strength of frontline battalions as it is with tactics. Germany in 1918 and 1944 did not have enough replacements to support a sustained attrition warfare especially after wasting so many troops on expensive offensive that only achieved tactical breakthroughs.

The Italian front cannot be divorced from the rest of the Western front. This was part of a contiguous operation by the western allies against the Germans. It did not matter whether the 15th PG division was fighting Americans in Italy or France.

True enough. However the allied presence in Italy was a fraction of that in Northwestern Europe which is why for comparison's sake I excluded it.

However, the armies were substantially different with mechanisation resulting in a higher proportion of support troops for greater mobility and fire power. Furthermore, strategic air power meant that the campaign in the West in WW2 was waged in greater depth than in WW1.

Mechanisation could take you so far. Eventually you will have to stop to regroup and in the end as I said the point here is appreciation of the war on a tactical level, the battalion level instead of the normal assessment of combat on the Operational or strategic levels (Division\Corps\Army levels).

Same goes for Air power which did not save allies in numerous occasions in the west.

I am not sure what point you are trying to make about the relative "brutality of the war in the west" I suspect war is by its nature brutal to the combatant casualties and civilian victims. What scale are you proposing as an objective measure of "brutality"?

It is about the narrative. The portrayal of the fight in the west, and mind you I read primarily on the fight in the eastern front, is that it was not as savage or brutal as the fight in the east and that the western allies "got it easy".

The Americans in the 11 month campaign of WWII took more casualties than the 11 month campaign in WWI and this is with less troops and more fire power, better health services and no Spanish flu. The British suffered a rate of casualties not that far from WWI's hundred days campaign either.

Compared with the fight in the east it is apparent to me that the rate of casualties while still higher in the east than in the west the difference was not that far off.

My point is that the war in 1944-1945 was no less brutal on both the Germans and the allies than the war in the east.





My point from this thread is that defeats\reversals begin on the tactical level. When the war began Divisions averaged 10-12 battalions. By the end of the war a German Division would be lucky if it had 6 battalions. This phenomenon was also seen in WWI. And we are not even discussing changing the structure of the battalion itself (Number of companies, machine gun and mortar sections, motorisation etc.) let alone the division or corps.

Unlike WWI, the ratio of combat troops to overall troop numbers was pretty low in WWII. If I am not mistaken for the American Army it went down from 60% in WWI to 30% in WWII. The best way to measure this number is not by divisions but actually by infantry battalions and even better, by companies. Furthermore with so many troops Operating outside normal combat structures in ad-hoc units measuring performance is even harder. Officially there was 90 divisions in the west but if what I read on some WWII statistics website is true and that 40% of all battalions were attached to Division HQs and higher then this must change the way we analyse battles.

[Sheldrake]

It is difficult to make like for like comparisons on the basis of battalions and divisions, either between armies or between the first and second world wars. Nor is combat power or strength simply a matter of counting bayonets or gun barrels. The availability of ammunition and replacements made a big difference.

I actually do not think it is impossible to compare between the two wars especially in infantry battalion level. At the tactical level infantry battalions in 1914 had about the same fire power as their counterparts in 1945. Semi-Automatic weapons and sub-machine guns were quite rare and even then it was used in selective fire mode instead of auto-mode according to more than one source I read. (1)

Yes motorisation was better but it was more felt on brigade\division levels instead of battalion levels and even so let us not forget that motorisation was a phenomenon limited to the western front. In the east both armies were 80% on foot. (2)

In absolute terms the land battles of 1918 were much larger than the forces deployed in 1944-45. By the end of WW1 there were around 2 million US soldiers, 2 million British and By 1945 the Western Allies had around the equivalent of 90 divisions on the western front, around 3.5 million.

So was the opposition (1918 that is). My hypothesis is that the break in 1918 had about as much to do with sustainability of combat strength of frontline battalions as it is with tactics. Germany in 1918 and 1944 did not have enough replacements to support a sustained attrition warfare especially after wasting so many troops on expensive offensive that only achieved tactical breakthroughs.(3)

The Italian front cannot be divorced from the rest of the Western front. This was part of a contiguous operation by the western allies against the Germans. It did not matter whether the 15th PG division was fighting Americans in Italy or France.

True enough. However the allied presence in Italy was a fraction of that in Northwestern Europe which is why for comparison's sake I excluded it. (4)

However, the armies were substantially different with mechanisation resulting in a higher proportion of support troops for greater mobility and fire power. Furthermore, strategic air power meant that the campaign in the West in WW2 was waged in greater depth than in WW1.

Mechanisation could take you so far. Eventually you will have to stop to regroup and in the end as I said the point here is appreciation of the war on a tactical level, the battalion level instead of the normal assessment of combat on the Operational or strategic levels (Division\Corps\Army levels).

Same goes for Air power which did not save allies in numerous occasions in the west.

I am not sure what point you are trying to make about the relative "brutality of the war in the west" I suspect war is by its nature brutal to the combatant casualties and civilian victims. What scale are you proposing as an objective measure of "brutality"?

It is about the narrative. The portrayal of the fight in the west, and mind you I read primarily on the fight in the eastern front, is that it was not as savage or brutal as the fight in the east and that the western allies "got it easy".

The Americans in the 11 month campaign of WWII took more casualties than the 11 month campaign in WWI and this is with less troops and more fire power, better health services and no Spanish flu. The British suffered a rate of casualties not that far from WWI's hundred days campaign either.

Compared with the fight in the east it is apparent to me that the rate of casualties while still higher in the east than in the west the difference was not that far off.

My point is that the war in 1944-1945 was no less brutal on both the Germans and the allies than the war in the east.

My point from this thread is that defeats\reversals begin on the tactical level. When the war began Divisions averaged 10-12 battalions. By the end of the war a German Division would be lucky if it had 6 battalions. This phenomenon was also seen in WWI. And we are not even discussing changing the structure of the battalion itself (Number of companies, machine gun and mortar sections, motorisation etc.) let alone the division or corps.

Unlike WWI, the ratio of combat troops to overall troop numbers was pretty low in WWII. If I am not mistaken for the American Army it went down from 60% in WWI to 30% in WWII. The best way to measure this number is not by divisions but actually by infantry battalions and even better, by companies. Furthermore with so many troops Operating outside normal combat structures in ad-hoc units measuring performance is even harder. Officially there was 90 divisions in the west but if what I read on some WWII statistics website is true and that 40% of all battalions were attached to Division HQs and higher then this must change the way we analyse battles.

Re 1. This is highly contentious and contrary to the accepted views about the development of infantry during WW1. The infantry battalions of 1914 had only a fraction of the fire-power of those of 1918, let alone those of 1945! The infantry battalion of 1914 was 1000 riflemen with fixed bayonets and two medium machine guns. It had no grenades, light machine guns, rifle grenades or machine pistols let alone the mortars, anti tank guns, hand held rocket launchers, motor vehicles to carry additional ammunition and portable radios added during WW2. A 1945 infantry battalion would out-shoot a 1914 battalion at far greater range and had far greater resilience to tanks. The thinking behind the unit and how it fights was very different. 1914 infantry fightign was about building up a firing line of platoons or companies. From 1918 onwards it was about applying firepower with the minimum of exposure and operating as 64 sections with mix of weapons.

Re 2. The 20% of motorised forces on the Eastern front were those that carried out the major manoeuvres. The Germans were no more motorised on the west than in the east. A British non motorised infantry battalion had 100 drivers in its establishment of just over 800.

Re 3. How are you going to test your hypothesis? Do you not think that the collapse of the German army had something to do with the realisation by the Germans that they could not win?

Re 4. The allied strength in Italy was 20+ Divisions, which is quite a BIG fraction of 90 divisions and scarcely negligible. How does ignoring it make the comparison more sensible?

[Aber]

Officially there was 90 divisions in the west .

Careful with that number; 24 of those divisions only entered combat more than 6 months after D-Day.

[Art]

British losses are even more chaotic to me since numbers swing even more wildly.

Take a look at this page, for example:
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA ... eme-E.html

[Sheldrake]

Officially there was 90 divisions in the west .

Careful with that number; 24 of those divisions only entered combat more than 6 months after D-Day.

Yes. That is because the purpose of the lodgement phase of Op Overlord was for the Advance Guard of C.30 divisions to secure a lodgement area in which the main force, mobilised under the 1941 "Victory plan" for the US Army could be landed from without cross shipping into assault craft.

The main fight in the west was envisaged from 1942 as between 75 divisions of the 100 division US Army plus C 25 Divisions of British and Commonwealth troops. Historically the heavy infantry losses led to the disbanding of some British and not all US Formations deployed. However, the French built an army around their FEC amounting to C.9 divisions in the First French Army and claim to have formed formed 40 divisions from the FFI by the end of the war.

[AJFFM]

Re 1. This is highly contentious and contrary to the accepted views about the development of infantry during WW1. The infantry battalions of 1914 had only a fraction of the fire-power of those of 1918, let alone those of 1945! The infantry battalion of 1914 was 1000 riflemen with fixed bayonets and two medium machine guns. It had no grenades, light machine guns, rifle grenades or machine pistols let alone the mortars, anti tank guns, hand held rocket launchers, motor vehicles to carry additional ammunition and portable radios added during WW2. A 1945 infantry battalion would out-shoot a 1914 battalion at far greater range and had far greater resilience to tanks. The thinking behind the unit and how it fights was very different. 1914 infantry fightign was about building up a firing line of platoons or companies. From 1918 onwards it was about applying firepower with the minimum of exposure and operating as 64 sections with mix of weapons.

That assumes that after 4 years of bloody attrition (especially during the Spring of 1918) an infantry battalion was equivalent to a 1914 infantry battalion let alone a 1944 infantry battalion. If I am not mistaken the average strength in men at the beginning of 1918's 100 days was less than 700 men and there was not that many MGs to begin with having been usually grouped in companies and attached to higher HQs. Britain, France and Germany began the war with 1000 men battalions. Personal armament was the same throughout both wars, Bolt-Action rifles\semi-automatic with roughly the same load issued in 1914 as was issued in 1944 (again my source is shaky here but I trust him). Yes, more MGs and sub MGs were available in WWII but their numbers, actual numbers, was small to have an effect on the conduct of combat.

If you have TOEs for battalions of various combatants (again except for the Red Army, I have a number of good sources on them already) I would be very grateful if you provide me with some or give me a good reference especially for WWI.

Re 2. The 20% of motorised forces on the Eastern front were those that carried out the major manoeuvres. The Germans were no more motorised on the west than in the east. A British non motorised infantry battalion had 100 drivers in its establishment of just over 800.

Not in all cases. Most Soviet armour in 1944 was against AGNU instead of AGC and it was the infantry that done the major work in Bagration as well as the march from Boltava to the Dnieper if I am not mistaken. Of course deep penetration was primarily due to armour but it was the contant pressure by the infantry who were on foot that won the battles.

Re 3. How are you going to test your hypothesis? Do you not think that the collapse of the German army had something to do with the realisation by the Germans that they could not win?

The test is simple, statistical analysis. I know others done it before and it is a standard practice in Soviet\Russian Operational Analysis but I think applying statistical indicators such as force ratios per battalion, fire power densities (theoretical calculations based on TOEs) would help explain why supposedly professional elites as the SS were roundly defeated in Normandy but majority reservist divisions blocked the advance of the allies for nearly five months after Paris.

Germany would have lost regardless. I have said that before and have no illusions about it. It is just an exploration of what happened.

Re 4. The allied strength in Italy was 20+ Divisions, which is quite a BIG fraction of 90 divisions and scarcely negligible. How does ignoring it make the comparison more sensible?

True enough, however the nature of the battle, the condition of the front and the rate of casualties makes a comparison with the east or WWI unfare and impractical.

[Sheldrake]

Good Luck to you. However, your premise that battalions are comparable is deeply flawed.

The British and French practice, from 1916 was to have Light machine guns (Lewis and Chauchat) as platoon if not section weapons and the proportion of weapons increased as the numbers of men dwindled. There is a photograph of a 20 man Australian platoon in 1918 with three Lewis guns.

While the majority of British and German soldiers had similar personal weapons in both wars these were not equivalents. The iconic weapon for the German soldier of 1918 is not the rifle but the Grenade. The soldiers of 1914 were warrior riflemen who generated fire-power through their individual marksmanship - think BEF. The soldiers of 1918 - and even more so in 1944 were conscripts in an industrial process mainly serving crew weapons. Soldiers were specialist bombers, rifle bombers machine gun detachments and some scouts and snipers. Increasingly supported by what might be described as machinists in uniform, mortar-men, medium machine gunners, tank crews and artillerymen. If the soldier of 1914 was a countryman poacher or gamekeeper, by 1918he was an industrial worker. The average soldier could not hit a barn door, but it did not matter as long as the Lewis/Bren MG42 was in action and fed with ammunition. Yes there still were riflemen and success depended on the battle for the last 30 yards, but these werea small number.

Try reading Richard Holmes' "Tommy", Stephen Bull's "Trench warfare" or Paddy Griffiths' Battle tactics of the western front" or Liddell Hart's Man in the Dark' theory of Infantry Tactics (lecture) RUSI Journal, Feb 1921, Vol. 66, No. 1

[Gary Kennedy]

I'd just add, as some who has a practically diagnosable condition of collecting unit organisational tables, there were noticeable differences between what an Inf Bn looked like in 1939 to what it looked like in 1944, even if the underlying framework remained. I've only seen second hand info for 1914-18 era establishment tables, but they have a very different look to what was used some 30 years later.

[Mori]

On Allied losses, some hints.

Total losses: you can find weekly reports with total losses in SHAEF and/or War Office archives. Check entries around TNA WO 106/4386: these are reports for Brooke. It will lift most questions you can have on inconsistencies. They include data for British / American / French / Canadian

British: check www.hut-six.co.uk for soldier per soldier casualties (go to search engine). This should answer all your questions on actual losses.

US: G-3 report should include the data you're looking for. They are not easy to get online though

French: war diaries ("Journal de Marche") have daily report on losses.

[Inselaffe]

Hello,

For British casualties in NWE, you can usually get detailed figures (by unit and also break downs of types of casualty) in the Corps level Medical Services war diaries. Laborious but worthwhile; full of interesting stuff.

Cheers.

[Mori]

For British casualties in NWE, you can usually get detailed figures (by unit and also break downs of types of casualty) in the Corps level Medical Services war diaries. Laborious but worthwhile; full of interesting stuff.

Interesting!

Would you have the exact source (WO 171/something, I suppose) ?