Strategic Options After Kursk

[AJFFM]

The US did let Berlin out of its grasp, it was decided it was not worth the 100k losses or so to turn half of the city over to the Russians.

The Americans were already suffering close to 70k casualties a month by April 45, suffering 100k more was not that far from the horrible losses between Sept. and Dec. of 44. The Germans were more than willing to surrender without much resistance to the Americans and the British in the Spring of 44 and if I am not mistaken Patton and Monty (who never saw eye to eye) both saw Berlin as up for grabs.

[RichTO90]

Post 20 : Then they could contribute to another large scale Kursk style offensive(probably in the Ukraine)to push the Russians back east once more .

Post 32 is talking about 20 divisions available for the east .

Post 20 is talking about about a large offensive in the Ukraine to push the Soviets back .

Sorry, but taking "quotes" from two different posters, mixing them together, and then "refuting" something neither actually said doesn't further your argument very well.

First, according to ChrisD268 if the Germans could "transfer the best of the 60 divisions stationed there to the eastern front...
Then they could contribute to another large scale Kursk style armoured offensive (probably in the Ukraine) to push the Russians back east once more (perhaps aimed at getting to the Dneiper river and trapping as much Soviet armour west of that barrier as possible)." The number of the "60 divisions" to be sent is unspecified and the objectives are rather large, while success is implied it isn't specific - and is unlikely, given that "15-20 divisions" is the maximum number that could be sent.

Next, according to BDV if 15-20 divisions could have been sent east rapidly, then it is "possible they could have stabilized the front in Byelorussia and Lithuania without weakening AGS". Again reasonable and not specifying more than the possibility of success.

In both cases, if the movement was achieved as described, then the effect likely would have been at least a short-term "success" of some type. That such a movement is unlikely is a different argument.

They are both "strategic options after Kursk", neither are likely to be accomplished.

[RichTO90]

The Americans were already suffering close to 70k casualties a month by April 45, suffering 100k more was not that far from the horrible losses between Sept. and Dec. of 44. The Germans were more than willing to surrender without much resistance to the Americans and the British in the Spring of 44 and if I am not mistaken Patton and Monty (who never saw eye to eye) both saw Berlin as up for grabs.

They were? By "April 1945", i.e. in the previous month of March 1945, the Americans suffered 64,886 battle casualties, in all theaters for all branches of the Army, including the Army Air Corps. The average for the four months September-December 1944 was
67,357.5 per month, so actually little different from April 1945. The average for the 45 months of the war were 20,779. The ETO and MTO did encompass the majority of those losses, 56,281 in March 1945 and 62,367.25 for September-December 1944, so again little different.

I am unclear how "100k" losses could come into the picture, except as Bradley's estimate for a crossing of the Elbe and advance to Berlin? In any case though, Bradley's estimate and whether or not Patton and Monty saw Berlin "up for grabs" is irrelevant - it was Eisenhower's decision. Eisenhower's halt at the Elbe was a military decision and was sound given the intelligence he had at the time. It also had the backing of Truman, Churchill, the Combined Chiefs of Staff, and the U.S. Chiefs of Staff.

[BDV]

How reasonable were the german estimates of theirs and their enemies abilities? Kursk and Bagration/Overlord aftermath suggest, not very. That is a big problem, and we stray into WhIf land if we disregard it.

[BDV]

One of the things that could/should be done, in the aftermath of the Kursk debacle, is to evacuate friendlies (with families) from east Ukraine/Crimea to Poland, France, and the Balkans, go all out on mobilizing denizens of the Baltics, and pull all unreliable able bodied male slavs 16 year old to 40 year old East of Dniepr for labor in the Reich and in Poland, before January 1944, repeat for the Dniepr-Bug area in January-March, and Bug-Dniester in March-June.

[AJFFM]

The Americans were already suffering close to 70k casualties a month by April 45, suffering 100k more was not that far from the horrible losses between Sept. and Dec. of 44. The Germans were more than willing to surrender without much resistance to the Americans and the British in the Spring of 44 and if I am not mistaken Patton and Monty (who never saw eye to eye) both saw Berlin as up for grabs.

They were? By "April 1945", i.e. in the previous month of March 1945, the Americans suffered 64,886 battle casualties, in all theaters for all branches of the Army, including the Army Air Corps. The average for the four months September-December 1944 was
67,357.5 per month, so actually little different from April 1945. The average for the 45 months of the war were 20,779. The ETO and MTO did encompass the majority of those losses, 56,281 in March 1945 and 62,367.25 for September-December 1944, so again little different.

I am unclear how "100k" losses could come into the picture, except as Bradley's estimate for a crossing of the Elbe and advance to Berlin? In any case though, Bradley's estimate and whether or not Patton and Monty saw Berlin "up for grabs" is irrelevant - it was Eisenhower's decision. Eisenhower's halt at the Elbe was a military decision and was sound given the intelligence he had at the time. It also had the backing of Truman, Churchill, the Combined Chiefs of Staff, and the U.S. Chiefs of Staff.

If I am not mistaken from Dec 41 till May 45 the American army (including USAAF) in the ETO suffered 766k total casualties with roughly 177k KIA and a large number of MIA (most POW but some KIA, source: War department official stats 1946 pg 79). Of course it is worth noting that this includes Italy and NA as well as the air campaign and since most of the fighting actually was from June 44 till May 45 which need a little bit of digging to actually know how many casualties were suffered only France and beyond. Also it is worth noting that reporting was out of synch with months that saw little fighting reported in this document seen and unusually high number of casualties. A quick calculation from the document above show the US suffering something like 600k casualties in the countries covered by direct military action after June 44 (also including the very large USAAF casualties which are roughly 90k) which roughly translates into 66k men per month which is close to my original estimate (which considers the whole month of May within the average).

I never claimed the US would lose 100k men in a fight for Berlin, someone else suggested it. I merely said the US could stomach such a loss given that it suffered something like that number in Jan. 45 if we were to include the Pacific theatre here. And for a prize like Berlin, it was probably worth it.

[ChrisDR68]

Why would the Americans be particularly bothered about capturing Berlin?

The only thing I can think of is it's prestige value.

By prior agreement Berlin was to be captured by the Soviets then after the war divided up into different zones for each of the main Allied nations (as actually happened in the OTL).

Losing tens of thousands of GI's lives for a city they would be mostly giving over to the other Allied armies makes little sense to me. Apart from that given the disproportionate amount of the fighting and dying the Russians did during the war they had a strong case for deserving to capture the German capital.

[AJFFM]

Berlin wasn't a symbolic city, it was strategically located near the Oder which would be the natural boundary between unified Germany (which was obviously going to be under American influence) and Soviet controlled Poland. All signs before the deal (which offered Berlin to the Soviets by the Americans just to rile the Brits with no reciprocal guaranteed about Central and Eastern Europe) showed that Stalin was not interested in honouring any deal with the Americans and with hindsight the Americans realised their mistake as early as June 45.

And the Americas lost 10s of thousand of GIs in Austria, Germany and Czechoslovakia only to hand these territories to the Soviets, French and British so this argument is null.

[RichTO90]

Sorry, I missed your reply.

If I am not mistaken from Dec 41 till May 45 the American army (including USAAF) in the ETO suffered 766k total casualties with roughly 177k KIA and a large number of MIA (most POW but some KIA, source: War department official stats 1946 pg 79).

Not exactly. The figures in total for the ETO, MTO, and NATO were 765,694 battle casualties - total casualties were greater than that. It was 177,062 "dead among battle casualties", which included all other deaths related to combat, such as DOW, PW deaths, and MIA declared dead. Total KIA was 153,234.

Of course it is worth noting that this includes Italy and NA as well as the air campaign and since most of the fighting actually was from June 44 till May 45 which need a little bit of digging to actually know how many casualties were suffered only France and beyond.

Battle deaths (total battle casualties were not analyzed by theater and month) in the ETO from June 1944 to the end of May 1945 were 121,171 out of 152,109. So about 80% of the battle casualties in the ETO likely occurred then. Or, an average of roughly 7.3% per month.

Also it is worth noting that reporting was out of synch with months that saw little fighting reported in this document seen and unusually high number of casualties. A quick calculation from the document above show the US suffering something like 600k casualties in the countries covered by direct military action after June 44 (also including the very large USAAF casualties which are roughly 90k) which roughly translates into 66k men per month which is close to my original estimate (which considers the whole month of May within the average).

However, only 16,030 of the MTO battle deaths occurred June 1944 to May 1945. Which was only 40% of the total incurred there.
If we do the calculation from the known data, 539,345 battle casualties were likely incurred in the ETO and MTO during that period, or 49,031 per month average including all of May 1945.

I never claimed the US would lose 100k men in a fight for Berlin, someone else suggested it. I merely said the US could stomach such a loss given that it suffered something like that number in Jan. 45 if we were to include the Pacific theatre here. And for a prize like Berlin, it was probably worth it.

Sorry, I was quite clear where you were going with that. Thanks for clearing it up. However, I am not sure that Berlin was ever seen as a "prize" by the decision makers in the U.S., so I doubt they ever made that calculation.

[AJFFM]

Thanks for the reply but we went well off topic. I need to dwell on this issue and maybe open up a new thread. Have you any knowledge about more recent research about US war casualties that breaks down everything including equipment losses? I read the Third army after action report and describing it as mere propaganda is a insult to the name of good propaganda (they claimed more Tiger IIs destroyed than were actually built if I am not mistaken).

[RichTO90]

Thanks for the reply but we went well off topic. I need to dwell on this issue and maybe open up a new thread. Have you any knowledge about more recent research about US war casualties that breaks down everything including equipment losses? I read the Third army after action report and describing it as mere propaganda is a insult to the name of good propaganda (they claimed more Tiger IIs destroyed than were actually built if I am not mistaken).

Sorry, but you have me confused. How do claims for "Tiger IIs destroyed" relate to anything about American equipment losses or war casualties? Anyway, I think the Adjutant Generals report, for all its failings, still seems adequate.

You indeed are mistaken BTW and may need to do a second read of the Third Army AAR. I presume you are referring to the chart on page 409? Where exactly does it indicate any losses for "Tiger II"? What it tracks are Mark III and IV, counting 1,508 and 858 "Mark VI" from August 1944 to May 1945. What is missing? You got it, the Panther. Unfortunately there was a lot of confusion in reporting at this time and as frequently as "Mark IV" was identified as a "Tiger", so was the Panther, sometimes as a "Tiger Royal". Expecting a report put together in a couple of months by a bunch of Engineers waiting to go home that was basically a compilation of all previous wartime reporting to date to be very accurate is a bit much. But somewhere I hve the complete file of such reports put together at the request of the ETOUSA Historian somewhere if you are interetsed.

Is 2,366 a likely reasonable total Panzer loss for the opponents of Third Army? Probably. BTW, what else is missing? Hey, you got it again! The StuG, StuH, JgPz, and so on...probably subsumed in other figures as well.

[AJFFM]

Which I asked has there been any studies after the war like the AdjG report on casualties that broke down equipment losses?

The British have one and so does the USSR but I never saw an American one for WWII (I have Vietnam war reports as well as the recent wars in the Mid East).

[RichTO90]

Which I asked has there been any studies after the war like the AdjG report on casualties that broke down equipment losses?

The British have one and so does the USSR but I never saw an American one for WWII (I have Vietnam war reports as well as the recent wars in the Mid East).

Okay, I see what you meant, the reference to the Tigers confused me. No, there is no consolidated report that was ever done to my knowledge, likely because of the decentralized nature of the U.S. War Department and because Army Ordnance also had purview over quite a bit of production that went to the Navy Department and USMC. There is quite a bit of data on losses to tanks in U.S. service, which has been posted before, but it is incomplete (among many annoying things, the Fifth Army only tracked consolidated tank losses through July 1944 and data for many Pacific campaigns is almost entirely lacking). For other items you have to go through the various theater Ordnance, QM, Engineer, and CWS monthly records to compile data and again there are holes in it plus the plethora of commands leaves it open as to what overlaps may exist in the data.

OTOH, aircraft are well tracked by the USAAF Statistical Digest.

[ChrisDR68]

Berlin wasn't a symbolic city, it was strategically located near the Oder which would be the natural boundary between unified Germany (which was obviously going to be under American influence) and Soviet controlled Poland. All signs before the deal (which offered Berlin to the Soviets by the Americans just to rile the Brits with no reciprocal guaranteed about Central and Eastern Europe) showed that Stalin was not interested in honouring any deal with the Americans and with hindsight the Americans realised their mistake as early as June 45.

And the Americas lost 10s of thousand of GIs in Austria, Germany and Czechoslovakia only to hand these territories to the Soviets, French and British so this argument is null.

If that's true then why did Stalin honour the agreement to divide Berlin up after the war?

Your last point about Austria and Czechoslovakia isn't convincing either. Capturing Berlin would have been on a whole different scale of casualties compared to liberating these two countries. Austria also stayed in the western sphere of influence so it could be argued the American losses here were acceptable in terms of grand strategy.

Going by memory the Soviets captured most of Czechoslovakia themselves and in fact this was where the last remaining large scale organised German military resistance was located.

[BDV]

I think the rational option on the East Front, after the Kursk debacle is wone of trading space for time (and soviet casualties). However, I think that the operational details of how this is to be achieved is an area for tough debate, as obviously historical german/Axis efforts left things to be desired.