How did the Germans last over three years once Barbarossa failed?

[Cult Icon]

Army Group North Ukraine's frontline was 1/3rd of AGC and it had the 1.PzA and 4.PzA & an axis allied army. Between the two army groups (AGC and AGNU), it had 2/3rds of the armor as well.

[Michael Kenny]

Army Group North Ukraine's frontline was 1/3rd of AGC and it had the 1.PzA and 4.PzA & an axis allied army. Between the two army groups (AGC and AGNU), it had 2/3rds of the armor as well.

4 Panzer Divisions and 24 Inf with a 400 km front for North Ukraine & South Ukraine.

[Richard Anderson]

van Creveld, Ferguson, Dupuy, Zetterling, Woodford, Lawrence et aliae... everyone just straight out dismisses their methodologies and empirical data without providing any counter evidence (may it be because of nationalism or vanities). QJM, CEV, may it be politically incorrect or not. I have absolutely no sympaphies for nationalsocialists, may they rot where they fell.

Ah, you know Trevor, Shawn, and Chris then?

[Michael Kenny]

Here is the frontage in Normandy at July 2nd. Can anyone find a more crowded battlefield in WW2?

From front line to beaches was 28-13 km and one wonders how the tactically superior German army did not manage to advance some 10 miles or so and wipe out the beaches.

It seems to me an army noted for its ability to outflank and encircle the enemy missed a chance to take Bayeux, destroy the Allied beaches and bag 500,000 POWs.

Here is how I would have done it.

qwT075.............jpg (31.18 KiB) Viewed 1174 times

[Aber]

From front line to beaches was 28-13 km and one wonders how the tactically superior German army did not manage to advance some 10 miles or so and wipe out the beaches.

It seems to me an army noted for its ability to outflank and encircle the enemy missed a chance to take Bayeux, destroy the Allied beaches and bag 500,000 POWs.

Here is how I would have done it.

qwT075.............jpg

Fiendishly clever.

Attacking with an objective of Bayeux, splitting the Allied armies.

The Allies wouldn't have expected THAT.

[stg 44]

qwT075.jpg

Here is the frontage in Normandy at July 2nd. Can anyone find a more crowded battlefield in WW2?

From front line to beaches was 28-13 km and one wonders how the tactically superior German army did not manage to advance some 10 miles or so and wipe out the beaches.

It seems to me an army noted for its ability to outflank and encircle the enemy missed a chance to take Bayeux, destroy the Allied beaches and bag 500,000 POWs.

Here is how I would have done it.

qwT075.............jpg

And your plan would have failed for the same reason the Germans lost the campaign in WW2: total Allied air supremacy (they lost over 4000 aircraft in the campaign without blinking), artillery and AFV superiority by several orders of magnitude, and fire support from the fleet off the coast. German attempts to reinforce the battle area was badly hampered by the Allied bombing of transportation and strafing anything that moved, while fire missions by the fleet in the Channel destroyed anything within 15 miles of the beach. Let's also not forget the SAS, resistance, and SOE missions running behind German lines sabotaging their efforts as well. The Allies just had superiority in every area and the Germans were badly outnumbered on the defensive.

[Aber]

the Germans were badly outnumbered on the defensive.

Because their intelligence was wrong, and they were mis-deployed.

[stg 44]

the Germans were badly outnumbered on the defensive.

Because their intelligence was wrong, and they were mis-deployed.

And? Fact of the matter is that the strategy proposed by Michael is not possible given the Transport Plan and aerial domination over France by the Allies. The extensive deception efforts certainly helped, including the Double Cross program, but that wouldn't have mattered if the Allies didn't dominate the air more than any other nation did in any campaign of WW2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Plan
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/AAF-H-DDay/

Air Power: Critical to Success on D-Day

From the beginning Eisenhower and the rest of the combined forces planners recognized that air power would be critical to success of OVERLORD. Experience had taught planners to avoid facing hostile air power over the battlefront. This meant that the Luftwaffe would have to be destroyed, but not at the price of sacrificing vitally needed air support missions for air superiority ones.

Fortunately, in early 1944 the Luftwaffe was on the skids. By the fall of 1943, Republic P-47 Thunderbolts equipped with long-range "drop" tanks were inflicting heavy losses on German fighters over Occupied Europe and in the German periphery. Then, in December 1943, the North American P-51B Mustang entered service. Featuring superlative handling qualities and aerodynamic design, and powered by a Packard-built Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, the P-51B (and its successors, the P-51C and P-51D) could escort bomber strikes to Berlin and back, thanks in part to a symmetrical wing section that was thick enough to house a large quantity of fuel and streamlined enough to minimize drag. These two fine aircraft were worthy supplements to the overall Allied strategic bombing effort.

Whatever the bombing campaign may or may not have accomplished in destroying enemy resources, it did contribute directly to the D-Day success. Large bomber formations were aerial magnets that drew up the Luftwaffe to be destroyed by the American fighter force. The omnipresent Thunderbolts and Mustangs (and less frequently P-38 Lightnings) gave the Luftwaffe no respite over Germany, complementing the shorter-legged Spitfires and Hawker Typhoons of the Royal Air Force.

Between January and June 1941 the five months before D-Day--the Luftwaffe was effectively destroyed: 2,262 German fighter pilots died during that time. In May alone, no less than 25 percent of Germany's total fighter pilot force (which averaged 2,283 at any one time during this period) perished. During Big Week, American air forces targeted the German aircraft industry for special treatment; while production continued, the fighter force took staggering losses. In March 1944, fully 56 percent of the available German fighters were lost, dipping to 43 percent in April (as the bomber effort switched to Germany's petroleum production), and rising again to just over 50 percent in May, on the eve of Normandy. No wonder, then, that the Luftwaffe could contribute less than a hundred sorties to the defense of Normandy. Months of concentrated air warfare had given the Allies not only air superiority, but air supremacy as well.

Basically, the Allied air campaign for the invasion of Europe consisted of three phases. First, Allied fighters would attempt to destroy the Luftwaffe. The second phase called for isolating the battlefield by interdicting road and rail networks. And once the invasion began, Allied air forces would concentrate on battlefield interdiction and close air support. The requirements to keep the landing sites secret-particularly the deception to encourage the Germans to devote their greatest attention in the region of the Pas de Calais-complicated the air campaign. Strike planners had to schedule vastly more operations across the sweep of likely landing sites rather than just at the true site of OVERLORD. For example, rocket-armed Royal Air Force Hawker Typhoon fighter-bombers of the Second Tactical Air Force (2 TAF) attacked two radar installations outside the planned assault area for every one they attacked within it.

[Michael Kenny]

The list of excuses is certainly a long one. I never ceased to be amused at the acres of print wasted trying to cover over the unacceptable (to some) obvious. Germany was outfought by an Allied army that was a generation ahead of it. A fully motorised and integrated all-arms entity v an Army that was incapable of joined up thinking.

[Cult Icon]

May 31, 1944:

Panzer Divisions and Tiger battalions only:

AGN: 12.Pz, 11.SS PzG, S502

AGC: 20.Pz, 25.PzG, FHH PzG, S501

AGNU: 1.Pz, 4.Pz, 5.Pz, 7.Pz, 8.Pz, 16.Pz, 5.SS, 18.PzG, 20.PzG, S505, S506,S507, S509

AGSU: 3.Pz, 13.Pz, 14.Pz, 17.Pz, 23.Pz, 24.Pz, GD, SS-T, 10.PzG

AGN: 8 stug brigades
AGC: 13 stug brigades
AGNU: 7 stug brigades
AGSU: 9 stug brigades

[Graeme Sydney]

The Allies just had superiority in every area and the Germans were badly outnumbered on the defensive.

Gee, those military incompetent Allies must have had God and Lady Luck on their side.

[Cult Icon]

Now, the breakdowns are interesting and mirror the offensive operations:

German armor losses were not very high in normandy until the falaise pocket:

283, 380, 250. And then a big write-off in Sept: 1,998. 231, 190

German panzer divisions also, for the most part, escaped with their rear echelon in-tact.

In the East it was:

169, 2012, 1001, 877, 868, 281

what is notable about these figures is how in July 1944 the Germans lost ~1,250 stugs and PzJ while tank losses were only 767. This reflects the destruction of Army Group Center and defeat taken by the southern fronts. This involved a lot of wholesale capture of formations, which most likely included a lot of independent armor units like the stugs and PzJ.

For the other months, stug +Pzj losses either rival or exceed the tank losses in the east.

[Michael Kenny]

Now, the breakdowns are interesting and mirror the offensive operations:

German armor losses were not very high in normandy until the falaise pocket:

283, 380, 250. And then a big write-off in Sept: 1,998. 231, 190

That is because the September total is a catch-up.

[Michael Kenny]

May 31, 1944:

Panzer Divisions and Tiger battalions only:

AGN: 12.Pz, 11.SS PzG, S502

AGC: 20.Pz, 25.PzG, FHH PzG, S501

AGNU: 1.Pz, 4.Pz, 5.Pz, 7.Pz, 8.Pz, 16.Pz, 5.SS, 18.PzG, 20.PzG, S505, S506,S507, S509

AGSU: 3.Pz, 13.Pz, 14.Pz, 17.Pz, 23.Pz, 24.Pz, GD, SS-T, 10.PzG

AGN: 8 stug brigades
AGC: 13 stug brigades
AGNU: 7 stug brigades
AGSU: 9 stug brigades

Frontage please so we can have an idea of armour density. I know it was at least 1000 km
Normandy was 100 km wide x 30 km deep .
There were more tanks in the West than in the East. Include Italy and there were even more tanks in the west

[Boby]

The whole Halt Order is an excuse invented by the generals to prove that Germany would have won the war without the intervention of Hitler .

I regard the HaltBefehl Legende as the creation of panzerjockey Mafia. A Mafia that says awfully little about Rommel's being stumped at Lille and Guderian's trouble at Calais.

One thinks that the panzerjockey Mafia would be more quiet given the spectacular failure of Panzer-Vorwarts! concepts ("deep armored strikes") in the Russian Campaign. Instead they insisted on their erroneous ways, impressing younger, more feeble minds.

There is a pretty crucial difference: at Dunkirk on the 24th there was only a tiny British artillery force, while Calais and Lille had major garrisons several times their size. The French 68th division holding the Aa Canal line had already lost several bridgeheads that the Germans had seized, but were obliged to give up as per the Halt Order. So you may regard it is a myth that they could have succeed, but the examples you use to 'prove' that are not even remotely related to the reality at Dunkirk on the 24th and even 25th of May. And I suggest you check out this work, which discusses the issue in a fair bit of depth and concludes the only thing stopping the Germans from taking Dunkirk before defenses could be set up was the Halt Order:
https://www.amazon.com/Blitzkrieg-Legen ... 1591142954

The Soviet campaign in 1941 is not even remotely comparable to the situation in France in 1940.

On 24 may there were only tiny German forces far away from Dunkirk .Units of the 1PzD were at least 15 km away from Dunkirk, units of the LSS were 30 km away.The other German units were more than 50 km away from Dunkirk. The source is Frieser (Blitzkrieg Legend ) .

2 PzD was at Boulogne, 10 PzD was at Calais . And at that moment most PzD were understrenght,lacking especially infantry and artillery who were needed to protect the few operational tanks .

http://wwii-photos-maps.com/lagewest/19 ... -1940.html