D'Este's "A Genius for War"

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Tom from Cornwall
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D'Este's "A Genius for War"

#1

Post by Tom from Cornwall » 31 Oct 2022, 21:23

Hi,

Just re-reading Carlo D'Este's biography of George Patton and came across this section:
p.638
[…]
The [Third Army] G-3 kept a chart (and another in Patton’s van) reflecting the daily accomplishments of the Third Army, which was the first thing Patton looked at during his daily briefings. In less than a month of combat the results were spectacular. As of August 26 the score sheet read:

Third Army German

Killed 1,930 (e) 16,000
Wounded 9,041 (e) 55,500
Non-Battle casualties 5,414
Missing 1,854
POWs 65,000
Totals 18,239 136,500

The Third Army captured or destroyed 4,353 German tanks, artillery and vehicles, losing only 269 tanks, 74 guns and 956 vehicles of its own. Patton’s penchant for keeping accurate counts was the best of any commanding general’s. Once, when Bradley asked for the number of enemy dead since D Day, only Third Army provided a prompt answer. [Note 44: Patton Diary, Aug. 28, 1944.]
I am surprised that E'Este repeated those figures totally uncritically as if they were based on any realistic analysis and then made the statement about Patton's "best" penchant for keeping an accurate count without questioning how they were calculated.

It would be interesting to understand if there are any accurate figures for German casualties in August 1944 in Normandy.

Regards

Tom

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Re: D'Este's "A Genius for War"

#2

Post by Richard Anderson » 31 Oct 2022, 22:02

Tom from Cornwall wrote:
31 Oct 2022, 21:23
Hi,

Just re-reading Carlo D'Este's biography of George Patton and came across this section:
p.638
[…]
The [Third Army] G-3 kept a chart (and another in Patton’s van) reflecting the daily accomplishments of the Third Army, which was the first thing Patton looked at during his daily briefings. In less than a month of combat the results were spectacular. As of August 26 the score sheet read:

Third Army German

Killed 1,930 (e) 16,000
Wounded 9,041 (e) 55,500
Non-Battle casualties 5,414
Missing 1,854
POWs 65,000
Totals 18,239 136,500

The Third Army captured or destroyed 4,353 German tanks, artillery and vehicles, losing only 269 tanks, 74 guns and 956 vehicles of its own. Patton’s penchant for keeping accurate counts was the best of any commanding general’s. Once, when Bradley asked for the number of enemy dead since D Day, only Third Army provided a prompt answer. [Note 44: Patton Diary, Aug. 28, 1944.]
I am surprised that E'Este repeated those figures totally uncritically as if they were based on any realistic analysis and then made the statement about Patton's "best" penchant for keeping an accurate count without questioning how they were calculated.

It would be interesting to understand if there are any accurate figures for German casualties in August 1944 in Normandy.

Regards

Tom
Tom,

The monthly charts are reproduced in the Third Army AAR, I believe in the second volume. They were based on a realistic analysis even if it was incomplete and had all the problems with battlefield estimates.

The more problematic was the personnel figures. The POW count was the number passing through Third Army cages - rounded up of course - and was acurate. KIA and WIA were based on "body counts" with all the hazards that involved.

The ordnance figures should be accurate. 12th Army Group policy was that such counts were not for "claims" but rather for items counted and collected by Ordnance teams inside American lines. I have some of the daily counts and the chief problem with them was categorization of tanks - Panthers were counted as "heavy tanks" and it is unclear exactly what they counted as light and medium tanks. Of course, it helped make the numbers look good that in summary they lumped all armored and unarmored vehicles together with artillery of all kinds.
Richard C. Anderson Jr.

American Thunder: U.S. Army Tank Design, Development, and Doctrine in World War II
Cracking Hitler's Atlantic Wall
Hitler's Last Gamble
Artillery Hell


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Re: D'Este's "A Genius for War"

#3

Post by Tom from Cornwall » 01 Nov 2022, 00:24

Richard Anderson wrote:
31 Oct 2022, 22:02

Tom,

The monthly charts are reproduced in the Third Army AAR, I believe in the second volume. They were based on a realistic analysis even if it was incomplete and had all the problems with battlefield estimates.

The more problematic was the personnel figures. The POW count was the number passing through Third Army cages - rounded up of course - and was acurate. KIA and WIA were based on "body counts" with all the hazards that involved.

The ordnance figures should be accurate. 12th Army Group policy was that such counts were not for "claims" but rather for items counted and collected by Ordnance teams inside American lines. I have some of the daily counts and the chief problem with them was categorization of tanks - Panthers were counted as "heavy tanks" and it is unclear exactly what they counted as light and medium tanks. Of course, it helped make the numbers look good that in summary they lumped all armored and unarmored vehicles together with artillery of all kinds.
Rich,

Thanks for the reply and the information about the location of the charts.

I get the remark about ‘body count’ for Killed but not sure how that would help assessment of how many Germans had been wounded by Third Army action in Aug 44. I’m tending towards expecting that to be pretty much a WAG. As for armour, vehicles and guns - I guess it would be possible to make an assessment of how much armour was actually available to the German units that Third Army encountered during this period.

I clearly failed to explain my question effectively though, as my remarks weren’t really about the Third Army statistics, which I would treat with extreme caution, it was more about Carlo D’Este’s uncritical repeating of them. Given his experience in US Army I would have expected him to be slightly more doubtful as to the veracity of such statistics.

Regards

Tom

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Re: D'Este's "A Genius for War"

#4

Post by Richard Anderson » 01 Nov 2022, 01:01

Tom from Cornwall wrote:
01 Nov 2022, 00:24
I get the remark about ‘body count’ for Killed but not sure how that would help assessment of how many Germans had been wounded by Third Army action in Aug 44. I’m tending towards expecting that to be pretty much a WAG.
I suspect they used a rule-of-thumb of 3.5 wounded for every killed.
As for armour, vehicles and guns - I guess it would be possible to make an assessment of how much armour was actually available to the German units that Third Army encountered during this period.
Yep, and where they can be found they are not out of the realm of the possible, For example, the estimates for German tank losses in the Arracourt battles is pretty accurate.

The caveat, especially for early on in Normandy, is that some things were probably counted multiple times by different Ordnance Technical Teams in some cases and may have been counted both by FUSA and Second British Army where they fell along the intra-army boundary.
I clearly failed to explain my question effectively though, as my remarks weren’t really about the Third Army statistics, which I would treat with extreme caution, it was more about Carlo D’Este’s uncritical repeating of them. Given his experience in US Army I would have expected him to be slightly more doubtful as to the veracity of such statistics.
I think he was more comparing the record keeping of Third Army with that of First Army, which was indifferent at best. It had no mechanism I have found for keeping track of such things at army-level and so left it to the corps. Thus, in April-July 1945 when the AFV&W Section ETOUSA was attempting to track German losses, FUSA's reply was by corps rather than consolidated by the army and IIRC not all corps reported.
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Re: D'Este's "A Genius for War"

#5

Post by Mori » 01 Nov 2022, 01:28

Tom from Cornwall wrote:
31 Oct 2022, 21:23
p.638
[…]
The [Third Army] G-3 kept a chart (and another in Patton’s van) reflecting the daily accomplishments of the Third Army, which was the first thing Patton looked at during his daily briefings.


I am surprised that E'Este repeated those figures totally uncritically as if they were based on any realistic analysis and then made the statement about Patton's "best" penchant for keeping an accurate count without questioning how they were calculated.
Because Patton looked at these figures every morning, his staff were exagerating them. (Source: testimony by a staff member).

Patton was also so proud/obsessed with them he routinely copied the figures in his personal diary - a pretty strange habit that I don't think any other corps/army commander mirrored.

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Re: D'Este's "A Genius for War"

#6

Post by Mori » 01 Nov 2022, 01:49

Tom from Cornwall wrote:
01 Nov 2022, 00:24

I clearly failed to explain my question effectively though, as my remarks weren’t really about the Third Army statistics, which I would treat with extreme caution, it was more about Carlo D’Este’s uncritical repeating of them. Given his experience in US Army I would have expected him to be slightly more doubtful as to the veracity of such statistics.
I spent some time studying Patton a few years ago, and this naturally included all had been written before by his biographers. D'Este's book is by and large a solid work, but includes a fair number of dilletante assertions. The one you mention falls in that category: he didn't check figures against actual TUSA records but just trusted what Patton copied by hand, and he didn't ask what credibility had such figures against the actual German troops in front of TUSA.

This doesn't mean that figures were wrong. Just that d'Este didn't made the effort of challenging them whatsoever.

For example, the PoW counts is probably the most accurate, as Richard said. But it includes anyone wearing a uniform. In mobile phases such as August 1944 or April 1945, that can be many types of personel, including depot guards, firemen, border guards, train operators, civilan affairs staff in occupied countries, non flying teams in air bases etc.

AFAIR, there is a split of captured personel for April 1945 in TUSA or FUSA AAR. It's when the German forces eventually collapsed, so the situation is extreme. It shows that less than 10% of PoWs belong to Wehrmacht combat units. D'Este could have used such a data to reflect on relevance of the data quoted for August 1944.
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Re: D'Este's "A Genius for War"

#7

Post by Mori » 01 Nov 2022, 01:56

Some more examples of "dillettante" assertions by d'Este about Patton. And let me repeat that the work is by and large solid. Just quoting from memory.

- Patton suffering from dislexia (d'Este aimed at explaining bad grades in maths at West Point, but wasn't puzzled that this dislexia spontaneously disappeared thereafter - hardly any mispelled words in Patton's diary / letters!)

- Patton action during WW1 is described with two lenghty chapters. However, it's nowhere said that the full combat time Patton experienced in France is... 3 days. The length of the description seems designed to cloud this fact.

- Weak reasoning to excuse Patton's orders "not to take prisonners alive" during Husky. D'Este claimed that shooting PoWs in cold blood was regrettable but happened fairly often - but he could only find one more example on the Allied side, and it was by Canadians (not Americans) and in Normandy (not N.Africa/Sicily/Italy).

-
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Re: D'Este's "A Genius for War"

#8

Post by Mori » 01 Nov 2022, 02:22

Tom from Cornwall wrote:
01 Nov 2022, 00:24
I get the remark about ‘body count’ for Killed but not sure how that would help assessment of how many Germans had been wounded by Third Army action in Aug 44. I’m tending towards expecting that to be pretty much a WAG. As for armour, vehicles and guns - I guess it would be possible to make an assessment of how much armour was actually available to the German units that Third Army encountered during this period.
Main problem is German own reports are not honest... Most units concealed troops and equipment in rear areas under various excuses ("training", "refershing", assignment to depot etc.), and that's especially true of SS formations.

For example, 17th SS div sent a report on 19 July 1944 saying it had just 876 riflemen left. But 5 days later another report said the full manpower was more than 11,000 men. The units also played games in reports to Himmler himself.

Other examples exists suggesting this was quite common behavior.

That troops and equipment were in rear areas as the Normandy battle raged goes a long way in explaining how Germans stabilized the front in a few days early September 1944.

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Re: D'Este's "A Genius for War"

#9

Post by Westphalia1812 » 01 Nov 2022, 03:15

Mori wrote:
01 Nov 2022, 02:22


For example, 17th SS div sent a report on 19 July 1944 saying it had just 876 riflemen left. But 5 days later another report said the full manpower was more than 11,000 men. The units also played games in reports to Himmler himself.


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Re: D'Este's "A Genius for War"

#10

Post by Westphalia1812 » 01 Nov 2022, 03:35

Mori wrote:
01 Nov 2022, 02:22


... Most units concealed troops and equipment in rear areas under various excuses ("training", "refershing", assignment to depot etc.), and that's especially true of SS formations.



That troops and equipment were in rear areas as the Normandy battle raged goes a long way in explaining how Germans stabilized the front in a few days early September 1944.
That's one thing I've never heard about until now. Can you cite examples? This would be very interesting for evaluating the combat readiness of the armored reserves.

AFAIK, 12th SS send some of their surviving tanks to the rear around mid August, having some left despite being one of the most engaged divs. My memory could have failed me, though :lol:
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Re: D'Este's "A Genius for War"

#11

Post by Richard Anderson » 01 Nov 2022, 06:08

Mori wrote:
01 Nov 2022, 01:56
Some more examples of "dillettante" assertions by d'Este about Patton. And let me repeat that the work is by and large solid. Just quoting from memory.

- Patton suffering from dislexia (d'Este aimed at explaining bad grades in maths at West Point, but wasn't puzzled that this dislexia spontaneously disappeared thereafter - hardly any mispelled words in Patton's diary / letters!)
Patton did likely suffer from dyslexia. Have you read any of Patton's written diary or letters? Or just the typed transcriptions? The transcriptions were done after he died and vary significantly from the originals, which are full of odd misspellings.
- Patton action during WW1 is described with two lenghty chapters. However, it's nowhere said that the full combat time Patton experienced in France is... 3 days. The length of the description seems designed to cloud this fact.
Five days actually. Four days at St. Mihiel and one day in the Meuse-Argonne.
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Re: D'Este's "A Genius for War"

#12

Post by Richard Anderson » 01 Nov 2022, 06:33

Mori wrote:
01 Nov 2022, 01:49
For example, the PoW counts is probably the most accurate, as Richard said. But it includes anyone wearing a uniform. In mobile phases such as August 1944 or April 1945, that can be many types of personel, including depot guards, firemen, border guards, train operators, civilan affairs staff in occupied countries, non flying teams in air bases etc.
Possibly...except "depot guards" in the entirety of Ob. West probably accounted for little more than 1,000 men. For example, Ls.-Btl. 390 was assigned to the Oberquartiermeister of 7. Armee on 1 August 1943 to provide security details for the army depots and other installations, which duty continued through summer 1944. The location strength of the Stab and 2. and 3. Kompanie is unknown but the strength of 1. Kompanie as of 31 March was all of 29 O&EM.

I am also unclear how many uniformed "firemen" and "train operators" there may have been in Ob.West for the Allies to hoover up as POW or why "civilian affairs staff" would be uniformed? By "border guards I assume you mean Landesschützen? While there were large numbers of such units they tended to be weakly manned.

Why is it incorrect to count Luftwaffe ground crews - or air crew for that matter - as POW? Were they not military personnel? Because a unit is "paramilitary" - uniformed and armed - do they not count as POW?
AFAIR, there is a split of captured personel for April 1945 in TUSA or FUSA AAR. It's when the German forces eventually collapsed, so the situation is extreme. It shows that less than 10% of PoWs belong to Wehrmacht combat units.
I think what you're referring to is page 374 of volume I of the TUSA AAR.

The paralysis of the enemy's replacement system was strikingly
illustrated by an analysis of the 226,309 prisoners of war captured by
Third U. S. Army during the period 26 March to 30 April. Of these prisoners,
1,911 were from Panzer-type divisions, 10,121 from infantry divisions
and 214,277 from miscellaneous units. The enemy was forced to use
low grade troops or none at all to replace his losses. In a quality
analysis of prisoners of war, 18,148 or 8.1 percent were found to be in
Class I, consisting of combat personnel of divisions, all personnel of
General Headquarters, Army Group, anti-tank, infantry and Panzer units;
79,111 or 34.9 percent were in Class II, consisting of all personnel of
fortress and replacement units, home guard, Volkssturm, police and
foreigners; 129,050 or 57 percent were in Class III, consisting of service
and supply troops of divisions, personnel of General Headquarters
artillery, engineer and antiaircraft units, personnel from higher headquarters,
General Headquarters service and supply units. Of the 226,309
prisoners of war, 1,911 or 0.9 percent were from Panzer-type divisions,
10,121 or 4.5 percent were from infantry-type divisions, and 214,277 or
94.6 percent were from miscellaneous units.

There is little to indicate that was the norm in summer 1944 and it seems likely that it was the opposite then, given the number of divisions destroyed.
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Re: D'Este's "A Genius for War"

#13

Post by Mori » 01 Nov 2022, 11:17

Westphalia1812 wrote:
01 Nov 2022, 03:35
Mori wrote:
01 Nov 2022, 02:22


... Most units concealed troops and equipment in rear areas under various excuses ("training", "refershing", assignment to depot etc.), and that's especially true of SS formations.



That troops and equipment were in rear areas as the Normandy battle raged goes a long way in explaining how Germans stabilized the front in a few days early September 1944.
That's one thing I've never heard about until now. Can you cite examples? This would be very interesting for evaluating the combat readiness of the armored reserves.

AFAIK, 12th SS send some of their surviving tanks to the rear around mid August, having some left despite being one of the most engaged divs. My memory could have failed me, though :lol:
The other example I've read is 12th SS, like you say.

In the first weeks of the battle of Normandy, it was heavily engaged and lost ca. 6,000 men. But after July 10th, the unit was never committed in full even though it still had ca. 14,000 personnel.

Only Kampfgruppen of 100s of men fought (and these were especially strong as they concentrated as much firepower as possible in a small group). However, they were a symbolic fraction of the full strength of the unit.

On July 23rd, most of troops outside these KGs were ordered back to their old garrison zone "to refresh the division and to safeguard men and equipement".

All this and previous assertions are from Leleu's "La Waffen-SS", which is only available in French (and in Spanish). The writer quotes a lot of archives, both from BAMA/NARA (KTB OKW, OB West (RH 19-IV), Pz Gr West (RH 20-5), Pz.AOK 5 (RH 21-5), and FMS Eberbach) and from VHA Prague archives.

It's all part of a bigger picture: how German SS units had a hidden agenda consisting on preserving themselves.
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Re: D'Este's "A Genius for War"

#14

Post by Mori » 01 Nov 2022, 11:29

Richard Anderson wrote:
01 Nov 2022, 06:08
Mori wrote:
01 Nov 2022, 01:56
Some more examples of "dillettante" assertions by d'Este about Patton. And let me repeat that the work is by and large solid. Just quoting from memory.

- Patton suffering from dislexia (d'Este aimed at explaining bad grades in maths at West Point, but wasn't puzzled that this dislexia spontaneously disappeared thereafter - hardly any mispelled words in Patton's diary / letters!)
Patton did likely suffer from dyslexia. Have you read any of Patton's written diary or letters? Or just the typed transcriptions? The transcriptions were done after he died and vary significantly from the originals, which are full of odd misspellings.
Yes, I have. I read the full hand-written diary because I didn't trust the transcriptions. I even wrote an article about that :)

I counted how many spelling mistakes there were: almost none, except when spelling names of (foreign) people. But then, so many people got the spelling of Air Marshall Coningham and Admiral Cunningham wrong that you can't blame it all on dislexia :)

I also showed Patton's hand-writing to speech therapists to get their comments whether that could be anything like dislexia. They concurred it showed no sign of dislexia per se. They also confirmed dislexia doesn't cure, and may just be compensated through re-education - which Patton never had (not to mention such treatment may not have existed at all in the 1920s).
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Re: D'Este's "A Genius for War"

#15

Post by Mori » 01 Nov 2022, 11:38

Richard Anderson wrote:
01 Nov 2022, 06:33
Mori wrote:
01 Nov 2022, 01:49
For example, the PoW counts is probably the most accurate, as Richard said. But it includes anyone wearing a uniform. In mobile phases such as August 1944 or April 1945, that can be many types of personel, including depot guards, firemen, border guards, train operators, civilan affairs staff in occupied countries, non flying teams in air bases etc.
Possibly...except "depot guards" in the entirety of Ob. West probably accounted for little more than 1,000 men. For example, Ls.-Btl. 390 was assigned to the Oberquartiermeister of 7. Armee on 1 August 1943 to provide security details for the army depots and other installations, which duty continued through summer 1944. The location strength of the Stab and 2. and 3. Kompanie is unknown but the strength of 1. Kompanie as of 31 March was all of 29 O&EM.

I am also unclear how many uniformed "firemen" and "train operators" there may have been in Ob.West for the Allies to hoover up as POW or why "civilian affairs staff" would be uniformed? By "border guards I assume you mean Landesschützen? While there were large numbers of such units they tended to be weakly manned.

Why is it incorrect to count Luftwaffe ground crews - or air crew for that matter - as POW? Were they not military personnel? Because a unit is "paramilitary" - uniformed and armed - do they not count as POW?
AFAIR, there is a split of captured personel for April 1945 in TUSA or FUSA AAR. It's when the German forces eventually collapsed, so the situation is extreme. It shows that less than 10% of PoWs belong to Wehrmacht combat units.
I think what you're referring to is page 374 of volume I of the TUSA AAR.

(...)

There is little to indicate that was the norm in summer 1944 and it seems likely that it was the opposite then, given the number of divisions destroyed.
Thanks for the complete quote of TUSA AAR. It would have taken me a while to find it in my files.

I'm not saying it was wrong to take all these men PoWs, and I actually believe it was definitively relevant to capture them. However, the suggestion above was to compare total figures of what went through the PoWs cages with field strength of German combat units: I don't think it would work because so many other types of personnel than combat units ended up in the PoWs cages during mobile operations.

It could be more relevant in static phases, like the Lorraine campaign in autumn 1944, when most of PoWs are frontline soldiers.

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