1944-45: what was the 'Festung' policy good for?

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Mori
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Re: 1944-45: what was the 'Festung' policy good for?

#31

Post by Mori » 01 Dec 2020, 19:50

strops wrote:
01 Dec 2020, 18:51
I think Bastogne 44/45 is an example for a Festung like policy. 101st Airborne was put in the line, short before the town was encirceld. Then for 8 days it stands to break the movements of the Wehrmacht and block an important supply line. With a closer look we can say, that it works because the Wehrmacht wasn't able to conquer the town after encircling and, biggest part, 3rd Army was at hand to swung north and make a relief attack. After this the southern front of Bastogne was cut in two and the Wehrmacht put in more troops to encircle the town again. After this failed, Bastogne was the base for decisive strikes against the german frontline with the potential to cut off the salient north of Bastogne.
But does Bastogne slow down the german advance? Finally only the 26. Volks-Grenadier-Division (with parts of other units) was the unit to seal the pocket. Other units could take their advance further.
That's an excellent analogy. And no one ever said these paratroopers "could have been better used elsewhere".

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Re: 1944-45: what was the 'Festung' policy good for?

#32

Post by I have questions » 01 Dec 2020, 20:20

strops wrote:
01 Dec 2020, 18:51
Hi,

may we can look at this efforts from another point of view. Could the policy of Festungen be succesful? What does it take and need? I think Bastogne 44/45 is an example for a Festung like policy. 101st Airborne was put in the line, short before the town was encirceld. Then for 8 days it stands to break the movements of the Wehrmacht and block an important supply line. With a closer look we can say, that it works because the Wehrmacht wasn't able to conquer the town after encircling and, biggest part, 3rd Army was at hand to swung north and make a relief attack. After this the southern front of Bastogne was cut in two and the Wehrmacht put in more troops to encircle the town again. After this failed, Bastogne was the base for decisive strikes against the german frontline with the potential to cut off the salient north of Bastogne.
But does Bastogne slow down the german advance? Finally only the 26. Volks-Grenadier-Division (with parts of other units) was the unit to seal the pocket. Other units could take their advance further.

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Alex
One could make the argument that this only worked because the German's attacking forces were already weak and by the latter stages of 'Wacht am Rhein' they were burnt out and combat ineffective. The Germans in the west were not the Soviets in 1944/45, they couldn't bring the same numbers to bear on an objective. While an example of a properly executed festung, the siege of Bastogne hardly compares to the type of battles that raged in the east, in material and men involved.

It may be a no brainer, but using the Western Front to refer to the Eastern Front is fundamentally flawed because they were two very different conflicts. A festung in the west could hold out longer because the Americans/British/French were seldom willing to expend manpower on reducing these areas. This is why so many of the ports remained occupied until VE day. The front was shorter and places like Cherbourg, Normandy and Antwerp were perfectly capable of supplying any thrust into Germany. Meanwhile on the German side, their priority was the Eastern Front thus the west wasn't as strong.

In short, it's apples and oranges because of how different the dispositions are and the differing objectives of the parties involved.


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Re: 1944-45: what was the 'Festung' policy good for?

#33

Post by Sheldrake » 01 Dec 2020, 20:52

Mori wrote:
01 Dec 2020, 19:50
strops wrote:
01 Dec 2020, 18:51
I think Bastogne 44/45 is an example for a Festung like policy. 101st Airborne was put in the line, short before the town was encirceld. Then for 8 days it stands to break the movements of the Wehrmacht and block an important supply line. With a closer look we can say, that it works because the Wehrmacht wasn't able to conquer the town after encircling and, biggest part, 3rd Army was at hand to swung north and make a relief attack. After this the southern front of Bastogne was cut in two and the Wehrmacht put in more troops to encircle the town again. After this failed, Bastogne was the base for decisive strikes against the german frontline with the potential to cut off the salient north of Bastogne.
But does Bastogne slow down the german advance? Finally only the 26. Volks-Grenadier-Division (with parts of other units) was the unit to seal the pocket. Other units could take their advance further.
That's an excellent analogy. And no one ever said these paratroopers "could have been better used elsewhere".
Actually, the value of Bastogne can be challenged.

The story of the siege of Bastogne touched a chord in the 1944 media, as did the relief by Patton's army - all very cowboys and Indians with the US cavalry riding to the rescue of the surrounded wagon train.

The Germans could, and did, bypass Bastogne. The German main thrust was supposed to be NE rather than SW. Furthermore the substantial surrounded force then became the focus for US activity. Instead of a Third Army mission of defeating the Germans, the primary mission became to relieve Bastogne. Bastogne is also part of the US airborne myth, its traditions and history. It had to be really really important because the 101st were there.

The battle for St Vith probably did more to slow the Germany advance as this was on the northern trust line. This was defended by armoured forces from two divisions and the remnants of the 106th infantry. Montgomery ordered St Vith evacuated after it had imposed enough delay and before it was surrounded. By this time it had come under command of the XVIII Airborne Corps Matt Ridgeway objected as his airborne ethos was to stand and fight. Though the US armoured commanders beleived in manouvre and links to the logistics that kept tanks moving.

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Re: 1944-45: what was the 'Festung' policy good for?

#34

Post by Mori » 01 Dec 2020, 21:09

Yes, airborne units are meant to be surrounded. That's what they are trained for. I hadn't realized Ridgway's opinion also derived from that.

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Re: 1944-45: what was the 'Festung' policy good for?

#35

Post by Max Payload » 02 Dec 2020, 11:06

Cult Icon wrote:
01 Dec 2020, 15:29
In Glantz's final volume of the Stalingrad Trilogy and his 42-43 works it is evident that the intentional giving up of the Stalingrad pocket tied up so many Soviet resources that the subsequent winter counteroffensive lost quite a bit of steam and bought time for the Axis to retreat in better order. The 6.A/4.PzA troops knew that they were given up by their leadership and the goal posts of their leadership shifted to fighting as a long as possible and tying down as many soviet units as possible.

Kholm and Demyansk also tied up a disproportionate amount of Soviet units for quite a long time- Kholm may have been the first significant one in Russia as it occurred early in the war. The Kholm shield was designed for the defenders- a tribute to the "propaganda" aspects of the defense.
Kholm and Demyansk were success stories for the Ostheer. But for any overall cost/benefit analysis of the Stalingrad and Korsun encirclements to conclude they were anything other than disasters would be bizarre. None of these were pre-planned Festungen. They came about from the unfolding of largely unforeseen events on the battlefield. The defensive arrangements at Kholm and Demyansk were the results of calculated decisions by AGN/AOK.16 commanders. Stalingrad and Korsun were the result of Hitler’s obstinacy.
The morale of 6.A/4.PzA remained high while the troops believed they were part of a planned strategy and there was the possibility of relief. After the Operation Ring their motivation was more the avoidance of Soviet captivity and, until the loss of Gumrak, possible evacuation on the air bridge rather than deliberate self-sacrifice.

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Re: 1944-45: what was the 'Festung' policy good for?

#36

Post by Art » 02 Dec 2020, 14:13

I have questions wrote:
01 Dec 2020, 20:20
It may be a no brainer, but using the Western Front to refer to the Eastern Front is fundamentally flawed because they were two very different conflicts. A festung in the west could hold out longer because the Americans/British/French were seldom willing to expend manpower on reducing these areas.
Cherbourg, Saint-Malo, Brest, Toulon, Le Havre, Boulogne, Calais, Metz. There was hardly such a number of siege operations on the EF in 1944.

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Re: 1944-45: what was the 'Festung' policy good for?

#37

Post by Cult Icon » 02 Dec 2020, 18:49

Max Payload wrote:
02 Dec 2020, 11:06
Kholm and Demyansk were success stories for the Ostheer. But for any overall cost/benefit analysis of the Stalingrad and Korsun encirclements to conclude they were anything other than disasters would be bizarre. None of these were pre-planned Festungen. They came about from the unfolding of largely unforeseen events on the battlefield. The defensive arrangements at Kholm and Demyansk were the results of calculated decisions by AGN/AOK.16 commanders. Stalingrad and Korsun were the result of Hitler’s obstinacy.
The morale of 6.A/4.PzA remained high while the troops believed they were part of a planned strategy and there was the possibility of relief. After the Operation Ring their motivation was more the avoidance of Soviet captivity and, until the loss of Gumrak, possible evacuation on the air bridge rather than deliberate self-sacrifice.
Korsun was spun as a "victory" by the Nazi press because the survivors linked up the relief force- at the time. We decades later of course know that it was the pivot point in the Ukraine. Per Stalingrad, the attitude of the 6.A/4.PzA leaders after no possibility of relief was actually that of delay. What individual soldiers believed and communicated in post-war memories however was probably different. There were opportunities for the Soviets to cut off and destroy Army Group A and achieve even bigger successes however their units were tied up in systematically clearing out the Axis forces that were holding most of Stalingrad, from house to house. This expended large reserves of ammunition and personnel, and gave AGA a lot of time to leave the Caucasus.

Kholm is probably a good "model" for a festung. However it is doubtful to me that such arrangements would have worked in 1944/1945 with late war weapons. The defenders at Kholm could handle the light tanks and infantry that were sent against them but how about T-34/85 and SU-152...!

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Re: 1944-45: what was the 'Festung' policy good for?

#38

Post by I have questions » 02 Dec 2020, 19:51

Cult Icon wrote:
02 Dec 2020, 18:49

Kholm is probably a good "model" for a festung. However it is doubtful to me that such arrangements would have worked in 1944/1945 with late war weapons. The defenders at Kholm could handle the light tanks and infantry that were sent against them but how about T-34/85 and SU-152...!
Not to mention that the quality of the troops involved would've been far lower, even by security division standards

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Re: 1944-45: what was the 'Festung' policy good for?

#39

Post by Max Payload » 03 Dec 2020, 13:23

Cult Icon wrote:
02 Dec 2020, 18:49
Per Stalingrad, the attitude of the 6.A/4.PzA leaders after no possibility of relief was actually that of delay. What individual soldiers believed and communicated in post-war memories however was probably different. There were opportunities for the Soviets to cut off and destroy Army Group A and achieve even bigger successes however their units were tied up in systematically clearing out the Axis forces that were holding most of Stalingrad, from house to house. This expended large reserves of ammunition and personnel, and gave AGA a lot of time to leave the Caucasus.
It is certainly the case that had Paulus surrendered prior to the commencement of Operation Ring, the outcome for the Ostheer is likely to have been considerably worse than the disaster it was. After mid-January, a surrender at Stalingrad would probably not have made much difference on the lower Don because of the time it would have taken to deploy Rokossovsky’s forces towards Rostov, the accelerated withdrawal of AGA that was already underway, and the failure of Petrov to cut off the Taman escape route to the Crimea.
However, but for Hitler’s intransigence, there were actions that could have been taken throughout most of November that would have avoided or at least mitigated the disaster that did occur. The most obvious are the development of Heim’s corps in early to mid-November to create a powerful mobile reserve (something that Paulus could have done from his own resources), strengthen rather than further weaken his flanks, and withdrawal from the Volga to the southwest immediately after the 23 November encirclement.

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Re: 1944-45: what was the 'Festung' policy good for?

#40

Post by Art » 03 Dec 2020, 21:12

A rough scheme of operational railroads (bold lines) in the Central Europe in April-May 1945 (in attachment). An obvious thing is that a dense rail network in Silesia allowed extension of operational roads to the west side of the Oder, bypassing Breslau from the north. Glogau, Poznan and Schneidemühl had been taken by April and ceased to be a problem. All four "fortresses" blocking the principal rail line would have produced a greater effect. In reality, the fact that Breslau resisted until the last days of the war didn't prevent and advance to Berlin and Prague, so one isolated "fortress" wasn't critical.
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Re: 1944-45: what was the 'Festung' policy good for?

#41

Post by I have questions » 04 Dec 2020, 04:53

Art wrote:
03 Dec 2020, 21:12
A rough scheme of operational railroads (bold lines) in the Central Europe in April-May 1945 (in attachment). An obvious thing is that a dense rail network in Silesia allowed extension of operational roads to the west side of the Oder, bypassing Breslau from the north. Glogau, Poznan and Schneidemühl had been taken by April and ceased to be a problem. All four "fortresses" blocking the principal rail line would have produced a greater effect. In reality, the fact that Breslau resisted until the last days of the war didn't prevent and advance to Berlin and Prague, so one isolated "fortress" wasn't critical.
I would take this to mean that the festung policy on an individual level was ineffective, but when employed in a manner of several fortresses along the same rail route, it would work to the desired effect?

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Re: 1944-45: what was the 'Festung' policy good for?

#42

Post by Art » 04 Dec 2020, 10:57

The Prussian General Staff didn't build so many fortresses.

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Re: 1944-45: what was the 'Festung' policy good for?

#43

Post by Sheldrake » 04 Dec 2020, 20:53

Art wrote:
04 Dec 2020, 10:57
The Prussian General Staff didn't build so many fortresses.
But they did a fair bit of fortress building
By 1891 Germany was divided into eleven fortress-inspection districts. In the Königsberg district were the first-class fortress or fortified camp of Königsberg, the coast forts at Memel and Pillau, and the fortress of Boyen ; in the Danzig district are coast fortresses at Danzig, Colborg, Stralsund, and Swinemunde : the Posen district had two places of arms or fortified camps at Posen and Neisse, a minor fortress at Glalz and a railroad blockade fort at Glogau. In the Berlin district were the first-class fortresses of Kustrin, Magdeburg, and Spandau and the forts for railroad obstruction at Konigstein and Torgau ; the district of Mayence had three strong places of the first class in Mayence, Rastatt, and Ulm; in the Metz district the first-class fortress or fortified camp of Metz was flanked by the railroad-obstruction forts at Bitsch and Diedenhofen : the Cologne district had the fortified camps of Cologne and Coblenz, the fortress of Eurenbreitstein, and railroad blockade fortifications at Düsseldorf, Wesel, and Saar-Louis ; in the Kiel , district, besides the first-class fortress of Sonderburg-Duppel, there were coast fortifications at the mouths of the Ems, the Elbe, and the Weser, and at Wilhelmshaven, Kiel, Friedrichsort, and Travemilnde ; in the Thorn district there was a fortified camp at Thorn, with smaller fortresses at, Graudenz, Marienburg, and Dirschau : the Strasburg district had the great fortress at Strasburg and minor works at Neu Breisaeh ; in the Munich district was a first-class fortress to serve as a fortified camp at Ingolstadt, besides which the only effective fortifications were the works built to command the railroad at Germersheim.

In the interior only Spandau, Custrin, Magdeburg, Ingolstadt and Ulm were maintained as defensive supporting points, and similarly on the Rhine, which was formerly studded with fortresses from Basel to Emmerich, the defences were limited to New Breisach, Germersheim, Mainz, Coblenz, Cologne and Wesel, all of a "barrier" character and not organized specially as centers of activity for field armies. The French frontier, and to a less extent the Russian, were organized offensively. Metz, already surrounded by the French with a girdle of forts, was extended and completed as a great entrenched camp, and Strassburg, which in 1870 possessed no outlying works, was similarly expanded, though the latter was regarded an instrument of defence more than of attack. On the Russian frontier Königsberg, Danzig, Thorn, Posen, Gtogau (and on a smaller scale Boyen in East Prussia and Graudenz on the Vistula) were modernized and improved.
From 1899, Germany began to pay more attention to her fixed defences, and in the next years a long line of fortifications came into existence on the French frontier, the positions and strength of which were regulated with special regard to a new strategic disposition of the field armies and to the number and sites of the twelve strategic railway stations between Cologne and the Belgian frontier, and later - the so-called " fundamental plan " of operations against France having apparently undergone modification in consequence of changes in the foreign relations of the German government - an immense strategic railway station was undertaken at Saarburg, on the right rear of Thionville and well away from the French frontier, and many important new works both of fortification and of railway construction were begun in Upper Alsace, between Colmar and Basel.

Germany was particularly well fortified on the side looking toward France. In this section were situated the strong fortresses of Metz, Strassburg, Rastatt, Mainz. Cologne, and Coblenz, and the minor fortifications of Dicdenhofen, Saar-louis, New Breisach. Germersheim, Ingolstadt, Hamm. and Wesel. The other large German fortresses were in Eastern or Central Prussia, namely Danzig, Königsberg, Posen, Küstrin, Sandau, Magdeburg, and Xeisse. The minor fortresses in the interior were Thorn, Dirschau, Glogau, Glatz, and Konigstein.

The coast defences included, besides the great naval ports of Wilhelmshaven on the North Sea and Kiel on the Baltic, Danzig, Pillau, Memel, Friedrichsort, Cuxhaven, Geestemunde and Swinemunde.
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military ... tungen.htm

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Re: 1944-45: what was the 'Festung' policy good for?

#44

Post by nrobins0509 » 30 Dec 2020, 17:26

I think that Festung could have been somewhat successful in the east if the Germans had not had such overwhelming supply problems and been able to maintain full strength experienced units. It is certainly an interesting defensive doctrine, but the fact is by this time they were just completely outmatched logistically and the manpower sacrificed due to being surrounded could have been put to much better use in an elastic defense/shortening of the front in the east. The Soviets had enough of a logistical advantage that they could smash through defenses and take their time whittling away at the surrounded German units while the bulk of the army had been pushed back to the point that there was often no real chance of rescuing them or retaking the fortress. Not to mention the problems of micromanagement of German higher-ups who often did not believe the reports of Soviet strength and denied requests for breakout attempts such as what happened during the Vitebsk-Orsha offensive. What a tragic waste of men that was. On the the German side in the east, even if they were to build the most extensive rail network the world had ever seen to that point it wouldn't matter because partisans would just continue to blow them up in places like Belarus. They were so destructive and disruptive to supply lines that laying new logistical infrastructure would just become pointless at a some stage.

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Re: 1944-45: what was the 'Festung' policy good for?

#45

Post by Account deleted » 20 Feb 2021, 19:08

Of course they did. Let's take Glogau. This example of how propaganda is still valid on the pages of Wikipedia. But the truth is that 9000 German soldiers and Volksturmists stormed the 329 infantry division of 4500 men and attached units of 2000 men until 18 February. After 18 February the 389th Rifle Division had slightly more soldiers. The Germans died, were wounded, or all of the prisoners. Russians have 2,000 irrecoverable ones. Was it worth the propaganda such losses if Germany had fewer troops anyway?

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