"Hitler got it right for Normandy 1944"

Discussions on High Command, strategy and the Armed Forces (Wehrmacht) in general.
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Urmel
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Re: "Hitler got it right for Normandy 1944"

#496

Post by Urmel » 30 Dec 2016, 20:51

sandeepmukherjee196 wrote:It is true that inspite of the German plans falling into allied hands, very little change was brought in by Halder and co. Halder was essentially a logistic clerk with generalstab stripes on his trousers. Rommel had once famously asked of Halder...what had he ever done in war except sit in a chair on his backside !
Maybe if Rommel had tried that he would have been more successful?
The enemy had superiority in numbers, his tanks were more heavily armoured, they had larger calibre guns with nearly twice the effective range of ours, and their telescopes were superior. 5 RTR 19/11/41

The CRUSADER Project - The Winter Battle 1941/42

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Re: "Hitler got it right for Normandy 1944"

#497

Post by sandeepmukherjee196 » 30 Dec 2016, 21:25

Urmel wrote:
sandeepmukherjee196 wrote:It is true that inspite of the German plans falling into allied hands, very little change was brought in by Halder and co. Halder was essentially a logistic clerk with generalstab stripes on his trousers. Rommel had once famously asked of Halder...what had he ever done in war except sit in a chair on his backside !
Maybe if Rommel had tried that he would have been more successful?
No. When Rommel was in admin roles, far removed from the scene of action, he was pretty ordinary. Like in France 1944.


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Re: "Hitler got it right for Normandy 1944"

#498

Post by Urmel » 30 Dec 2016, 21:28

Well that still beats losing the war in his theatre, which is what happened in North Africa
The enemy had superiority in numbers, his tanks were more heavily armoured, they had larger calibre guns with nearly twice the effective range of ours, and their telescopes were superior. 5 RTR 19/11/41

The CRUSADER Project - The Winter Battle 1941/42

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Re: "Hitler got it right for Normandy 1944"

#499

Post by Nickdfresh » 30 Dec 2016, 22:44

ljadw wrote: Freyberg's Blitzkrieg Legend ? :lol: You mean : Frieser's Blitzkrieg Legend ? :wink:

Where are you getting any of this ? Source ?" The Blitzkrieg Legend by Frieser :maps between P 130 and P 131 .
You got his name right and everything else wrong. :) I don't physically have the book as it's in storage. We of course have Google...
And, FYI : the plane crash incident from january 1940 had initially NO influence on the German planning:the same day of the plane crash the orders were given to start the attack (using the old plan ) but this was impossible because of the bad weather .
It didn't have to, starting an offensive in the middle of winter was asinine. As was flying a small aircraft in a snowstorm...
Also FYI : it was not the first Fall Gelb, but the second one .
Not clear on what you mean here.
Finally ,again FYI (you need a lot of these) :the Allies did NOT get their hands on the first Fall Gelb , but only on a very small part of it : the 2 German officers who landed in Belgium belonged to the LW and had no information about the army plans, but only about landing of paratroopers in Gent . Besides, most of the documents in question were burned .
The Allies didn't need to get their hands on Fall Gelb because they had at that point correctly deduced the German planning and actually had good intelligence up until a point. In any case, he didn't burn many of the documents at all and the Belgian Gendarmes did get most them, but it wasn't the entire plan but certainly enough that the Allies were certain the initial center of gravity is Belgium proper. But it was a happy accident for the Wehrmacht because it triggered the Allied reaction as I stated and led to a breakdown of Allied operational security ultimately leading to a cascading disaster that was sickle cut...

Read the section: https://books.google.com/booksd=GTw4AAA ... an&f=false

Then tell me Manstein's Alternative Plan and tell me how that was pretty much the same as Halder's initial Fall Gelb...

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Re: "Hitler got it right for Normandy 1944"

#500

Post by ljadw » 31 Dec 2016, 10:48

There was no snowstorm .

Other point : the French ( the French decided the Allied strategy, the British followed ) had determined their strategy and elaborated their plans already BEFORE the war, long before some one was talking about Sichelschnitt. They were convinced that the main German attack would come from the north of the Ardennes ,and they were right . The same for the Belgians : the Belgians expected the Germans to come from the Netherlands, that's why they built fortifications along the Albert canal ,behind the border with the Netherlands .

The Dyle plan (with the Breda variant ) dated from years before the war .

After the war, the panzer lobby has created the myth that the advance through the Ardennes was decisive and that Bock was sitting by,doing nothing : this is totally wrong ;without the successful advance of AGB, the PzG Kleist was doomed to fail .

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Re: "Hitler got it right for Normandy 1944"

#501

Post by sandeepmukherjee196 » 31 Dec 2016, 11:43

Urmel wrote:Well that still beats losing the war in his theatre, which is what happened in North Africa
He is the last person responsible for that debacle. In the western desert he was hamstrung by Halder and co's negative attitude to this theatre. In Tunisia he didn't have complete control. Arnim didn't cooperate at vital junctures.

His only fault in NA was his deferring of the Malta operation in 42. That turned out to be suicidal. But I guess he went with his "Bias For Action" and went for Egypt while the going was good !

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Re: "Hitler got it right for Normandy 1944"

#502

Post by sandeepmukherjee196 » 31 Dec 2016, 11:53

ljadw wrote: ..................................

After the war, the panzer lobby has created the myth that the advance through the Ardennes was decisive and that Bock was sitting by,doing nothing : this is totally wrong ;without the successful advance of AGB, the PzG Kleist was doomed to fail .
No. That was no myth. No one said that "Bock was sitting by, doing nothing" either. The classical Panzer Doctrine was like a dance of the Matador...the cape being waved somewhere to engage the enemy and the spear going in elsewhere to quickly penetrate, disrupt and envelop. Bock's successful "waving of the cape" in the North was essential for the "spear" to effectively go through Ardennes and across the Meuse.

If the bulk of the allied forces could engage the Schwerpunkt coming through the Ardennes then the German plan would have failed. Like I said earlier, the Germans had absolutely no material superiority over the allies.

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Re: "Hitler got it right for Normandy 1944"

#503

Post by doogal » 31 Dec 2016, 16:45

sandeepmukherjee196 wrote - The classical Panzer Doctrine was like a dance of the Matador.
I dont think that in 1940 there existed any "classical Panzer Doctrine" sandeep, there were a range of ideas which had yet to be tested.

The placing of a holding force or a force to engage or "pin" the enemy while another manouvered around it was simply classic Military Doctrine which had been applied many times throughout history.
Matthew Cooper states in the German army 1933 - 1945 that "throughout the Polish Campaign, the employment of the mechanised units revealed the idea that they were intended solely to ease the advance and to support the activities of the infantry....Thus, any strategic exploitation of the armoured idea was still-born. The paralysis of command and the breakdown of morale were not made the ultimate aim of the ... German ground and air forces, and were only incidental by-products of the traditional maneuvers of rapid encirclement and of the supporting activities of the flying artillery of the Luftwaffe, both of which had as their purpose the physical destruction of the enemy troops. Such was the Vernichtungsgedanke of the Polish campaign.

Guderians ideas and others such as Tukhachevsky saw Armoured forces being concentrated as an iron fist and given wide ranging operational missions.
Others saw armour as support for infantry and im sure you know about its genesis through the operations in which it was tested.
You can go through the different theatres which German forces fought using armour and each time they tailored the use of armour to the differing terrain, to the enemy they faced, and the problems that arose. A true Panzer doctrine had yet to fully mature and even when it did using other forces to pin an enemy was a small part of it.

But in 1940 these were just beginning to be tested.
My basic point is that you are taking one small element ( a tactical ploy) of what would become (all arm) armoured /Manouvere warfare. Which drew upon many classic military traditions which used manouvere for the purpose of dislocation.

:D Happy new year to one and all

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Re: "Hitler got it right for Normandy 1944"

#504

Post by ljadw » 31 Dec 2016, 17:02

sandeepmukherjee196 wrote:
ljadw wrote: ..................................

After the war, the panzer lobby has created the myth that the advance through the Ardennes was decisive and that Bock was sitting by,doing nothing : this is totally wrong ;without the successful advance of AGB, the PzG Kleist was doomed to fail .
No. That was no myth. No one said that "Bock was sitting by, doing nothing" either. The classical Panzer Doctrine was like a dance of the Matador...the cape being waved somewhere to engage the enemy and the spear going in elsewhere to quickly penetrate, disrupt and envelop. Bock's successful "waving of the cape" in the North was essential for the "spear" to effectively go through Ardennes and across the Meuse.

If the bulk of the allied forces could engage the Schwerpunkt coming through the Ardennes then the German plan would have failed. Like I said earlier, the Germans had absolutely no material superiority over the allies.
There was NO waving of the cape : the waving of the cape is a post war invention : already before the war,before Fall Gelb, the French expected a German attack on the Netherlands and Belgium, and they planned to go north ,to stop the Germans.

Fall Gelb succeeded because the Germans had a manpower and material superiority .

If the allied forces in the north would engage the PzG Kleist (which was not the Schwerpunkt), the Germans would have been very quickly at the Somme and no one would have prevented them to enter Paris . The great danger for the allies was in the north,that's why they went north : plan Dyle with the Breda variant .

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Re: "Hitler got it right for Normandy 1944"

#505

Post by sandeepmukherjee196 » 31 Dec 2016, 17:59

ljadw wrote:
sandeepmukherjee196 wrote:
ljadw wrote: ..................................

After the war, the panzer lobby has created the myth that the advance through the Ardennes was decisive and that Bock was sitting by,doing nothing : this is totally wrong ;without the successful advance of AGB, the PzG Kleist was doomed to fail .
No. That was no myth. No one said that "Bock was sitting by, doing nothing" either. The classical Panzer Doctrine was like a dance of the Matador...the cape being waved somewhere to engage the enemy and the spear going in elsewhere to quickly penetrate, disrupt and envelop. Bock's successful "waving of the cape" in the North was essential for the "spear" to effectively go through Ardennes and across the Meuse.

If the bulk of the allied forces could engage the Schwerpunkt coming through the Ardennes then the German plan would have failed. Like I said earlier, the Germans had absolutely no material superiority over the allies.
There was NO waving of the cape : the waving of the cape is a post war invention : already before the war,before Fall Gelb, the French expected a German attack on the Netherlands and Belgium, and they planned to go north ,to stop the Germans.
If they planned to go North and if the Germans further reinforced that premise by actually waving the cape North..where is the contradiction?
It's another matter that the cape itself appeared to smother the poor bull!
ljadw wrote:Fall Gelb succeeded because the Germans had a manpower and material superiority .
Completely fallacious. Please provide the stats here that proves any superiority whatsoever in numbers and quality.
ljadw wrote:If the allied forces in the north would engage the PzG Kleist (which was not the Schwerpunkt), the Germans would have been very quickly at the Somme and no one would have prevented them to enter Paris . The great danger for the allies was in the north,that's why they went north : plan Dyle with the Breda variant .
Huh ! You have completely lost me here ! And by stating that Pz Grp Kleist was not the Schwerpunkt you have outdone yourself on AHF !

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Re: "Hitler got it right for Normandy 1944"

#506

Post by sandeepmukherjee196 » 31 Dec 2016, 18:21

doogal wrote:
sandeepmukherjee196 wrote - The classical Panzer Doctrine was like a dance of the Matador.
I dont think that in 1940 there existed any "classical Panzer Doctrine" sandeep, there were a range of ideas which had yet to be tested.

The placing of a holding force or a force to engage or "pin" the enemy while another manoeuvred around it was simply classic Military Doctrine which had been applied many times throughout history.

.......................................................

:D Happy new year to one and all
HAPPY NEW YEAR DOOGAL...

The Panzer doctrine was after all centred around panzers. The manoeuvres you are mentioning didn't have the technology and mobility required for grand success earlier. In March 1918 Ludendorff tried similar stuff but with limited and temporary success because of the lack of mobility, technology and the Panzer arm! The Panzer doctrine is not just about schnell troops..Its not a mechanised cavalry raid ! There is much more to it !


Cheers
Sandeep

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Re: "Hitler got it right for Normandy 1944"

#507

Post by sandeepmukherjee196 » 31 Dec 2016, 18:25

Hi..

"..Reported to the Führer with the others. Breakfast followed. [He displayed] amazing knowledge over military-technical innovations in all states. Afterwards I was detained for an hour to discuss operations. I presented the essentials of our memorandum to OKH. Had full agreement. Indeed an astonishing convergence of thinking from the same points of view that we had represented right from the beginning..."

This is an excerpt from Manstein's diary. On Hitler's strategic grasp... :)

Cheers
Sandeep

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Re: "Hitler got it right for Normandy 1944"

#508

Post by Urmel » 31 Dec 2016, 18:57

sandeepmukherjee196 wrote:
Urmel wrote:Well that still beats losing the war in his theatre, which is what happened in North Africa
He is the last person responsible for that debacle. In the western desert he was hamstrung by Halder and co's negative attitude to this theatre. In Tunisia he didn't have complete control. Arnim didn't cooperate at vital junctures.

His only fault in NA was his deferring of the Malta operation in 42. That turned out to be suicidal. But I guess he went with his "Bias For Action" and went for Egypt while the going was good !
Err, no.
The enemy had superiority in numbers, his tanks were more heavily armoured, they had larger calibre guns with nearly twice the effective range of ours, and their telescopes were superior. 5 RTR 19/11/41

The CRUSADER Project - The Winter Battle 1941/42

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Re: "Hitler got it right for Normandy 1944"

#509

Post by doogal » 31 Dec 2016, 22:21

Sandeep wrote - The Panzer doctrine was after all centred around panzers. The manoeuvres you are mentioning didn't have the technology and mobility required for grand success earlier. In March 1918 Ludendorff tried similar stuff but with limited and temporary success because of the lack of mobility, technology and the Panzer arm! The Panzer doctrine is not just about schnell troops..Its not a mechanised cavalry raid ! There is much more to it !
Ludendorff in 1918 was attempting a different manouvere he needed to draw manpower away from a continuous entrenched front in an attempt to weaken sectors of said continuous front for a larger assault. It is completely different from Pinning an army group so that it could not wheel in another direction. Or rather so it could not disengage and move in a different axis of direction to support the southern area.

Ludendorff lacked the numbers and supplies to continue his succesfull break in and then pursuit in WW1 and while im sure technology and motorised mobility would have been greatly appreciated its lack there was not why his 1918 assaults failed.

My point was that the basic manouvere used in 1940 was a simple military tactic, Engage and Pin to prevent the movement of a force.

And i say once again that to say Panzer Doctrine is not correct as a Panzer Doctrine did not exist in 1940 but rather adhoc expedients and experiments based on a few years of research with limited scope for practice or the creation of a firm case of knowledge.
Maybe im just being a bit picky

There was never really a consensus in doctrinal terms in the German army as to the use of Armour, this only came to being with the study of the succesfull German armour engagements of WW2 measured against the failures of armoured engagements post war. And this with many caveats and alterations to factor in.

:P :P all the best for 2017 AHF you are and will always be the most enjoyable (and a special shout for ljadw who always gives me the giggles with his absolute refusal to countenance any other point of view but his own keep it up :D )

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Re: "Hitler got it right for Normandy 1944"

#510

Post by ljadw » 31 Dec 2016, 23:27

sandeepmukherjee196 wrote:
ljadw wrote:
sandeepmukherjee196 wrote:
ljadw wrote: ..................................

After the war, the panzer lobby has created the myth that the advance through the Ardennes was decisive and that Bock was sitting by,doing nothing : this is totally wrong ;without the successful advance of AGB, the PzG Kleist was doomed to fail .
No. That was no myth. No one said that "Bock was sitting by, doing nothing" either. The classical Panzer Doctrine was like a dance of the Matador...the cape being waved somewhere to engage the enemy and the spear going in elsewhere to quickly penetrate, disrupt and envelop. Bock's successful "waving of the cape" in the North was essential for the "spear" to effectively go through Ardennes and across the Meuse.

If the bulk of the allied forces could engage the Schwerpunkt coming through the Ardennes then the German plan would have failed. Like I said earlier, the Germans had absolutely no material superiority over the allies.
There was NO waving of the cape : the waving of the cape is a post war invention : already before the war,before Fall Gelb, the French expected a German attack on the Netherlands and Belgium, and they planned to go north ,to stop the Germans.
If they planned to go North and if the Germans further reinforced that premise by actually waving the cape North..where is the contradiction?
It's another matter that the cape itself appeared to smother the poor bull!
ljadw wrote:Fall Gelb succeeded because the Germans had a manpower and material superiority .
Completely fallacious. Please provide the stats here that proves any superiority whatsoever in numbers and quality.
ljadw wrote:If the allied forces in the north would engage the PzG Kleist (which was not the Schwerpunkt), the Germans would have been very quickly at the Somme and no one would have prevented them to enter Paris . The great danger for the allies was in the north,that's why they went north : plan Dyle with the Breda variant .
Huh ! You have completely lost me here ! And by stating that Pz Grp Kleist was not the Schwerpunkt you have outdone yourself on AHF !

The Germans had 136 divisions,the PzG Kleist 8.How can 5% be the Schwerpunkt ?

The French had not 136 divisions,thus the Germans had a quantitative superiority .

On the North eastern front 29 French divisions faced 74 German divisions : who had the superiority ?

Even with the aid of the Belgians (22) and the BEF (11 ) there was still a German superiority and this is without counting the 42 German reserve divisions ;the French had only 17 reserve divisions .

On their own,the French could not hold the frontline between the Channel and Luxemburg ;they needed desperatedly the 22 Belgian divisions ;thus they were condemned to go to the north ,while hoping that the Ardennes could hold without reinforcements;if they reinforced the Ardennes, the 22 Belgian divisions were lost and no one could stop the German advance to Paris .

Waving of the cape had no influence on the French strategy which was founded on facts ,which were : a shortage of manpower and a too long border . There was only one possibility to do something on this .What the Germans planned had no influence on what the French did . And this was also so later in the war . The Barbarossa planning was determined by what the Germans could do , not by what the Soviets would do . It was also the same for Overlord: the German dislocation was determined by the German possibilities,the Allied disposition by the Allied possibilities . Both did not determine each other . The theory that the French fell in a German trap is wrong . It caresses the German ego, but it remains wrong .

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