German armored vehicles/weapons if the war continued?

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Michael Kenny
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Re: German armored vehicles/weapons if the war continued?

#46

Post by Michael Kenny » 24 Jul 2021, 02:43

DP
Last edited by Michael Kenny on 24 Jul 2021, 02:51, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: German armored vehicles/weapons if the war continued?

#47

Post by Michael Kenny » 24 Jul 2021, 02:44

Terry Duncan wrote:
24 Jul 2021, 02:16


Not what I said. I said it wouldn't have lasted so long if the Germans were not capable of holding their own.
So how long do you think the Germans 'should' have lasted? Saying they lasted 'so long' means you must have another time period in mind (other than the 3 months it took) so what was it. Do you think the Allies should have beaten the Germans in Normandy in 2 weeks? A month? 6 Weeks? Two months?
I am genuinely after the time the German should have lasted and thus better understand just how 'good' they were because they exceeded this period by what exactly?
Given the Allies had Paris down for D+90 and they got there before then clearly in the mind of the Allied planners they beat the Germans quicker than they had planned so I am after the German view of how long they think they should have 'lasted'.
I have read extensively in this area and have never ever found a German source that had a timetable for their holding out and in reality the reports sent back stress the fact that they knew they were beaten and asking for permission to retire (which they got briefly in early July) and it was Hitler who refused to follow this sound advice from his Generals. They realised they were beaten in just under 4 weeks so I wonder why so many come out with the fact-free 'lasted so long' trope.

.


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Re: German armored vehicles/weapons if the war continued?

#48

Post by Cult Icon » 24 Jul 2021, 02:59

Terry Duncan wrote:
24 Jul 2021, 02:16
Not what I said. I said it wouldnt have lasted so long if the Germans were not capable of holding their own. If every engagement had ended in an Allied victory then it would have all been over far quicker. Given they landed knowing they would have to fight through the bocage then I think it went pretty well to plan, but that plan didnt involve the Germans losing every tactical engagement did it.
Yes, they don't get any credit from certain camps...

When their side is outnumbered 2:1, 3:1 or worse on the ground, get little in the way of reinforcements while the Allied divisions are getting a steady supply of replacements, several times numerical superiority in armor, and ten times in artillery making great offensive gains is a non-starter. What they can do is to spare what is leftover, frequently small resources, to counterattack breaches and maintain the line & stop breakthroughs. With these efforts the Normandy campaign became a "static front" for a long time despite the over insurance of the Allies & clever hedging of their military politics.

The numerical superiority of the allies in armor, air support, and artillery was extreme to an unprecedented degree, even the most experienced Generals cannot attack and win against 10:1 odds in armor & artillery ammunition plus air support. In the fall of 44' the German armored force was outnumbered in the region of 15:1 -20:1.

The GOODWOOD operation is a good barometer of the limits of Allied power. Here the Germans made the rare defense-in depth of some 10 miles with a few miles of front with half a Pz division (21.Pz), about a battalion and a half of the 16.LWFD remnants plus others, GHQ artillery, AA, and anti-tank with elements of the I SS Pz Corps in reserve. The British-Canadians failed to penetrate into the operational depths despite expending resources that were so extreme that it was not seen before by the Germans in the war. Even the expenditure of several hundred thousand artillery rounds, over 2000 aircraft to drop the equivalent of tactical nuke to neutralize two tank battalions and provide follow-up CAS didn't create a massive and highly successful breakthrough. Let alone the vast number of Allied tanks employed.

The operation was so expensive that reputations were put on the line and for posterity.

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Re: German armored vehicles/weapons if the war continued?

#49

Post by Michael Kenny » 24 Jul 2021, 04:20

Cult Icon wrote:
24 Jul 2021, 02:59
With these efforts the Normandy campaign became a "static front" for a long time .........

.
incorrect. The Germans were consistently pushed back and the only reason they did not bolt and run in late June is because Hitler made them stand and fight. It is comical to see how the erratic decisions of a lunatic (that prevented Rommel & Rundstedt from giving up Normandy) are being promoted as proof of some innate military superiority of the soldiers too scared to stand up to a madman.
I can only refer the delusional to Rundstedt who , lacking the superior insight of the armchair experts here, told Keitel on July 1st...make peace you fools

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Re: German armored vehicles/weapons if the war continued?

#50

Post by Cult Icon » 24 Jul 2021, 04:36

historygeek2021 wrote:
24 Jul 2021, 00:21
The only "success" the Germans had against the U.S. Army after Kasserine Pass was in defensive delaying actions.
As I pointed out earlier it is fictional that the Germans had tank superiority at Arracourt. Weapons without qualified units are pretty useless. They were using non-operational units, little more than a collection of equipment with personnel possessing as little of 1 week of unit training that were inferior to the divisions of their opponents (The Pz Brigades were either around 2000 men or over 4000 for the larger version), especially the premier US 4th Armored division plus its strong daily support in the form of P-47 fighter-bombers. When a proper armored unit, the 11.Pz arrived the nature of the fighting dramatically changed as it employed the right tactics and had access to a full organization.

Granted this fiction/myth spreading on the internet has traction to the allied-biased.

Since we are on Axis history forum I would think that people would aspire to do better than Allied-biased, top down general history. A lot of resources are here even you don't spend thousands of dollars collecting research materials.

Successful defense with inferior resources is still a success, and counts. There were times "When the Odds were Even", where clashes between armored divisions occurred, this happened in the Ardennes, the Slyvester offensives occurring in the same period. The Germans ones held their own in these battles despite their reduced units. Pound for pound, the capabilities and combat doctrine were more similar than different.

And German armor and anti-tank weapons were qualitatively superior.

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Re: German armored vehicles/weapons if the war continued?

#51

Post by Michael Kenny » 24 Jul 2021, 05:29

Cult Icon wrote:
24 Jul 2021, 04:36
And German armor and anti-tank weapons were qualitatively superior..
Of course they were............

Brian Clough was being interviewed after his team Nottingham Forest had just won their first European Cup Final in May 1979. Told by one reporter that 'most people' believed his opponents (Malmo) had played the better football and that they were the 'moral victors' Clough replied 'I congratulate the Malmo manager on his moral victory. I will just have to console myself with the cup.

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Re: German armored vehicles/weapons if the war continued?

#52

Post by KDF33 » 24 Jul 2021, 06:18

Michael Kenny wrote:
24 Jul 2021, 04:20
incorrect. The Germans were consistently pushed back and the only reason they did not bolt and run in late June is because Hitler made them stand and fight. It is comical to see how the erratic decisions of a lunatic (that prevented Rommel & Rundstedt from giving up Normandy) are being promoted as proof of some innate military superiority of the soldiers too scared to stand up to a madman.
I can only refer the delusional to Rundstedt who , lacking the superior insight of the armchair experts here, told Keitel on July 1st...make peace you fools
I am always baffled by how much you lose your composure when anyone makes even the slightest even-handed comment regarding German performance. Can you even point to where exactly Cult Icon speaks of German 'innate military superiority'? To paraphrase him, his point seems simply to be that 'pound for pound', German and American capabilities and combat doctrines converged more than diverged, and that ultimately Germany was defeated in the West largely on account of the Allies' overwhelming numerical and material advantage.

Why is this controversial to you? Are you under the impression that the Allies didn't possess such an advantage?

And before you respond that this is the usual complaining about the Germans being beaten in an 'unfair fight', let me state my position clearly: It only made sense for the Allies to accumulate such overwhelming advantage if they were in position to do so, and indeed it is difficult to posit paths to military victory in general apart from force superiority, assuming both belligerents are similar in combat power on a pound-for-pound basis and avoid egregious mistakes (cf. France 1940). This isn't just an Allied thing, by the way: Barbarossa inflicted as much damage as it did on the Soviets largely on account of superior German numbers, too.

You bring emotional volatility and arguments about 'fairness' in threads that have nothing whatsoever to do with either. Take this paragraph, for instance:
Michael Kenny wrote:
24 Jul 2021, 05:29
Of course they were............

Brian Clough was being interviewed after his team Nottingham Forrest had just won their first European Cup Final in May 1979. Told by one reporter that 'most people' believed his opponents (Malmo) had played the better football and that they were the 'moral victors' Clough replied 'I congratulate the Malmo manager on his moral victory. I will just have to console myself with the cup.
No one is claiming that the Germans won a 'moral victory', a silly notion in the first place. From my reading of the thread, all Cult Icon is doing is contextualizing German defeats by bringing his understanding of the constraints they operated under - first among them, crushing Allied numerical and material superiority. What would you want him to do instead? Indeed, what type of analysis is allowed in your opinion? If we can't look at the context under which the campaigns were fought, how are we even supposed to reach an understanding of what happened, and why?

What do you seek to achieve with these oddly emotional posts? With whom are you refighting those arguments in your mind? Because you sure don't seem to be engaging with what the other members of AHF are actually writing.

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Re: German armored vehicles/weapons if the war continued?

#53

Post by Michael Kenny » 24 Jul 2021, 06:32

KDF33 wrote:
24 Jul 2021, 06:18


I am always baffled by how much you lose your composure when anyone makes even the slightest even-handed comment regarding German performance. Can you even point to where exactly Cult Icon speaks of German 'innate military superiority'? To paraphrase him, his point seems simply to be that 'pound for pound', German and American capabilities and combat doctrines converged more than diverged, and that ultimately Germany was defeated in the West largely on account of the Allies' overwhelming numerical and material advantage.

Why is this controversial to you? Are you under the impression that the Allies didn't possess such an advantage?

And before you respond that this is the usual complaining about the Germans being beaten in an 'unfair fight', let me state my position clearly: It only made sense for the Allies to accumulate such overwhelming advantage if they were in position to do so, and indeed it is difficult to posit paths to military victory in general apart from force superiority, assuming both belligerents are similar in combat power on a pound-for-pound basis and avoid egregious mistakes (cf. France 1940). This isn't just an Allied thing, by the way: Barbarossa inflicted as much damage as it did on the Soviets largely on account of superior German numbers, too.

You bring emotional volatility and arguments about 'fairness' in threads that have nothing whatsoever to do with either. Take this paragraph, for instance:
Michael Kenny wrote:
24 Jul 2021, 05:29
Of course they were............

Brian Clough was being interviewed after his team Nottingham Forrest had just won their first European Cup Final in May 1979. Told by one reporter that 'most people' believed his opponents (Malmo) had played the better football and that they were the 'moral victors' Clough replied 'I congratulate the Malmo manager on his moral victory. I will just have to console myself with the cup.
No one is claiming that the Germans won a 'moral victory', a silly notion in the first place. From my reading of the thread, all Cult Icon is doing is contextualizing German defeats by bringing his understanding of the constraints they operated under - first among them, crushing Allied numerical and material superiority. What would you want him to do instead? Indeed, what type of analysis is allowed in your opinion? If we can't look at the context under which the campaigns were fought, how are we even supposed to reach an understanding of what happened, and why?

What do you seek to achieve with these oddly emotional posts? With whom are you refighting those arguments in your mind? Because you sure don't seem to be arguing with the other posters on AHF.
To quote P. Barnes 'Nice speech but your still not coming in'

What I am doing is asking for a reason why it is being claimed the Germans in Normandy ' lasted so long'. It is a common trope that suggests that they should have been beaten sooner (as in 'they didn't last so long') and it was a sign of some special superior power of the German Army. I want to put a number on that superior power and thus am asking those who say the Germans 'lasted so long' to quantify their assertion. To do this I need a number for how long they believe the Germans should have lasted so I can work how how much better they performed than any other army. The implication behind it all is that no other army could, in a similar situation, last as long. Anyone who denies this last point is being disingenuous.
Let me make it a bit simpler .
If the Armies were reversed and it was the Germans landing and the Allies defending then how long would the Allies have lasted. That is a pretty simple analogy so what are the numbers. Would the Allies last 1 month? 2 months? 3 months or perhaps 3 days?
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Re: German armored vehicles/weapons if the war continued?

#54

Post by Michael Kenny » 24 Jul 2021, 06:45

KDF33 wrote:
24 Jul 2021, 06:18
his point seems simply to be that 'pound for pound', German and American capabilities and combat doctrines converged more than diverged, and that ultimately Germany was defeated in the West largely on account of the Allies' overwhelming numerical and material advantage.

Why is this controversial to you? Are you under the impression that the Allies didn't possess such an advantage?
The error he makes and you failed to spot is corrected below:

'Germany was defeated in the West by the Allies who had an overwhelming numerical and material advantage'

The original quote is the 'we wuz outnumber/ not a fair fight ' excuse. An excuse you claimed was not being used.

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Re: German armored vehicles/weapons if the war continued?

#55

Post by KDF33 » 24 Jul 2021, 07:04

Michael Kenny wrote:
24 Jul 2021, 06:32
What I am doing is asking for a reason why it is being claimed the Germans in Normandy 'lasted so long'.
The problem is that you misconstrue Terry Duncan's point. Again, he wrote:
Terry Duncan wrote:
23 Jul 2021, 21:20
You can happily turn this around and ask when did the US ever manage to defeat the German army on anything like equal odds? The US may well have had a superiority in numbers and supply, but local tactical battles often went in the favour of the Germans otherwise the Normandy campaign wouldnt have lasted so long and Patton wouldnt have stalled at Metz.
This was in response to historygeek2021 writing the following: 'When did the Germans ever enjoy tactical success against the Americans after Kasserine Pass? The U.S. Army was simply on a different level.'

Terry Duncan even clarified his point, here:
Terry Duncan wrote:
24 Jul 2021, 02:16
Not what I said. I said it wouldnt have lasted so long if the Germans were not capable of holding their own. If every engagement had ended in an Allied victory then it would have all been over far quicker. Given they landed knowing they would have to fight through the bocage then I think it went pretty well to plan, but that plan didnt involve the Germans losing every tactical engagement did it.
From my reading, his point is simple: the Germans must have won some share of the tactical engagements (essentially defensive), otherwise the Allied breakthrough wouldn't have taken until July 25. This is hardly a controversial statement, as the various Allied operations in the Caen sector can attest. Indeed, the decisive breakthrough was attained by concentrating overwhelming force in the American sector, comparatively weakly held, while the British tied down the bulk of the German mobile units.
Michael Kenny wrote:
24 Jul 2021, 06:32
It is a common trope that suggests that they should have been beaten sooner (as in 'they didn't last so long') and it was a sign of some special superior power of the German Army. I want to put a number on that superior power and thus am asking those who say the Germans 'lasted so long' to quantify their assertion.
And here you revert to arguing with whatever ghost you seem to regularly conjure. You're also conflating Terry Duncan (who made the point about the Normandy campaign 'lasting so long') with Cult Icon. Neither of them, however, argued that German resistance was in any way a sign of 'some special superior power'.

If you disagree with this, I await your quoting of the posts where they argued that point.
Michael Kenny wrote:
24 Jul 2021, 06:32
To do this I need a number for how long they believe the Germans should have lasted so I can work how how much better they performed than any other army.
Again, where did either Terry Duncan or Cult Icon argue that the Wehrmacht performed 'better than any other army'?

To paraphrase you, to lend credence to your argument 'I need a quote from them'.

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Re: German armored vehicles/weapons if the war continued?

#56

Post by KDF33 » 24 Jul 2021, 07:06

Michael Kenny wrote:
24 Jul 2021, 06:45
The original quote is the 'we wuz outnumber/ not a fair fight ' excuse. An excuse you claimed was not being used.
Still waiting for that quote.

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Re: German armored vehicles/weapons if the war continued?

#57

Post by Michael Kenny » 24 Jul 2021, 07:14

The fantasy:
Cult Icon wrote:
24 Jul 2021, 02:59


The GOODWOOD operation is a good barometer of the limits of Allied power. Here the Germans made the rare defense-in depth of some 10 miles with a few miles of front with half a Pz division (21.Pz), about a battalion and a half of the 16.LWFD remnants plus others, GHQ artillery, AA, and anti-tank with elements of the I SS Pz Corps in reserve. The British-Canadians failed to penetrate into the operational depths despite expending resources that were so extreme that it was not seen before by the Germans in the war. Even the expenditure of several hundred thousand artillery rounds, over 2000 aircraft to drop the equivalent of tactical nuke to neutralize two tank battalions and provide follow-up CAS didn't create a massive and highly successful breakthrough. Let alone the vast number of Allied tanks employed.

The operation was so expensive that reputations were put on the line and for posterity.
The reality:
Kluge Report July 21 1944  a-horzassd.jpg

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Re: German armored vehicles/weapons if the war continued?

#58

Post by KDF33 » 24 Jul 2021, 07:28

Michael Kenny wrote:
24 Jul 2021, 07:14
The fantasy:

[...]

The reality:
The best illustration that you are arguing with strawmen that only exist in your mind, is that your excerpt makes Cult Icon's argument for him:

1) It confirms that the German front held during Goodwood ('I am able to report that the front has been held intact until now' - fourth to last paragraph).

2) It predicts that the front will soon break, due to overwhelming Allied numbers and material superiority, most prominently the disproportionate superiority in weight of fire.

Indeed, the following two paragraphs from Cult Icon sound like a summary of von Kluge, just in a slightly different order:
Cult Icon wrote:
24 Jul 2021, 02:59
When their side is outnumbered 2:1, 3:1 or worse on the ground, get little in the way of reinforcements while the Allied divisions are getting a steady supply of replacements, several times numerical superiority in armor, and ten times in artillery making great offensive gains is a non-starter. What they can do is to spare what is leftover, frequently small resources, to counterattack breaches and maintain the line & stop breakthroughs. With these efforts the Normandy campaign became a "static front" for a long time despite the over insurance of the Allies & clever hedging of their military politics.

The numerical superiority of the allies in armor, air support, and artillery was extreme to an unprecedented degree, even the most experienced Generals cannot attack and win against 10:1 odds in armor & artillery ammunition plus air support. In the fall of 44' the German armored force was outnumbered in the region of 15:1 -20:1.

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Re: German armored vehicles/weapons if the war continued?

#59

Post by Michael Kenny » 24 Jul 2021, 07:39

KDF33 wrote:
24 Jul 2021, 07:04


From my reading, his point is simple: the Germans must have won some share of the tactical engagements (essentially defensive), otherwise the Allied breakthrough wouldn't have taken until July 25.
How did you decide that Lasting until July 25th was a good result? How did you discount that lasting until August 25th was the better result? Would June 25th have been a sign of significantly poorer performance? When the disastrous results of this obsession with never giving up ground caught up with the Germans in August would you still defend the stand as a sign of superior military performance?

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Re: German armored vehicles/weapons if the war continued?

#60

Post by KDF33 » 24 Jul 2021, 07:48

Michael Kenny wrote:
24 Jul 2021, 07:39
How did you decide that Lasting until July 25th was a good result?
Where did I write that?
Michael Kenny wrote:
24 Jul 2021, 07:39
When the disastrous results of this obsession with never giving up ground caught up with the Germans in August would you still defend the stand as a sign of superior military performance?
Where did I defend German resistance in June and July as 'a sign of superior military performance'?

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