If all the people and texts can predict the future so well, how come they never seem to know what’s going to happen tomorrow morning? If all the texts - Bible, Mayan Codices, Aztec Calendars, Nostradamus and assorted others) “know the future” so exactly, how come when a predicted date occurs when an event is supposed to take place, it never happens? And how come when people talk about events predicted in these texts, they all point to current events happening now, and predicted the same things two generations ago? How come? Huh? Huh? There are other words besides ‘blarney’ that could be used.
Up until 1935 it was a volunteer Army and many of the best officers joined up during this period it time. many that were conscripted prior to the war would have volunteered through nazi euphoriea anyway. Many Germans saw Hitler and the nazi as some kind of saviour and were only too glad to join in the ‘movement’.
While I don’t want to contribute to any flaming, the German military doctrine was vastly superior to anything else in Europe and it took most of the war to teach the rest of the Europeans how to fight properly.
Isn’t this usually the case when the aggressor plans diligently for war and the defender has planned only for peace? Surprise attacks have a way of succeeding precisely because the ‘enemy’ doesn’t want war and believes war won’t happen or at the very least, hopes it doesn’t happen? Those surprise tactics have a rather short half-life too, as the folks who are still standing figure out how to counter them.
Is it a surprise to anyone here that the strong beat the weak? But if they aren’t completely beaten, the attacker may get a really nasty come-uppance later on. In order for this to work, a nation has to be able to trade something for time. In the case of Russia, it was vast numbers of soldiers thrown willy-nilly into battle, and LOTS of space that the Germans realistically could never occupy effectively; in the case of Great Britain, it was the English Channel that the Germans had no means of crossing, and the RAF which handed Germany its first taste of defeat.
Eventually, the Americans had the Atlantic and long air distances, but the American example during WWII is interesting to me because the Americans had the resources to trade equipment and ordinance in vast quantities to overcome “better” soldiers even if the enemy’s individual pieces of equipment were of higher quality. US commanders already knew that many soldiers fired their weapons hoping not to hit anyone unless they were in really close quarters, and developed “stand-off” weapons in such quantities that it didn’t matter in the end: massed artillery, hordes of fighter bombers, light, medium and heavy bombers and a navy so big that it equaled all of the navies in the world put together.
As has been sagely observed, this worked in WWII but worked less well in Korea and not well in Vietnam. When the enemy doesn’t wear a uniform, the rules become irrelevant. But in WWII, the German Blitzkrieg was quickly countered by its opponents on a vastly larger scale. When Operation Citadel launched in Russia, the Germans were already wholly outclassed in this arena and just didn’t know it.
The German army, as another observer noted, was not very mechanized, one might even say barely mechanized in 1939 by 1943 standards. The Germans were really set-up for a short, sharp war and a quick victory, not a long war for which they did not possess the resources.
Actually the best and brightest officers were already in the Reichswehr and were only too happy to have a job in a small, but very mobile and efficient military constabulary force that sowed the seeds of Germany’s successes of the early part of WWII…
While I don’t want to contribute to any flaming, the German military doctrine was vastly superior to anything else in Europe and it took most of the war to teach the rest of the Europeans how to fight properly.
Most would question whether there really was any coherent German military “Blitzkrieg” or “Schwerpunkt” doctrine at all. And what we attribute to German successes early on was the adaption of new technology for command and control and merely an evolution of their “stormtrooper” infiltration and flanking tactics–avoiding enemy strong points–from WWI and incorporating the ideas of their former enemies such as Liddell Hart…
One could also argue that the Soviets early on had a very capable doctrine in “Deep Battle” that was actually far more methodical than anything the Germans practiced overall. But this was largely (though not totally) eviscerated by Stalin with his purges of the “Trotskyist” officer corp…
The term Blitzkrieg is much mis used and miss understood. German doctrine was “Auftragstaktik” adapted to modern warfare with wheel track and plane.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission-type_tactics
However the essence of the “Blitzkrieg” as a method of warfare is based on The British General Fullers WW-I operational “Plan 1919”, which was to be the final attack planned for 1919 to defeat Germany.
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB939.pdf
The essence of this type of operational warfare was to pin the enemy reserve armies paralizing the GHQ ability to influence the out come of the battle at the precise time and space where your forces intend to break through. In essence you give your enemy a reason to sacrifice his mobility and trade it for ridge defence around something critical to the countries survival. Defeating that enemy army in this situation will precipitate a whole sale collapse of both the military morale and civilian belief in their national security, leading to military route and panic civilian flight.
The best example is France 1940, the enemy is lured into the Lowlands and then cut off from his lines of communication and resupply through a massed lightning operational maneuver. Contry to popular opinion the most important aspect of this warfare is not the lighting breakthrough, but the front wide offensive that deceives the enemy into committ his reserves prematurely thus giving up any remaining operational mobility. Once that happenes the enemy army is already defeated and thus his countrys will to fight on.
It would have worked in Russia if they had ignored Hitler and gone after Moscow with all their mobile forces combined into one gigantic operational push, or a series of operational envelopments aimed at reaching Moscow ASAP. Meanwhile the masses of the German horse mobile infantry armies, engaged and pinned the Russian horse based infantry armies in place and along with that, their mechanized reserves. This prevents the Soviet command from organizing counter attacks at all but the lowest levels, as was the case of the counter attacks in France a year earlier.
Soviet command was an order of magnitude slower in its tempo of command of operations at this time and would never have been able to counter such a concentrated operational drive. However such a drive required the German concentration of logistics along the entire length and duration of this main offensive. Hitlers racial beliefs convinced him the Red Army could be defeated by Smolensk so insufficent concentration of forces or supplies were applied to achieve anything beyond Smolensk. As the German armies got bogged down, this gave Stalin and the RED Army the time and space it needed to mobilize sufficent reserves to grind the German offensive to a halt.
Britain could have been defeated in a similiar mannor of sequential operational maneuvers, had sufficent time been alloted to amassing the naval forces needed for such operation maneuvers.
I doubt this because the Germans simply didn’t have the tonnage or the firepower to make this happen. The Kriegsmarine wouldn’t guarantee a corridor wide enough to make an invasion practicable and frankly, the English would have committed the entire home fleet to destroy whatever the Germans put into the fray. German landing craft capabilities were pretty close to zero and they had to bring all those horses over as well. Not very realistic. Not to mention that they didn’t have absolute control in the air.
Still a doubts even if “they” captured Moscow that would be the end , Napoleon captured it and it wasn’t the end even if he crushed them many times ( i know the times were different and the warfare too ) . Capturing the resources might be a different thing though , capturing Stalingrad and cutting the oil reserves would be a blow ,as it was the transport hub . Moscow was a simbolic and capital , capturing it would demoralize maybe but not stop the Reds to continue . This is what i think . On the thematic about blitzkrieg , whatever the therm is used rightly or not it was a complete fact , the germans used the lightning quick attack against France , never used before and based or not the germans show it in practice . The only problem for me that the blitzkrieg was a limited war , you can’t continue blitzkrieg for 4 years , because soon or later the enemy overthrow you and your armies come in defence instead in attack .
The traditional thinking is that they Germans could either get the troops across, but not support them in the field with supplies. Or transport and support a force too small to be effective. The First Sealord of the Admiralty wrote a letter to Churchill in mid Aug 1940 admitting that up to 100,000 German troops could land on British ports and there was precious little they could do to prevent this. Maritime survaillence was very poor at this point in the war. Each month most of the 500-1000 vessels that went through British waters did so undetected.
Infact the survaillence task was so difficult that the HMG concentrated what air and naval assets they could on establishing only two corridors to prevent German access to the Atlantic Ocean. These corridors where the “English Channel” and the “Northern Patrol”. However the record of even these barriers was poor. Reportedly 2/3 of the German vessels that crossed these barriers got through. In the channel it was much worse with 3/4 of the vessel getting through well into 1942. There was no channel wide survailence to prevent invasion, except a number of gun and ASW trawlers, reinforced by nightly Destroyer sweeps, none of which had Radar until 1942.
Without radar they were fly and fighting blind. Infact in most of the naval clashes between German and allied warships during this period went to the Germans due to superior naval leadership. Often the German warships were twice as effective as the allied counterparts despite the fact they were outnumbered & out gunned by the allies.
All the RN could garrantee HMG is that they could isolate any landed force from resupply.Pound would later admitt that infact the Germans could probably land 200,000 troops before they were cut off. Infact the RN felt firmly that the task of perventing any invasion of the UK was the job of the RAF and the Army, not the task of the RN. Chuchill forbade any Capital ship from entering the Channel during such an invasion, since he feared the loss of the capital ships more than he feared invasion. So the Home fleet would stick to its main tasks.
What makes matters worse is that British bombing was very poor at this time in the war with most of RAF bombing missions missing there targets over Germany by something like 20 miles. Even a mission over the Channel is likely to be off by 5km. Historically the British airpower averaged 150 sortie to sink a single vessel through out the war. There is evidence to suggest that at this time in the war, the bombing figure was more like 600 sortie to sink a single vessel. So Germany didn’t need airsuperioty over England. When the invasion scare reached its peak in September 1940 the British bombed the German ports where their vessels were gatheing for invasion . The claim was 260 German vessel sunk in one week of bombing, but the German records show that only 65 vessels were lost, with the rest being lightly damaged and returned to service soon after. The BoB was sufficent to keep the RAF out of the battle. If they do get into the invasion, the kill ratio would swing decisively to the LW side.
The germans DID have the transportation tonnage for the straight forward channel crossing. They also had converted the bulk of the river barges for a slow crossing of the straits of dover, where the wave height is very low and within limits of the seakeeping of the converted barges. This was tested and it was found these barges could survive force 4-5 without too much difficulty and only suffered light damage when the wind and waves reached force 6-8.
There were very few horses in the first waves since these were substitued out for biycles. Infact these divisions had 2000 biycles in the TOE for this mission. They also carried Howitzers in the first waves.
The Germans may have also had the navy large enough to escort this invasion and prevent most RN interceptions. Historically in the fall of 1940 German navy had 650 auxiliary warships plus couple hundred U-Boots, M-Boots , F-Boot; S-Boots R-Boots & Destroyers and T-Boot. What remains of the Sealion plan indicates that 320 of these vessels were detailed to support the Sealion plan.
Historically the allied record on intercepting German convoys is not very good until late in the war [1944/45]. Infact in the first years of the war 2/3 of all German convoys evaded Allied interceptions, without suffering any damage at all. It didn’t seem to matter too much how many RN attacking sortie or how many German escorts were in these clashes, which is good since 3/4 of these escorts were simple converted trawlers.Most often this occured due to actions by the escorts combined with the fog of war and unaggressive/ incompetant RN commanders.
In the cases were the allies were able to intercept the convoys, they were only able to sink one German vessel for each attacking RN Sortie, and most of those damaged or sunk were infact the German escort vessels. This was also true of the attacks on the convoys of German troops invading Crete in 1941, even though all the RN Cruisers and Destroyers were Radar equipped and the lone counter attacking Italian Torpedoboot were not Radar equipped.
Later in the war the situation reversed itself and the more competant RN commanders were able to intercept most German convoys, however they were still unable to manage destroying more than 1-2 enemy vessels per attacking RN sortie.
From what we know of the German sealion plan, their invasion featured 4000 vessels, which makes RN ‘sweeping the channel of invasion vessels’ difficult to comprehend. It can only be understood in the context of propaganda and the faith that generally goes with national security after the fact.
Oh no one will argue except ,probably you my friend…
The false “Deep battle” ( attacking the enemy with huge number of airborne troops ) wasn’t even near simular to German armoured blitzkrieg.
Very nice said UBC and interesting also , i didn’t know that facts , thanks for posting it 
I think you have that backwards, my friend. No one who has access to a history that was not wiped clean by the Stalinism would ever argue anything other…
Here again is the Wiki article you failed to in anyway refute or even acknowledge:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_deep_battle
This topic is also touched on by numerous historians, and indeed, you yourself have unintentionally acknowledged its success against the Japanese at Khalkhin Gol as Gen. Zhukov crushed them using many of the precepts of Deep Operations/Battle…
Meh. Even Gen. “Smiling” Albert Kesselring claimed that Operation Sealion never would have worked and was little more than a bluff, or ploy, to pressure the British into peace negotiations and avoid a protracted naval and air blockade against a superior naval force. The Kreigsmarine had already suffered crippling losses of destroyers at Nardvark–and this was widely seen as a Pyrric naval victory for the Germans.
More importantly, Sealion was based on the notion that river barges were to make a crossing in the English Channel laden with troops and equipment, if the Royal Navy didn’t inflict serious losses the likes of which Germany would not see until 1942-43; the rough seas surely would have caused serious problems…
More on Sealion in this thread.
I agree. German notions of amphibious assault forces were, at best, infantile and stillborn. Add to that the destruction of the Graf Spee and the Bismark and frankly, it was a threat made up mostly of bluster and blarney.
Let’s suppose for a moment that all of the foregoing is true. Why didn’t the Germans do it? The question begs an answer. By not doing it, Germany guaranteed that there would be an unsinkable aircraft carrier offshore for the duration. Not too smart. Or maybe they really couldn’t do it.
Its simple Hitler never wanted to go to war with the UK since he believed they were part of his so called aryan race , but they just hadn’t figured that out yet. More importantly he believed that if Germany attacked the UK , the British Empire would disintegrate and all the other colonial powers would be well placed to exploite this, but not Germany.
Finaly Hitler demanded that what ever plan was to be carried out, it had to guarantee success. Since only the German engineers had conducted on going amphibious ops at the battalion level, no one else had much experiance beyond Norway. At this point Goering stepped in and declared his Luftwaffe could guarantee success. So the Fright war against the RAF and UK began.
Hitler believed that attacking the USSR would be easier and isolating UK that way…since at that point Britian would be standing alone.
Nick; the modified barges were tested in the waters of the Straits of Dover and performed well enough, even in near gale force winds, to ensure crossing was possible. More importantly the waters in the Straits are calmed compared to the rest of the Channel. The Significant Wave Height [SWH]through out the channel varies from 2-7 meter waves with the occasional 10meter waves. However the Straits are always 1/2 meter SWH all year round.
If you don’t believe me just check out this site for a year or two as some people have already done.
http://www.oceanweather.com/data/
So there is no question that the modified Barges could cross , they could.
Just as importantly if you care to study the naval clashes with German surface ships through 1941 , you will see that the Germans won most of their clashes [2/3] . The RN had a number of weakness that if arranged, would have drastically reduced there defence. Notably survaillance was poor until mid war as was accurate bombing capability. Further aggressive naval command was lacking in many clashes with German vessels. The British Admiralty placed alltogether far too much importance on the phantom of German surface raiders that their sheer presence would have drawn the bulk of the Home fleet away. They like many interneters today, believed a single large surface raider could wipe out entire convoys, when they rarely were ever able to sink more than 4-5 vessels during such a clash. Further British naval intelligence was poor compared to German naval intelligence which seems to have done quite well in the first half of the war.
Infact when you study WW-II Uboat and surface ship clashes with convoys, its startling to realise that very few warships were able to sink more than one enemy vessel each in such clashes. So you can calculate how slowly the RN would be able to whittle down such a massive invasion force.
Heres a good book on the subject.
http://stonebooks.com/archives/041121.shtml
Whats more the Germany navy of that time was much bigger that most people realise. Take the time to check out the following site. Baring in mind that many auxiliary warships involved in convoy patrols on both sides of the war, did very well as escorts repelling such attacks.
http://www.navypedia.org/ships/germany/ger_converted.htm
I make it about 690 auxuiliary vessels by late 1940.
[QUOTE=ubc;164762]Its simple Hitler never wanted to go to war with the UK since he believed they were part of his so called aryan race , but they just hadn’t figured that out yet. More importantly he believed that if Germany attacked the UK , the British Empire would disintegrate and all the other colonial powers would be well placed to exploite this, but not Germany.
Finaly Hitler demanded that what ever plan was to be carried out, it had to guarantee success. Since only the German engineers had conducted on going amphibious ops at the battalion level, no one else had much experiance beyond Norway. At this point Goering stepped in and declared his Luftwaffe could guarantee success. So the Fright war against the RAF and UK began.
Hitler believed that attacking the USSR would be easier and isolating UK that way…since at that point Britian would be standing alone.
Thank you for the answer. I still don’t buy it, but c’est la vie, mon ami.
Regarding a Blitz of Britain, I think some are forgetting Germany’s lack of planning and experience in this type of operation. France et al fell far quicker the Hitler imagined in his wildest dreams: he had never envisioned being in a position to assault the UK so quickly, and I, at least, had the impression that the logistics and supply situations were unworkable. I’ll ignore the problem of getting adequate craft together, unmolested, in time for the invasion, and just move on to the other point concerning German experience. As an example, I recall the German theory was that they would have to land their transports at high tide, and then (for the armor) wait for the tide to go enough out enough to allow the vehicles to “drive off.” I’ve even read the German preconception of a “high tide” requirement influenced D-Day (despite what may have happened in the case of other Allied amphibious operations). Remember all the high-and-dry beach obstacles with mines attached, so as to blow up landing craft at Normandy? And the lack of them out where the landing craft actually were?
The idea of German infantry advancing without armor for what could easily be several hours is one thing. Have their collected armor sitting in a nice row of boats, stock still on a beach for the same length of time is quite another. Where they chose to land would of course influence how quickly the UK artillery could get into action against such tempting targets, but the RAF would not have such a problem - and the Luftwaffe, with its lack of long-range fighters, would have a great deal of difficulty sticking around to provide adequate protection. Such considerations were, I believe, a major reason why Operation Sea Lion never came to pass - and wisely so, given Germany’s limitations.
Does anyone know if there has ever been a detailed study of Sealion’s chances given actual ships and planes that the Germans could have used, sailing/flying times from the French to English coast, numbers of mines that could have actually been placed, actual ships that the English could have responded with, actual divisions the English ground forces could have mustered?
All I can every find are general statements like “the RN was too strong”. Maybe they were too strong strategically, but did they have ships near at hand that could have actually intercepted the invasion fleet before significant ground forces made it ashore?
I know the British did a war game for Sealion but I have not been able to find any actual details about the force dispositions.
I did a little bit of research on the ships/boats that the KM could have fielded, I was quite surprised by the diversity and numbers of ships they had at their disposal. Counting the regular KM and adding S boats, MFPs, AFPs, Mine Layers, Mine Sweepers, R boats, U boats, auxiliary cruisers, converted trawlers, converted fishing boats, etc., the KM could put over 1,000 ships in the water. They also had 2,400 barges.
From South Foreland to Cap Gris Nez is 18.4 nautical miles. Most of the ships in this list of 1,000 could make the crossing in 2 hours. I think the barges had a speed of 9 knots, so give them 2.5 hours.
Then there are the possibility of mines blocking the entrance to the Dover Straight, and anti-ship batteries on the French coast. Several questions here, what capacity did the KM and LW have for mine laying in terms of mines per hour layed, and how many mines did they actually have, and how many mines would it take to seal off the Dover Straight? I know an S boat can lay 6 mines at a time, then they have to go back and get more.
It would be interesting to see actual numbers of the resources that each side could get into the Dover Straights before the RN fleet based at Scapa Flow shows up.
I have talked to a few people who have spent a lot of time in and around Dover and they say that even if a force makes it to the beaches there is no place to go. Rough terrain, few roads, lots of defensive positions, etc. Not sure how true that is.
This was done at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst in the 1970s, with a significant number of people who were in actual command positions on both sides taking part. Several scenarios were run, and the best for the Germans was for a smallish (divisonal sized) force surrounded at Romney Marsh and surrendering in about November. For most cases the Germans barely got off the beaches.
From memory the RN maintained about 50 destroyers in the Thames estuary (Chatham?) and Portsmouth until the threat of invasion had receded - causing quite a stink in the Western Approaches where they were desperately needed. A further significant number (~50?) were with the battleships and cruisers of the Home Fleet in Scapa Flow. The home fleet was about 24 hours steaming from the Channel coast, those in the Thames or Solent were about 4-5 hours steaming. With the level of intelligence available (early Ultra decrypts plus photo recon), the British could reasonably expect to have the Home Fleet arriving at about the same time as the first wave of the invasion goes in.
All very nice, but the actual troop carrying ability is what counts. For D-Day, the Allies used over 5,000 ships, the vast majority of them much bigger and more capable. There is a really nasty hidden feature to the barges too - they were mostly cast iron, not steel. This has a habit of shattering when hit hard (back when these hulls were common barges would sink every year from just being hit by chunks of ice on the Rhine - so imagine what even rifle-calibre machine gun rounds would do, let alone shellfire).
Couple of points there. Firstly, the Germans were planning to hit further east and the ports in Northern France around Calais really weren’t very good at the time (remember Dunkirk being considered a miracle? Part of the miracle was down to how bad the port was). 20 NM is the bare minimum - a very significant proportion would be doing over 50 NM. Secondly, you’re also radically overestimating the barge speeds - these were Rhine barges, often without engines and in rough water (the Channel can be VERY rough at times). Quite apart from the very real risk of swamping, 4kts is much more plausible (the figures I’ve seen for flat, still water are 10kts loaded, 5.5kts loaded - both for a slightly more modern powered barge). Allowing for loading/unloading times in the limited ports available, and you will frequently have German troops being on barges for over 24 hours. Not too bad for the LSTs the Allies used in Normandy, but horrific on a Rhine barge. Those troops who did get ashore (being swamped by heavy seas or the wake of a passing ship is a major risk for these barges) would be nowhere near their best fighting ability.
Given that the RN would quite happily clear a minefield by driving “expendable” ships straight through it if an invasion was on, then it has to be a thick one (and both sides of the invasion due to the fact that the RN has major bases at Scapa and Portsmouth). You’re looking at tens of thousands of mines, the laying of which will tell the UK that an invasion is imminent and exactly where it is going to be.
Sealion was a massacre waiting to happen, and had it been attempted the Germans would have suffered very badly indeed - possibly enough to shorten the war by a year or two.
I believe I watched a special on this on the History Channel. It was war games done by the Brittish military. The landing force was ultimatly cut off from supplies from the channel. If I am not mistaken the Nazi’s never fully gained air superiority over the RAF and this was actually one of the main reasons Operation Sealion was never materialized. To pull off such an invasion they would have had to dominatie the skys which at that time they still did not fully. They were still suffering heavy losses on their bombing runs into London. The landing force would have been cut off by the RN and the RAF and it would have been a horrid defeat.