US Army vs Wehrmacht efficiency comparison second try

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EwaldvonKleist
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US Army vs Wehrmacht efficiency comparison second try

Post by EwaldvonKleist »

This is the second try to start a discussion about this topic. The first thread was closed because some people did not know how to behave. Trolls or members who want to fight out things are not welcome here and i ask them to stay away. Please stay friendly, calm and rational and allow others who are interested in talking in a serious way about history to do this. I created a new thread, because in the old a few comments showed that that i am not the only one interested in this topic.
So now copy and paste from the old thread:
In the Gary Grigsby War in the West sub forum, some members including me started a discussion about the efficiency of the german Wehrmacht compared to other armies of the time in general and US Army in particular. We decided to move the thread here so we don’t need to hijack other discussions. Link to the old thread: tm.asp?m=4076323&mpage=2
<<<I really miss a history sub forum!>>>
Well, now to the discussion. My thesis is, that the German Wehrmacht was more combat efficient than nearly every other army in WW2.
But before i explain my point of view:
My definition of efficiency: Efficiency=(Outcome)/(Invested resources).
Please be friendly in this thread so we can have an interesting discussion based on facts alone.
Please try to give evidence for your arguments. Links on books of websites are fine, so everyone can get the information first hand.

So lets start: My general source is Martin van Crefeld and his study „Kampfkraft“/ „Fighting power“.
Clearifications:
C1) An army always has resources of all kinds given and the way the army is organized decides how much fighting power it can made of it.

C2) When talking about efficiency of an army, I mean tactical to operational level. Especially importance hast he tactical level. For definnitions read this Pdf: http://operationbarbarossa.net/wp-conte ... rms-11.pdf
So the way how ressource efficient an army is, is on tactical to close to 100% and on operational level to a high percentage decided by the army organization.


According to my primary source Crefeld, the German army outperforms the US Army and other armies in many aspects when it comes to converting ressources to combat value. I just want to outline some aspects:

A1) Use of the so called Auftragstaktik (Chapter 5):
German Army emphasized since Moltke (1800-1891) the system of the „Auftragstaktik“ or „order tactics“ in english. It means that the leader only gives his subordinates orders what to do, but not how to do.
The US army in contrast saw the war more as a playground for management, so the high command tries to give orders how to do something too. According to Crefeld, the US Army followed the principle of the management scientist Tylor conscious or unconscious in a way which did not suit to WW2 or war in general.

A2) Regional recruiting (Chapter 6)
Wehrmacht formed units with soldiers of same origins, so the soldiers had a similar culture, dialect etc. This increased unit cohesion
US Army mixed soldiers from all regions, leading to difficulties through different cultures.

A3) Replacement System (Chapter 6)
German army made sure that the man who fight together know each other very good by creating and refilling fighting en bloc.
US army saw soldiers more as a stream of water. When the bottle is empty somewhere, you can just refill it.
The US Army system caused lower fighting morale. I will write a bit more about this in the end of this post, so take a breath.

A4) Centralisation (Chapter 7)
German army was very decentralized and trusted the subordinates a lot when it comes to choose the right leader for a task. Trying to press something in numbers to allow mechanized data handling (IBM machines...) was hardly done.
US Army was again focused on management and centralisation.
German system was better to find the man who not runs away when enemy is shooting.

A5) Vacation, medals and Health system (Chapter 8 and 9)
Germans had a better system of vacation and rest, while US soldiers had to fight mostly all the time (Homeland far away....). By refilling units like a bottle, there was also hardly a time when a unit was not in use. This resulted in higher US Army attrition, especially mentally.
German medal system was better, especially the time between the well done job and the medal was shorter compared to US Army.
Germans were good in getting injured/mentally ill men back into service, of course with more rude ways to treat them sometimes. Together with lower attrition losses, they had less permanent non-dead losses in relation to the intensity of fighting.

A6) Officers (Chapter 10 and 11)
German officers had more intense contact to their subordinates/soldiers. Germans often preferred good personalities over the most intelligent guys for low level command. Therefore, the relation among Officers and soldiers was much better in german army (even high commanders were also still seen as soldiers, no strict separation between officers and soldiers). Therefore, german soldiers respected their leaders more.
To repeat it: German army emphasized the skill of actually leading a group of people, not being the best in doing math. They saw war as a matter of character, not intelligence!!!
Again german army preferred a subjective view, the US Army tried to press everything in numbers. when it came to choosing the right leaders.

A7) Complaints
German Wehrmacht had a better system to deal with complaints and were more willing to punish leaders as well as the common soldier. Especially the implementation in the praxis was better than in US Army.
Crefeld of courses points out some weaknesses of the Wehrmacht and strengths of US Army. If you want more details about a special point just ask.
So all in all the german Army adapted much better to the physical, social and mental needs of the soldier, formed groups of better cohesion and also choose the leaders better. Therefore i really doubt the argument that US Army had better corps spirit than other armies because the organisation of the army worked against this. Please give evidence for better US Army corps spirit if you want to convince me!!!
This said, i think that the german army was better to form a group of soldiers, so with the same weapons, a given number of soldiers in the german system generates more fighting power than the same number in the US system.

Let me outline a special motivation to start the thread: It seems that general opinion is that the US Army had a kind of special corps spirit in WW2. I am very interested to hear first hand from Americans why they think so. As described above, the US Army organisation worked against such a spirit. I don't want to attack your fathers and grandfathers nor am i an american hater. I am only intersted in the point of view of other cultures/countries and want to learn.
I dont question that US Army had its advantages to!!!!!!!!!!!!
So, gentlemen, start your discussions!
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decaro
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RE: US Army vs Wehrmacht efficiency comparison second try

Post by decaro »


re the Wehrmacht, I recall a documentary that claimed German officers/senior enlisted treated their troops like tools and cared for them as such.

Although self-serving and sometimes impersonal, well-kept tools usually get the job done.
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RE: US Army vs Wehrmacht efficiency comparison second try

Post by Poopyhead »

A1) American warfighting placed overconfidence in quantity versus quality. This is primarily because it takes military genius to discover quality tactics and time to teach these to fledgling leaders. We went from basically a small National Guard to an army of millions. Our leaders didn't have a trained core of teachers to guide their education. So if we had told 100 leaders to just take the hill. probably 95 of them wouldn't have accomplished the task without horrible casualties. Tactics by the numbers beats no tactics at all.

A2) We did regional recruiting in our Civil War...until whole towns and villages lost their entire male population in one battle. So from then on we relied on "diversity".

A3) This goes back to numbers. Even we ran out of men who were fit to fight. In 1944 we were ready to draft just about anyone. So we vacuumed the men up, taught them how to march and sent them where they were needed. Their new unit was supposed to integrate them into trained platoons that would teach them to survive.

A4) Again, if you have more genius leaders than you know what to do with, then you decentralize. We certainly had some geniuses, but the establishment didn't trust them or believe them. So, numbers will eventually tell. The important strategy is to not lose the war by letting junior officers fail to follow the rules.

A5) I don't really have any experience to draw on for this. I am aware that we had great medical care available. However, Americans don't like whiners. Lots of movies were made about heroes sent back to the States to do bond drives and how they absolutely hated not being with their fellow soldiers at the front. We push it until it breaks. I do know of a machinegunner on a carrier off Okinawa. He had been shooting at kamikazes for several hours when he told his crew, "It sure is a hot one." Then he jumped overboard and was never seen again.

A6) We used the "sink or swim" method. It's the scene in Starship Trooper's where the LT says, "Rico, you're acting sergeant until you're dead or I find someone better!" We really didn't have a promotion system. Usually if you survived, you got promoted.

A7) The Army was giving 100% to learning how to fight. We didn't spend a lot of time teaching leaders to be King Solomon. So Patton slaps a soldier. MacArthur fills a rescue ship with his favorite furniture but then leaves the female nurses to be captured by the Japanese. We overlooked good leaders making bad mistakes, because we wanted the war to end as soon as possible.

One overall point for your argument, is the strategic effect of the German system. The German army took less than one year of actual combat to conquer most of Europe and North Africa. The three greatest industrial powers on Earth fought constantly for over three years to retake it.
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Max 86
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RE: US Army vs Wehrmacht efficiency comparison second try

Post by Max 86 »

This thread has no point other than to piss people off! [:-]

I deleted my rant!
No problem Chief!
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EwaldvonKleist
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RE: US Army vs Wehrmacht efficiency comparison second try

Post by EwaldvonKleist »

Thx for well structured post.
A1) You can of course trust quality. But when you manage to combine quantity with quality/efficiency, you can reach more. Western armies with the german efficiency i assume could have ended the war earlier and saved the lives of many western soldiers, jews, slavs and red army soldiers. It was not necessary to have quality but it would have been better.
US Army buildup was a very good example of good management, it showed the true power of the country when it came to big undertakings. But german situation was similiar: 1933 the german army consisted of 100 000men only because of Versailles Treaty and during the first years expanding the army was only half official: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_re-armament
A2) Creveld mentions this problem of single villages loosing all their man too. German recruiting was not about taking everyone from one small area but mixing people from bavaria with bavarians, bu not with prussians (or for americans: Dont throw together people from washington DC with people from Texas. Instead mix units with people from dallas and Houston so no city is completely empty when the units is wiped out.)
A3) But we agree that the situation in USA as well as in USSR was never as serious like in Japan or third reich? Crevelds/my point is more about how the new recruits are integrated in the units rather than the numbers.
A4) Good point. Soviets had very great troubles with their great purges (so obvious i dont give a source here) so they had the highest lack of leaders you can imagine. Therefore, they too took the way of centralization. Sometimes stalin/zhukov himself put military basics in orders. (like concentrating on the most threatened area) because subordinates had no experience-->centralization. Source: How Titans Clashed, Glantz. On the other hand creceld also reports lack of leaders on german side too, but they lacked everything so its nothing special here :-)
A5) I forgot to emphasize the mental part: Germans were better (with rude methods sometimes of course) to get the man back to their units when they have become crazy on the front line. But i am very sceptical about hollywood movies as a historical source (no disrespect).
A6) Sink or swim method is probably a bad idea when you only have one shot like in a war.
A7) War does not end sooner when leaders behaviour creates hatress and distrust under subordinates and mistakes are not analyzed correctly.

Yes, germans were faster, but in many cases the enemies were not that good prepared for the initial onslaught.
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EwaldvonKleist
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RE: US Army vs Wehrmacht efficiency comparison second try

Post by EwaldvonKleist »

ORIGINAL: Max 86

This thread has no point other than to piss people off! [:-]

I deleted my rant!
Dont understand this.
I don't want to make people angry. I want a calm, scientific discussion about army organization and institutionalisation of combat power. Its like analyzing the management structure of two companies to find out why one is more innovative than others. I don't question bravery and suffering of the fighting soldiers.
Edit: Best way to give proof would be primary sources and complicated statistical analysis of combat power/losses statistics etc.
Unluckily i have no time nor the mathematical skill (maybe one day?) to do this. Therefore i have to trust historicians and people like Nigel Askey (www.operationbarbarossa.net) and Dupuy to do the math. I haven't read dupuy yet and Nigel Askey has not yet finished his book series, but i am sure statistical analysis can clearify a lot.

Btw: More numbers would have a good influence on military history. If a soldier writes in his memoreis about "stubborn resistance", this IMO means nothing if there are no numbers about forces involved, losses/loss ratios etc. But this would be a topic for another discussion....
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RE: US Army vs Wehrmacht efficiency comparison second try

Post by VPaulus »

ORIGINAL: Max 86

This thread has no point other than to piss people off! [:-]

I deleted my rant!
Correct assumption. Locked.
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