The Tactics Of The German Army

In the year 1961, Fritz Fischer had presented his book, which was known as Germany's Aims in First World War and it had been successful in launching a debate among German historians and scholars as older historians severely criticized and opposed Fischer and his book. However, his contemporaries and younger historians supported his book. The book draws a detailed and comprehensive picture of Germany and its aims during the World War I.

The primary source is an article from a weekly news magazine publication called TIME. The article appeared in the September 25, 1939 edition of TIME under the coverage of the Polish Theatre. The article, titled Blitzkrieger, covered the recent events of the ongoing German invasion of Poland with a specific focus on the German commander in charge of the operation: Generaloberst Walther von Brauchitsch. Frustratingly, I have yet to find the author/journalist for this article due to TIME’s requirement that one has to be a paid subscriber to access the full text. Thankfully, EBCSOhost’s Academic Search Complete database had the full TIME article text. That particular text did not contain an author which leads to TIME’s website being the only possibility

<br>The plan to capture the Soviet Union, operation Barbarossa, was initially very successful. The German attack, comprising 134 divisions or just over 3 million soldiers, took the Russians by surprise and they quickly advanced towards Moscow. But the rough country and appalling roads were taking its toll, and the German advance started to slow. Hitler himself took control of the campaign. Hitler was a very determined man. He was very determined to avenge the loss and humiliation of world war

As Germany advanced on the city of Stalingrad, Hitler decided to rush the battle and try to finish it quickly. Because of this mindset, his army was severely underprepared to fight a drawn out battle in the Russian winter. German general Blumentritt recalled “The railheads (train tracks) were as much as 200 kilometers behind the front, and the bare nature of the countryside meant that there was little timber (wood) available for constructing defenses. There were no proper trenches or fixed positions” (Document 3). The Soviets had a major advantage over the Germans of the aspect of being resupplied. While they could receive support from nearby or within the city, Germany had to rely on supplies coming from a long way out. If supply shipments were cut off by the Soviets, the Germans were forced to continue fighting with limited resources. Also, the Battle of Stalingrad is a prime example of how much changed between the first and second world war. The vast majority of World War I was fought out of trenches, with soldiers moving very little. World War II was fought in the style of urban warfare, surrounded by streets and buildings, nearly the polar opposite of trench warfare. The Germans were not trained to fight an urban style battle, and thus struggled upon reaching the city of Stalingrad. When the cold Russian winter came, German suffering reached an all time high. A soldier named Wilhelm

The tactics used in World War I were radically different than that of previous wars. The majority of the war was fought in the trenches, and the war itself seemed to have no end. Due to this, the psychological impact of the war was unlike anything that had been seen before. During the early days of the war, the soldiers, on both sides, seemed to lack the dedication that would have been necessary to exterminate their enemy. However, as the war progressed, the desire to avenge their fallen comrades overcame their ethics and they began to kill their enemy indiscriminately. Surviving soldiers experienced a phenomenon that was, at that time, referred to as shell shock. Today we refer to this phenomenon as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. At this time, this psychological condition was misunderstood and the doctors lacked the training necessary to effectively treat this condition.

Omer Bartov’s book Hitler’s Army takes an interesting look into the social constructs of the Wehrmacht during World War II. Bartov proposes a question of was the Wehrmacht Hitler’s Army. By that they mean did the soldiers of the Wehrmacht believe in Nazi ideology and what they were told they were fighting for, or were they simply soldiers fighting because they were told too. Bartov’s ultimate answer is yes they are loyal to Hitler and his ideology, and he is eventually correct. After training a generation mentally and physically from the age of ten through Hitler Youth programs the Wehrmacht became Hitler’s Army and their blind loyalty distorted their morality to carrying out war crimes when believed to be necessary. He reaches this conclusion by analyzing the Wehrmacht’s time in Russia and how that devastating campaign effected the enlisted soldiers. He finds that the only way the Wehrmacht’s moral even survived this was their warped mentality and cohesion between the soldiers due to harsh discipline.

The tactics used in World War II had to come from somewhere and that was the past. The main reason for this was because most high ranking officers only knew old tactics. One of the biggest strategies that most are familiar with is the use of trench warfare. The many problems both sides faced when using trenches was how vulnerable soldiers were inside them. They were prone to constant chemical attacks, artillery barrages, and tanks. Trench warfare was not a pretty fight but it was one of the most used tactics throughout the war. An offensive at Somme was a prime example of the use and tactical advantage tools of war gave a side. In the summer of 1916, General Douglas Haig ad ordered and eight day artillery bombardment to soften up the German

This inability saves the Allied from enduring the worst battle of the war, the Battle of the Bulge, where the US alone suffered close to 90,000 causalities. In reality, the German Army surrendered less than two months after Allied Forces captured the Ruhr Valley, severely crippling Germany’s war-making resources. This took place in the spring and not at the onset of winter, but the German Army was finished once the Allies controlled the Ruhr. The dash to Berlin during the winter months would have been slower than it occurred in the spring, but without the Ruhr, the German Army would have limited resources to resist the Allied advance. A defeated German Army in the West would likely have hastened the defeat of the Germans on the Eastern Front but as it stood, the Russians did not take Warsaw until mid-January after the Germans abandoned the city. Success at Arnhem puts the Allies on track to march on Berlin four months before the Russians would

The Germans were well equipped with state of the art weapons, had more troops than the allies. The allies were outnumbered and outgunned. Germans devised a plan that would use machineguns up front and artillery at the back. So constant fire from the enemies, the allies couldn’t fight back. Basically it was a death trap with one way in and no way out.

In order for the two front war to be a success, maintaining a coalition with Stalin and the Soviets was critical (“D-Day as a Parable”). Another key element that was critical to the opening of the second front was the Barbarossa Campaign. The Barbarossa Campaign was a massive battle between Germany and Russia (“D–Day as a Parable”). Germany wanted to destroy the Soviet Union and permanently eliminate the Communist threat on them while also seizing prime land within Soviet borders for the expansion of German territory ("Invasion of the Soviet Union,”). This major offensive maneuver moved more than a million troops to the Eastern front, leaving fewer numbers of German troops in Western Europe and Germany making a second front in Western Europe more plausible.

When Eisenhower summons 10th Armored Division to Bastogne, Patton exercises disciplined initiative in setting the stage for victory at the Battle of the Bulge. Before Patton is summoned to Verdun, he set the conditions for his forces to break away from the battle in the Saar River Valley and move toward Bastogne.

After the U.S. began to push out the Germans and enlarge the pathway to Bastogne at the end of December 1944, the U.S. troops and some British soldiers started a counterattack, to eliminate the bulge in the American line. This success was largely due to General Patton’s third army, that attacked from the North and the South. On January 8, 1945, the German forces began to pull out of the Bulge. As the Americans advanced, they continued to erase all German gains. By the end of January, 1945, all territory that was captured by the Germans was back under Allied control (“Battle of the Bulge”). The Battle of the bulge was one of the most difficult battles of the war for the United States. Along with having the most American casualties of any other battle, many of the soldiers suffered great emotional and physical trauma from the cold, and lack of medical supplies, and the horrors that many of them witnessed on the battlefield (Farmer). One battalion, the 551st Parachute Infantry Battalion, is a notable example of the physical and emotional trauma of the Battle of the Bulge. At the start of the battle the battalion had 793 men. By the end, only 110 were left alive. The 551st was the worst casualties of any unit during the Battle of the Bulge (Orfalea). Nearing the end of the battle, the allied troops fought harder than ever, partly to ensure that all of the bloodshed and death was not in vain.

Germany sought to conduct a massive counter-offense to seize control of the Allied Forces’ main hub of Antwerp. The German Army intended to split

used for supplies. Choosing this plan of action, Hitler used Walter Model and Gerd von

Stephen Lampus Ms. Weaver 3/9/15 English Summary The narrator went back to Dresden after the war with his old war buddy Bernard V. O’Hare where they were prisoners of war in a slaughterhouse. The narrator thought that Dresden was a useless memory in his mind but he was still tempted to write about it. He does end up writing about it as an anti-war book.