The Myth of the Eastern Front

I'm trying to remember which sources I'm slicing and dicing to say this, but my understanding of the 1918 Spring Offensive was that its achievements had to be balanced against its strategic and even operational aimlessness, especially as it evolved. That is, it occupied such giant swathes of territory in part because it was a offensive waged as if the occupation of square kilometers of France was a militarily useful end in itself.

I'd be interested to hear a clever counterfactual all about a speedy peace in the East and XYZ divisions being ready to attack the French at suchandsuch a date, with reference to conditions ABC in the French morale crisis, but given American intervention, the by then huge British and Commonwealth armies, and the sort of logistical / fort-reducing problems that even a spectacular German offensive would get bogged down with, I'm not sure why Clemenceau would ever ask for an armistice in late-1917 early 1918. As with 1914 that isn't to minimize the panic or operational pants-shitting that the Allies actually went through in 1918, or that it might have been worse.

As a second year undergrad I wrote a paper arguing that Schlieffen should've called for violating Dutch neutrality through the Limburg panhandle, on the grounds that it would've relieved the logistical mess (?!) and made the need to assault the Liege fortresses less of a military/political hair-trigger, the latter of which is at least arguable in an post-hoc undergrad logic sort of way.

They still produced ~30000 Pz III and Pz IV though.

I seem to recall Guderian touring a Soviet tank producing city and being impressed with the scale of production and capabilities of the tanks produced (compared to, probably, the PzI or II at that point). Just an interesting factoid.

~10,000 of which were the StuG III tank destroyer - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmgeschütz_III

Cheap and easy to produce!

Another thing to think about in terms of "myths" of the Eastern Front - if Germany hadn't acquired a HEAP of French vehicles after the fall of France, along with the surprisingly large Czech tank/engine industry they would have been struggling to put together enough mobility to begin Barbarossa.

The Czech industry gave them the very good early war Panzer 38(t) tank, which later morphed into the Marder and Hetzer tank destroyer (turret less) vehicles - similar to how the Pz III chassis morphed into the StuG III.

Captured French vehicles were extensively used in the rear area - artillery tractors / transports, trucks and excellent all terrain armoured cars - all of which made up for big shortfalls in German engine / truck production. In June 1941, apparently three out of the ten German mechanized divisions used captured trucks, mostly French. (Although there were some complaints about the performance in Soviet terrain, along with difficulties in maintaining huge hodge podges of captured vehicles)

5774 Pz. III (none of which had a gun that could reliably penetrate a T-34, a lot of these had far too little armour, the ones with enough armour had far too high ground pressure and overloaded suspension)
9870 Pz. IV (a few hundred of the early versions ought to be subtracted from this number, how many exactly is anyone's guess due to retrofits and applique armour)

34 780 T-34
22 559 T-34-85

The rest of that figure is tank destroyers and assault guns on Pz. III and Pz. IV chassis. The Soviet Union had those in great quantity too.

I believe Keegan discusses this in his WWI book -- that is, once Michael had run its course, Ludendorff pretty much resorted to attacking wherever he thought he could gain some ground, without any real sense of strategic purpose.

I suspect you are far better read on this subject than I am, but what struck me most about descriptions of the spring 1918 offensive was that while the stormtrooper/Hutier tactics were certainly innovative and a step in the right direction in terms of overcoming prepared defenses, the Germans were nevertheless unlikely to succeed because they hadn't yet addressed the main impediments to acheiving a decisive victory in the high-volume firepower era. Namely, a lack of portable real-time long distance communications (aka radios), and a lack of tanks/armored transports. Thus, they were still severely handicapped in terms of being able to quickly follow-up and exploit any breakthrough.

And shortly afterwards Czech industry was gutted and the dismembered pieces handed to Krupp. Meanwhile; he and his fellow plutocrats churned out no less than nine prototypes for the original Tiger, the end result being a run of 1347 tanks with awful mechanical reliability and poor hull shape. Oh, and 91 spare Porche tanks hulls configured for a hybrid gas/electric drive which ended up as the Elefant/Ferdinand tank destroyer because apparently it's customary to spool up production before you have guns, turrets or a final design.

On a scale of 1 to incest German war industry scores a "Hapsburg."

Plus in WW1 the Allied offensives (100 days) were as or more impressive that the Ludendorff offensive, and largely using the same tactics (plus lots more tanks) The 1918 CW armies were pretty hot shit, but as so often happens, it was the losers who learnt more lessons, and the innovative CW armies of 1918 went back, as fast as they could, to being an imperial police force.

Read The Wages of Destruction if you haven't, it's really something. The pre-war German economy was a clusterfuck; during the war it's a miracle it functioned at all. Even if you don't buy the (admittedly aggressive causative conclusions) the raw data is amazing.

Of particular entertainment is how thoroughly he demolishes the "Speer helped production" thing; all the investments were made before he ever took charge.

I didn't know the Czech industry got dismembered so quickly, that is quite interesting. I should have realised running the Czech industry "as is" would be incompatible with Nazi ideology of course. There is a whole chapter on the ludicrous prototypes situation for German tanks in the Cross of Iron book, as well as another covering much the same sort of balls up for air planes. I probably found them the most interesting chapters, in the way its always fun to read about organisational cock ups.

I have that on my Kindle, its next in the queue!

Currently I'm reading through the christmas gifted "second world war" by anthony beevor. So far (up the battle of britain) it is disappointingly pedestrian, sort of the readers digest version of better books.

I've read almost all of Beevor's books, and that is surprising. I also find it odd that he takes on the whole war after covering Stalingrad, Crete (which I didn't read), Berlin, and D-Day. I'm still interested on his take, as it seems different than most, but I'm sad to hear you find it pedestrian.

A book on the whole of WW2 strikes me as the sort of thing I've read a dozen of by now. Which is why I haven't bothered with Beevor's book, even though I really liked his other, more focused, works.

For the man who has everything: all the steelworks in Czechoslovakia. Hitler was very assiduous in repaying those who secured his rise to power; except the ones he had shot because they posed a threat.

Don't get met wrong, its not bad, but as suggested perhaps suffers from covering at a high level stuff already covered, so so far its all just felt like a recap. I'm hoping it reads better once there is more than just effectively only two theatres (China and fall of France) going on.

And to be fair, I learnt a lot more about soviets vs Japan in khalkin gol.

In the same vein, I used to love reading Stephan Ambrose books (yes, I know they're pulpy), but couldn't stand Citizen Soldiers. Pretty much because I had read a lot of it in either D-Day or Band of Brothers, and also because it was so high level he had lost all of the focus that made his writing great...it just got way too diffused.

Also, while Beevor is great, I respect David Glantz's books on the Eastern Front. When Titans Clashed is a really excellent overview...

Umm. Just having skimmed the synopsis and a few reviews the guy seems like he's stretching. (read: full of shit) There was a fairly significant year over year uptick in production 1942-1944, and wartime industries don't exactly run themselves. Furthermore, I would bet a significant sum of money that this paper provides much of the backing for his argument, despite the fact that it solely treats the aircraft industry, which the authors themselves acknowledged may have been the foundation of Speer's directives. Which, you know, makes Speer a good observer if not exactly a visionary. (insert Sun Tzu quote here) There's also the matter of just about everyone around Speer acknowledging he was something of an organizational genius.

Mind you, I wouldn't cry too much if they had decided to shoot him just to be safe. Someone should compile a book of Nazis and fellow travellers we should have shot; that would be a good read.

I would say that depending on which kind of reviews you are referencing, you are being somewhat unfair to Tooze. For instance, the first hit on google is a bullshitty flag-waver of a review written by a journalist with an axe to grind. I put a couple of journal reviews I thought seemed representative (the James review pulls no punches, to be sure) in the BF Zotero under WWII/Wages of Destruction*, but the consensus I've seen on Wages seems to be that it's in that category of big idea books that are worth reading if you're interested in the topic, even if it has some problems. Economic history really isn't my bag, but I think you're going after him for the wrong reasons here.

*(as always, PM me with a working email address for access)

My knee jerked pretty hard when I read that he had made the case that Hitler thought that America and the Soviet Union were a threat, had accurately assessed their strength and potential to grow their materiel industries, and thus without the benefit of hindsight and from the perspective of a Nazi official the decision to invade Russia was understandable. Not so much because that with hindsight it obviously was insane in the membrane; but because if we are to assume that Hitler was capable of making such determinations of war readiness to any degree of certainty then you're left with the question of why the hell he invaded Russia and declared war on the USA when he must have known his own military was not ready?

This is all me interpreting it via second hand information though, so he may be misrepresented.

wut

WELL THAT CLEARS IT UP

whut

WHUT

If I had more time I'd so be up for reading every damn book mentioned in those journals. Just fascinating obscure as fuck knowledge.

Re: Tooze

I sort of browsed through his book a few years back because it had a lot of handy collated data in it I used for reference. I wasn't really struck by the whole "Germany's war economy was a shambles" thesis, for two reasons: First, any student of Nazi Germany is pretty familiar with their economy, war and otherwise, being something of a command-economics fright, so there's no real shock value to the claim. Nor do people take Speer or his claims seriously, although there's less self-interested evidence of polycratic (dis)organization of power and economic decisionmaking. Second... it's a command economy. The phrase "it's a miracle that it worked at all" could describe most command economies at war or peace, or, for that matter, the war economies of normally liberal states. If you're studying the German war effort in detail, you already know that 1938, 1939 and 1940 all gave Germany crucial shots in the arm, that the invasion of the USSR was taken on a precarious military-industrial basis, etc.

OK, let's try again:

You're addressing Tooze's book as if he's an armchair general at a grognard tea party. That's not the kind of argument he's making, and I would be wary of people overrepresenting sub-sub-sub points of his book as dealbreakers for dramatic effect. With reference to the reviews, I'd say it's far more accurate to say that actual historians are more concerned with his assertions about the role that the underlying poverty of pre-Nazi Germany had in driving later decisionmaking, rather than funamentally military-game-theory-oriented arguments that sound like a paraphrase a paraphrase of a paraphrase that is derived from someone skimming the book for fights to pick.

I did say my knee jerked pretty hard, that being code for "I may have misjudged the poor fellow." To be fair, grognard tea party history happens with some frequency. It also wouldn't be the first time a guy has exaggerated the strength of his arguments to sell copies (if he has done so), which tends to come across like the former.

Consider your side of the argument won.

Dan Carlin in his Hardcore History podcast about the eastern front (Tales from the Ostfront I - IV, I think - see http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php?page=hharchive), makes the point that the knowledge of Napoleon's Russian campaign "hovered over the German high command like a ghost." They tried, in their way, to learn from it. The entire Eastern Front campaign was (originally) premised on the idea that the Soviet political system was hanging by a thread and that by giving the shed a good stiff kick it would collapse in upon itself. That they had this idea came directly from the German experience with the Russians in World War I, where, pretty much, exactly that happened.

They were proven wrong, of course. Thank god.

I'm just saying give the book a chance if it's a topic of interest to you, because it's solid enough in the eyes of experts to be worth considering even if you end up disagreeing with it, and the body of information collected within it is pretty exceptional. I totally biffed the dates on the paper so it looks like a much less sassy point than it once was.

Military history and WWII in particular is a toxic field in terms of the amount of bullshit floating around, so you're right to be skeptical. By the same token, though, the reviewers that play in the popular arena deserve more than casual scrutiny as to the quality of their arguments. Anyway, consider the horse beaten and deprived of its lebensraum.

I actually checked the dates, I figured you were speaking about his first book there. Which seems to be largely data sans analysis.

I might pick it up some time, but The Washing of the Spears comes first, I've been intending to track down a copy for years now but never had the time. I get the best Christmas gifts.