Category Eastern Front

Their Wehrmacht was Better than our Army

Poking around the internet, I ran across an article from 1985 by the British journalist and historian Max Hastings, rather provocatively titled “Their Wehrmacht was Better than our Army.” It was published in the Washington Post. I had not seen it before (as I went to work for Trevor Dupuy in 1987):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1985/05/05/their-wehrmacht-was-better-than-our-army/0b2cfe73-68f4-4bc3-a62d-7626f6382dbd/

A few highlights:

  1. The language in the first couple of paragraphs is also pretty provocative. 
  2. The discussion then goes to Liddell Hart.
  3. The discussion then goes to Trevor Dupuy and Martin Van Creveld.
  4. From Dupuy: “On a man for man basis, German ground soldiers consistently inflicted casualties at about a 50 percent higher rate than they incurred from the opposing British and American troops under all circumstances. This was true when they were attacking and when they were defending, when they had a local numerical superiority and when they did not, when they won and when they lost.”
  5. From Hastings: “A spirit of military narcissism, nourished by such films as “The Longest Day,” “A Bridge Too Far” and “The Battle of the Bulge,” was perpetuated mythical images of the Allied and German armies.”
  6. From Hastings: “Yet to be a soldier in America has never been the honorable calling, outside a few thousand Army families. It has traditionally been the route by which young men of modest origins…may aspire to build a career.”

It is worthwhile to read the entire article.

Now, these claims were controversial in the 1980s, and a number of U.S. Army officers and people out at Leavenworth personally and professionally went after Trevor Dupuy over this issue. There was a long unpleasant discussion of that story written up by the lawyer Thomas Nutter. He was going to turn into a book, but I gather that effort was never completed.

I do address the subject of the relative performance of armies in combat in Chapters 4 through 7 of my book War by Numbers. 

 

The Soviet General Staff study on Kursk compared to Unit Records (part 3 of 3 – Conclusions)

What we did was a simple comparison of the Soviet General Staff study data on the air fighting in the south compared to the daily records we gathered from the Second and Seventeenth Air Armies. What we found was their were minor differences in the sortie counts, but overall that was close to what was reported in the unit records we had.

On the other hand, the reports on casualties was not. There were outrageously incorrect estimations of enemy losses, which is typical of Soviet accounts. But as significant, the reports of their own losses were low. In particular, our count of Second Air Army losses from 5-18 July was 481, their count was 371. This Soviet General Staff study only reported 77% of their losses. Does this mean that if I draw losses reports from the Sixteenth Air Army from the Soviet General Staff study (as I don’t have the unit records), should I “inflate” them by 30%? (the inverse of 0.77).

Added to that, they simply left out the Seventeenth Air Army losses (182 aircraft). It may have been an oversight or a deliberate effort to downplay their losses.

But, just to focus on the Second Air Army losses, the staff study has the total losses for the 5th – 18th as 371: 172 fighters, 31 bombers, and 168 assault. We have the Second Air Army’s losses for 5 to 18 July 1943, taken from their daily reports, as 481 (See Table IV.32 of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka). This includes 248 fighters, 48 bombers, 180 assault and 5 night bombers. So actual losses of the Second Air Army were 30% higher than what was reported in the Soviet General Staff study, or 28% if one leaves out the night bombers.

One does wonder about the process where even the internal classified post-operation staff studies understate their losses (in addition to many other errors). They did have the unit records available to them. In particular, their table is vastly off on the 5th of July when the Second Air Army lost 114 planes and the Soviet General Staff study reports only 78, but it consistently underreports for every single day. They also do not report the losses for the Seventeenth Air Army, which according to our count was another 182 or 221 planes lost (see Tables IV.34 and Tables IV.35). This does argue that the reported losses for the Sixteenth Air Army may be low compared to reality.

In the bigger picture, the Soviet General Staff studies are secondary sources, not primary sources. Furthermore they are secondary sources with considerable bias and errors. They invariably (grossly) overplay German losses and seemed to try to minimize their own losses. Furthermore their narrative of accounts often downplays certain aspects of their operations. They do have be used with extreme caution, as opposed to treating them as somewhat authoritative.

Now, Niklas Zetterling & Anders Frankson offer a similar discussion of the problems of relying on the Soviet General Staff studies in their book The Korsun Pocket: The Encirclement and Breakout of a German Army in the East, 1944. It is clear that these are secondary sources with biases that must be used with considerable caution.

The Soviet General Staff study on Kursk compared to Unit Records (part 2 of 3 – Airplane Losses)

This is the second part of my comparison of the data provided in the Soviet General Staff study on Kursk that was prepared in March-April 1944 compared to the Second and Seventeenth Air Army records that I have.

Losses:

            There are one table on losses in the Soviet General Staff study on Kursk that relate to the Second and Seventeenth Air Army. They are provided below. I have broken it into two tables for this blog:

The Air Struggle Along the Enemy’s Main Axis

                             Air          Enemy Losses:

                             Battles   Fighter   Bomber  Total

5 July                       81           71           83         154

6 July                       64           40           65         105 

7 July                       74           44           78         122  

8 July                       65           54           52         106

9 July                       62           49           22           71

10-14 July              152         112           93         205

15-18 July               43           45           27           72

Totals                     541         415         420         835

 

                            Second Air Army Losses:   

                            Fighter  Bomber  Assault   Total

5 July                       36           15           27           78

6 July                       23           —             22           45

7 July                       24           —             13           37

8 July                       24             1           16           41

9 July                       16             1           15           32

10-14 July                49           14           75         138

15-18 July              (the figures in the line above cover from 10-18 July)  

Totals                       172           31         168         371

            Now, these figures have been discussed before. The losses of the German VIII Air Corps was 111 planes, vice the 835 claimed here. The losses of the Second Air Army according to the records we reviewed was 481 planes from 5 to 18 July: see Appendix IV, Table II.32 (page 1424) of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka), vice the 371 reported here. This report also does not include Seventeenth Air Army claims or losses. The Seventeenth Air Army’s losses were significant (182 planes). So, it does appear that the Soviet General Staff study basically leaves out 292 out of their 663 airplanes losses (44% of their losses), effectively under reporting their air losses by almost half.

       This is concerning, for it does appear that Soviet General Staff study is understating the Second Air Army losses, omitting the considerable losses from the Seventeenth Air Army and of course, grossly overclaiming the number of German aircraft shot down. This was in an internal classified report that was supposed to be an analysis of the battle. Hard to properly analyze if your data is not correct.

The Soviet General Staff study on Kursk compared to Unit Records (part 1 of 3 – Sortie Counts)

Yak-9 at war memorial, northeast of Yakovlevo, Belrorod-Oboyan road

For my on-going Aces at Kursk book I was asked by the publishers to include a Chapter on the air war in the north from 5-11 July 1943. For the original Kursk project we were able to access the Second and Seventeenth Air Army records in the south. We did not attempt to obtain the Sixteenth Air Army records at that time (1993-1995). Therefore I was forced to rely on the Soviet General Staff study on Kursk that was prepared in March-April 1944 for the count of sorties and losses. As the staff study also reported the sorties and losses from the south, and I had the records for the air armies involved in that, I decided to do a little comparison and added a write-up of this to an appendix of the book.

Sortie Counts (I left out the table of the sortie count from Soviet General Staff study) :

          The Soviet General Staff study data on sortie counts is similar to the data we have assembled. The data we have for the Second and Seventeenth Air Armies operations are taken directly from the daily air army reports as drawn from the archives. The Soviet General Staff study may used these same reports, or used higher level reports or other assembled reports for their study. But there are minor differences between ours and their reports, so most likely they used other higher level or assembled reports for their study. For example, we have the Second Air Army flying 1,296 daytime sorties on 5 July. The Soviet General Staff study has them flying 1,274. There are also minor differences the next two days, but the two sets of counts are the same for 8 and 9 July and then vary slightly for most of the subsequent days (except for the 15th and 16th, where they again match). After the 5th, the largest difference is on the 12th, where our reports record 10 more daytime sorties. These are very minor differences. The Second Air Army nighttime sorties match in all cases between the counts we assembled from the air army daily reports and what the Soviet General Staff study reports.

            The Seventeenth Air Army is a little more complex as some of their missions were flown into the battle area while other of their missions were flown completely out of the battle area defended by the Voronezh Front. For the Kursk database project, I ended up reviewing each reported mission as to where it operated and made a judgment as to whether this mission was in the area of the Belgorod offensive or not. It does not appear that the Soviet General Staff study did that. For the 5th through the 16th, their estimate more closely matches with the total number of sorties flown by the Seventeenth Air Army than it does with my lower count of the number of sorties flown in the battle area. On eight of those 12 days in question, their totals matches the total we drew from the Seventeenth Air Army daily reports. The day they most differ was on 7 July when they reported 50 more sorties than we counted. We did re-check the original report and our total is 639. Suspect their number of 689 is a typo. As the Soviet General Staff study may have been drawn from a later aggregate report, there are multiple opportunities for typos.

           On the other hand, in the table we assembled of Seventeenth Air Army daytime sorties we had a lower count for “only those that were in the Belgorod Area or attacked the VIII Air Corps” (see table in Chapter Four). It is consistently lower from the 5th through the 16th, which the worse variance being on the 7th, where we count 588 as valid sorties in the battle area, whereas the Soviet General Staff study reports 689. On the 17th we count none in the area and on the 18th we count 12 sorties.

           Still there are a couple of observations we can make from this comparison. First, is that the Soviet General Staff study reports of Soviet sorties flown is fairly accurate in that it matches with records we have from the Second and Seventeenth Air Armies. This is important to note as we rely on the Soviet General Staff study for the count of sorties for the Sixteenth Air Army.

Waffen-SS Tiger Crews At Kursk

Just wanted to make you aware of a book that has just been released written by Col. French L. Maclean (USA, ret.) called “Waffen-SS Tiger Crews at Kursk” (Schiffer Military, Atlen, PA, 2020). I am graciously listed in his acknowledgements, although my involvement was minimal (a few emails exchanged and one long pleasant meeting for coffee). It may be a while before I actually sit down and go through it, as I am busy finishing up a book about the things that are flying over the Tigers.

When we first set the blog up we decided not to do book reviews on this blog. I will probably hold to that. There are a number of reasons for that: 1) I know of lot of these people, 2) it is hard to review a book if you are not an expert in the area (and there are very few areas I am expert in), 3) it is hard not to find errors in books on subjects that  you are an expert (and sometimes it is as often as much as one error a page), 4) if you do know the subject, then it ends up taking a lot of time (man-weeks) as you check and cross-check each point, 5) I tend to be hyper-critical, and 6) I have been known to get somewhat sarcastic and caustic when it is late at night and after a few drinks….so….I don’t review books.

 

Soviet Artillery in Proportion

A miniature wargaming website in the UK came to my attention because he quoted from my Kursk book (actually probably from my blog). The link is here:

https://notquitemechanised.wordpress.com/

Now, this was one of the many asides that I developed during the writing of the book and I felt one of the more significant discussions in the book. I am always concerned that a number of major points in that book were drowned in the 1,662 pages. I am glad he was able to identify and pull that one out.

The quote is in his blog post, but for the battle we estimated that the Germans fired 51,083 tons of ammunition while the Soviets fired 21,867 tons. I don’t think anyone else have made such a calculation.

For the Soviet rocket launchers (Katyushas) they fired an estimated 2,422 tons of ammo, while for the German rocket launchers (Nebelwerfers) they fired 5,916 tons of ammo.

This is subject that probably could be the basis of a complete stand-alone study or book. I suspect if this was the case at Kursk, where the Soviet army had three months to prepare and stockpile, then it is very much an issue for other, especially more mobile, operations.

 

P.S. The complete quote is also in this earlier blog post:

German versus Soviet Artillery at Kursk

Surviving Prokhorovka: German Armoured Longevity on the Eastern Front in 1943-1944

This is a link to a long article by Dr. Ben Wheatley called ‘Surviving Prokhorovka: German Armoured Longevity on the Eastern Front in 1943-1944.”: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/16161262.2020.1750841

I have not read it yet and probably will not for a while. I have some other deadlines I am working to. This is a subject we have discussed before on this blog.

Richthofen and Dessloch

Dessloch in 1944

In June 1943 Otto Dessloch took over command of the Fourth Air Fleet from Wolfram von Richthofen. Richthofen went off to command the Second Air Fleet in Italy. Although it was supposed to be temporary command, Dessloch remained in command of the Fourth Air Fleet until the middle of 1944.

Dessloch later became infamous for having conducted a retaliatory bombing of Paris in September 1944, after the allies had taken it over. He passed away in Munich in 1977.

Now, I have two dates as to when he took command of the Fourth Air Fleet, either 11 June or 13 June. Right now, I don’t have any solid confirmation for either date, although Wikipedia uses the 11 June date. Does anyone has some clear documentation that establishes what date he took command?

Von Richthofen and David Irving

A few years ago I wrote an article on the History News Network on my decision to quote from David Irving’s work in my book on Kursk. The article is here: https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/163814

This primarily concerned the conference on 4 May 1943 preceding the Battle of Kursk. This conference is described in some depth by Guderian in his book. Guderian’s account has often been accepted uncritically by some writers. The account provided by David Irving, quoted from Wolfram von Richthofen (the cousin of the famous Red Baron), gives a very different picture of the conference. I do not know which account is more correct, but decided to present them both in my book.

Nine months ago, Dr. Andrew Arthy in Australia commented on that article that he had copies of the notes make by Wolfram von Richthofen. I noticed the comment last week, so looked him up, emailed him and he willingly provided a copy of the memo. It came from Freiburg: BA-MA N 671/10. The image above is the copy he sent me.

Jay Karamales (who is not a native German speaker) provided me with the following translation of it:

1.) Operation Citadel: General Model said he wasn’t strong enough and would likely get stuck or would need a lot of time. The Führer was of the opinion that the attack must smash through in the shortest possible time under all circumstances. Colonel General Guderian held out the prospect that within six weeks he would be able to supply sufficient armored forces that this would be guaranteed. The Führer therefore decided to postpone it for six weeks. To confirm this decision from all directions, discussion with FM von Kluge and FM von Manstein. Initially, they agreed to a postponement; however, when they heard that the Führer had already made the decision along these lines, they promoted [preached, publicized] an immediate start to the attack, apparently so as not to be burdened [encumbered? In legalese “belasten” means incriminated] by the postponement themselves.

Chief of the General Staff has doubts as to whether Guderian’s promises can be kept, above all because a larger number of Tiger deliveries are expected, but it appears that their chassis construction is not in order.

The Chief of Luftflotte 4 takes the position that postponement was wrong under all circumstances. The Russians can (and do) deploy more defense systems in six weeks than we can attack weapons. The attack will go slowly if we wait to start it in mid-June. [If we launch it] At the beginning of May we might not get to Kursk in the scheduled time of 48 hours, but certainly within 4 days. The Russian had defensive structures only on the fronts and not as deep as now. The Russian forces were still in the process of freshening up and realigning, while the Russian is now strong and ready. Our own troops (army corps and divisions) had total confidence and absolute success. This has definitely been undermined by all the back and forth and the waiting [delays]. The postponement gives the Russian the opportunity to take the initiative, even if this is not likely. In any case, it is impossible to predict how the postponement of the operation and its probably much slower progress will affect the plan [intentions] in the northern part of the Eastern Front.

David Irving’s translation (and he does his own translation), from his book Hitler’s War, reads:

[On 27 April] General Model declared he was not strong enough and would probably get bogged down or take too long. The Fuehrer took the view that the attack must be punched through without fail in shortest time possible. [Early in May.] General Guderian offered to furnish enough tank units within six weeks to guarantee this. The Fuehrer thus decided on a postponement of six weeks. To get the blessing of all sides on this decision, he called a conference [on 4 May] with Field Marshals von Kluge and von Manstein. At first they agreed on a postponement; but when they heard that the Fuehrer had already made his mind up to that effect, they spoke out for an immediate opening of the attack—apparently in order to avoid the odium of being blamed for the postponement themselves.

 

Annoying Disclaimer (that I probably should not need to make): The fact that I have referenced David Irving’s work in an area where he correctly quoted someone does not mean that I agree with or in any way support other claims or work that he has done.

P.S. Dr. Andrew Arthy is currently working on: https://airwarpublications.com/air-war-courland-writing-begun/

P.P.S. Another translation of the same passage is provided in Christer Bergstrom’s newly released Black Cross, Red Star, Volume 5 book, page 181. It reads:

They initially agreed to a postponement; however, when they heard that the Fuhrer had already made a decision in this sense, they propagated an immediate commencement of the attack, apparently so as not to be burdened by the shift themselves.”

Is this my last Kursk book?

The Aces at Kursk book may be my last Kursk book I will do for a while, depending on demand. From my original mega-book I have prepared two books, The Battle of Prokhorovka and Aces at Kursk. From the original book I can prepare two more books: The Battle of Tolstoye Woods and The Belgorod Offensive. These four books would effectively complete the serialization of my original book. I could also create one additional book, which would be a 300-page book for a more general audience addressing the entire battle in the south.

Also in my files are the German and Soviet research materials and draft texts to produce two or three others books covering the Soviet offensive to take Kharkov in February 1943, the German counteroffensive to retake Kharkov in March 1943 and the Soviet offensive to take Kharkov in August 1943. As part of our urban warfare work, we pulled up the unit records for both sides for the three battles in and around Kharkov in 1943. The fighting in February and March of 1943 was the fighting that immediately preceded the Battle of Kursk. They are probably best covered in a single book. The fighting in August 1943 is a continuation of the Battle of Kursk and is considered part of the Battle of Kursk by Soviet historians.

This would potentially allow for a series of six to eight books covering most of the fighting on the Russian Front in the south from February to August 1943. But I am not sure whether I should do that or move onto other projects. Right now, leaning towards moving onto other projects.