It is probably safe to say that the German regular army was, in 1939, the most efficient national fighting force in the world. This was not necessarily because of its oft-quoted superiority of equipment, which was partly a propaganda myth that worked; the standard and really efficient equipment was in general only in small scale use right up to the end of the 1940 French campaign and even later. It was due more to the tradition of militarism in the German nation, a tradition that ensured even in peace time an excellent and forward-looking General Staff and an army and population whose patriotism, and hence their military morale, could be easily stirred; and to the above-mentioned propaganda element which gave extra strength to the advanced tactics that were being adopted. The exaggerated accounts of the opening campaign against Poland in 1939 hid the fact that the successful Blitzkrieg (lightning war) had been achieved with quite ordinary
for the period, and thus helped to confuse and dishearten the opposition when the same tactics were used in France the following year. French equipment then, especially in armor, was in many ways superior to equivalent German machines but the army organization was ineffective against the superb staff work and unexpected tactics of the Germans.
The basis of this military machine can be traced back to traditions of conscription and militarism, well before even the First World War, when the German General Staff never really thought of the army as having been defeated. This attitude, together with the resentment engendered by the Versailles treaty that among other things severely restricted weapons and armed forces, gave a boost to militarism that was showing results even before Hitler came to power in I933. With hindsight it would seem that the Versailles restrictions on armament in particular did much to pressure Germany into developing technically advanced equipment and tactics so that when the time came, an efficient army could be produced at short notice.
In consequence, through the late 1920s and early 1930s, in all arms basic equipment was being developed in civilian guises without the handicap of having to conserve existing material - the old story of the German worker who stole perambulator parts and found that on assembly they kept coming out as a machine gun, had more than a grain of truth in it. Certainly "commercial" car and lorry chassis turned suspiciously easily into military cross-country vehicles, while more potent weapons were actually developed and tested fairly openly in neighbouring countries. Thus when Hitler came to power and declared the creation of a revived armed services (die Wehrmacht) comprising das Heer(Army); die Luftwaffe (Air Force); die Kriegsmarine (Navy) the basic work had already been done in many cases. True, the development of battle tanks had been slowest as had the development of artillery - they were big things to hide in the finished form - but other equipment was almost ready for production.
Unfortunately the General Staff and the propaganda branch let themselves be carried away by their ideals. In 1936, for example the Einheits or standard vehichle programme provided for construction of a whole range of elaborate troop supply and weapons carriers most of which had cross-country capability and all of which were very expensive. It became rapidly obvious that to provide even the limited striking forces required by the new tactics would take far too long and be far too costly. A rapid revaluation had to be undertaken and in 1938 Colonel von Schell pushed through a revised equipment programme that drastically simplified army procurement and introduced common elements in both civilian and army vehicles.
Organisation and planning, on the other hand was not seriously inhibited by post-war restrictions and was pushed ahead urgently all through the inter-war period. Untouched by the "allied" concept of apparently preparing for the next war on the lines of the last, the German General staff seized on the ideas of the British Captain Liddel Hart who was advocating the development of armoured striking forces as the spearhead of an army. His concept was of the "expanding torrents", the smashing hammerblow through an enemy front by masses of armour and mobile infantry which protected its flanks simply by its own speed and by the disorganization it caused. The Germans developed this into the Blitzkrieg system which added to the tanks and infantry a force of ground attack aircraft to co-operate closely with the army and help to clear the way for the spearhead.
The thinking was sound; the snag was that, even with simplified equipment programmers German industry could not produce nearly enough offensive equipment to meet the army's needs. The original plan was for 63 armoured (Panzer) Divisions; at the end of 1939 there were but ten and in 1945 therewere only some 36, while it was impossible to keep even these fully equipped. Hence the Blitzkrieg concept virtually dictated the formation of the rest of the army. Apart from a limited number of motorized infantry divisions to back up the panzers, all infantry formations would have to rely mainly on horse drawn transport, being carried and supplied by rail over long distances. It was conordered that this was not of great importance since they were intended only as fairly static units, mopping up after the short sharp panzer war and garrisoning occupied districts. Time invalidated this theory but only because the blitzkrieg, while winning major battles, did not in Russia provide the short sharp war it was intended to do.
Nonetheless, none of this was apparent in 1939. The political side is not relevant here except where it affected the army as a fighting machine but it had by then contributed in several ways to army tactical efficiency. One major one was in the annexation of Czechoslovakia which, from the military point of view, provided mobilization practice and an efficient battle-tank to stop the gap until home-developed machines come along! More than a quarter of the tanks used in the 1940 French campaign were of Czech design. It had also, however, already started to reduce the independent decision-making power of the General Staff, a tendency that was eventually to subordinate military policy directly to the control of Hitler, and eventually to embarrass the army in many ways.
In the field, initially the Blltzkneg worked. With crushlng air superlority and the unexpected tactics of the lightning war, first the Poles in Autumn 1939 and then the French and British eight months later were caught unprepared and decisively defeated on land. The German army found itself master of western Europe with a reputation for high fighting power and advanced equipment. The paucity of such equipment was not noticed and the success in some part seems to have hidden its lack even from the German political leaders.
During the ensuing year, much improved equipment, both light and heavy, was in fact coming into service The main battle tanks Types III and IV, new infantry weaponry and tactics based upon the lessons learn were ready for the major turning point of the war - the opening of the Russian front in June 1941. Although it exposed Germany to that constant General Staff nightmare, a war on two major fronts, at first this appeared a feasible operation. The panzer tactics and the sweeping outflanking movements worked; the opposition was driven back in great leaps and bounds. But it also very soon revealed the two basic weaknesses that defeated the German army.
Firstly, it became quickly evident that production capacity was not sufficient to equip properly the rapid expansion made necessary by the vast distances of Russia; a situation made worse by operations in the Balkans and in Africa which drained off further resources. The non-mobile infantry Divisions in particular proved a considerable handicap and the Russian winter of 1941-2 showed up a new weak link - unpreparedness to face extremely low temperatures. The wastage in vehicles, equipment and men was enormous and continual. The Blitzkrieg for the first time failed and in doing so sealed the final military defeat.
Secondly the strictly military control of operations was over. Even during the summer of 1941, central OKH control had grown so weak that individual army group commanders were interfering in the strategic planning by initiating operations on their own; OKH was really emasculated when on December 19, 1941, Hitler took over direct command of the army and increasingly interfered in its activities. While the offensives were taking place this was not quite so serious but once, from late 1942 on, the army was forced on to the defensive on all fronts, its effects both on efficiency and morale became extremely serious. Hitler developed an obsession about not giving up ground which lost vast quantities of men and material that the army could not spare; Germany had only a very limited potential in a long war and such epic disasters as Stalingrad and Tunis where whole armies of 100,000 men and more were lost complete with their equipment were largely irremediable so far as army strength was concerned. In addition his reaction to the 'independence' of the Russian front generals was to tie their hands by far too detailed orders which often could not take into account the actual circumstances in the field.
Here the political side of the war machine was a crippling handicap to the better field commanders, as it was in the rise of the 'private armies' formed by various factions within the Nazi regime. The most well-known of these was the Waffen-SS (Schutzstaffel) the armed branch of the Nazi Party's own force. From 1943 on, the best equipment, the best fighting men, the most regular supplies, were directed into this army which totalled over 38 Divisions by the war's end. At its best it was an effective fighting force second to none, but for the army command it had serious disadvantages.
First and foremost its field commanders always had a direct line of communication to Nazi headquarters and hence to OKW - the supreme command of the Wehrmacht; there was always a struggle for control in the field so that army commanders could never entirely assimilate SS units within their commands. Secondly; its loyalty eventually was to its creator Heinrich Himmler and to Hitler, not to the army General staff. Thirdly; in its creator's quest for power it soon included a number of almost completely useless Divisions sometimes known as the joke SS or Byzantine SS, composed almost entirely of foreign nationals and criminals some of whom fought well but many of whom could be guaranteed to desert at the first opportunity; yet they still had to be employed in war and they still consumed valuable equipment.
On a lesser scale the same can be said for the field Divisions hastily formed during 1943-45, from redundant Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine personnel. They were not trained to the standard of regular divisions, their equipment was not so good, and their former masters were always trying to keep some measure of control. Even the Volksturm, the last-ditch home guard that was blown up out of all proportion for political reasons by Martin Bormann - who wanted his own army - diverted some effort and equipment. As several commentators have said, it was a wonder that the poor regular army ever got any replacements at all!
On the credit side, however, political pressure had some rationalizing effect on development and production. From 1942 on, new and for its period very advanced, equipment began to reach the field, though never in sufficient quantity. Despite their teething troubles the new tanks, guns, infantry carriers and light infantry weapons were superior in design to equivalent allied equipment and it was only this superiority of designs coupled to the still efficient military machine and the resilience of the average German soldier, that enabled the army to fight on for so long. For, from the time of the successful allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944, the original defects of the Army ensured its eventual destruction.
Firstly, the basic lack of resources was emphasized by an ever increasing allied superiority in the air and an apparently inexhaustible allied source of equipment and manpower. If the Germans lost a thousand men or fifty tanks - or, more importantly, a fuel or ammunition dump - it was very difficult to replace them, especially as four fronts were calling for help. If the allies lost 1oo tanks another 1oo appeared as if by magic. Then, too, allied air superiority invalidated the German strategic defence pattern that had been forced on them by the split between mobile and largely immobile Divisions. On the western front, with rail traffic disrupted by air strikes, they could no longer easily move the horse drawnin fantry Divisions and had to rely on a crust defence backed by barely adequate mobile reserves. Yet allied air power also seriously hampered the mobility of these reserves. Petrol stores dropped rapidly and even heavy armour could not move safely in daylight. Thus even the panzer and motorized units, bled of much equipment for the Russian front, were drawn into the crust defence. It was a very hard crust to crack as the allies found at Caen and at Monte Casino, but once it broke there was little to hold advancing troops and, of more importance much equipment had to be abandoned through lack of transport. Matters were not made easier for the tactical commanders by Hitler's continued demands not to give ground, since it was then largely impossible to build up reserve lines or to conduct a proper strategic withdrawal.
On the
Russian front, air superiority was never such a problem but the extremes of climate and the vast distances handicapped the German army in much the same way. There was never enough mobile transport or battle equipment and what there was wore out quickly. In the circumstances the German withdrawal was a good piece of tactical fighting since, until the Russians used Blitzkrieg tactics themselves in overwhelming strength in 1945, some sort of a front line was always maintained.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about the German army in fact is that, despite political interference, its losses and the impossibility of ever meeting its needs, it remained a cohesive organization up to the end of the war. This was partly helped by the increasingly strict combing out of civilian workers to supply manpower needs and by the staggering capacity of German industry to maintain high production totals even under the allied bombing. Nonetheless it was a considerable feat to be able to raise a mobile counter attack force of the size and quality that tried to burst through the Ardennes in December 1944. That the gamble failed through, almost inevitable the German weaknesses of political interference, lack of fuel and the superior capacity of the allied forces especially in the air, does not conceal the basic feat.
In
summery, the German army in the 1939-45 war suffered from the startb y inadequate supplies of men and material. This would not have been vital had the Blitzkrieg philosophy always won campaigns instead of only major battles. But the Russian Blitzkrieg failed. From that time on the army was committed to a long drawn-out struggle on several fronts with inadequate mobility to maintain its front lines. The manpower and equipment situation was gravely worsened by political interference which threw away whole armies for militarily unsound reasons and this problem was compounded when the additional front was opened by the Allied Invasion of Europe. Lack of mobility in Russia and allied air superiority in France, together with political pressures, forced the adoption of a crusts defence. This in turn caused further heavy losses when the crust was broken. What enabled the army to fight so long, so effectively under these circumstances was the adaptability of its organization both for fighting and supply, the technical superiority of much of its equipment and a basic capacity to improvise. The Germans, through sheer necessity were the first modern army to carry out the now fashionable doctrine of minimum manpower, maximum firepower. The average Division at full establishment in 1939 was 15-17,000 men. By 1945 manpower strength of a Division was down to 11-13,000 at full establishment, but its total firepower, particularly in infantry weaponry had actually increased.
W.J.K. Davies, "German Army Handbook 1939-1945", Ian Allan,Ltd., 1973
In wartime photos of individuals wearing the General Assault Badge, it is common to see it with a "frosted" finish (a rich silver-white appearance).
