Soviet Tank Doctrine - Kursk 1943 featuring Dr. Roman Töppel
Dr. Roman Töppel is the leading German military historian on the Battle of Kursk. In this video we talk about the Soviet Tank Doctrine at Kursk 1943 and a few other topics.
His book on the Battle of Kursk is available in English, German, French and a few other languages.
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» SOURCES «
Töppel, Roman: Kursk 1943
Parshall, Jonathan B.; Tully, Anthony P.: Shattered Sword. The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway. Potomac Books: United States, 2007.
Jentz, Thomas L.: Panzertruppen - The complete guide to the Creation & Combat Employment of Germany’s Tank Force - 1933-1942. Schiffer Military History: Atglen, USA, 1996
Corum, James S.: The Roots of Blitzkrieg. Hans von Seeckt and German Military Reform
Pöhlmann, Markus: Der Panzer und die Mechanisierung des Krieges: Eine deutsche Geschichte 1890 bis 1945. Ferdinand Schöningh: Paderborn, 2016.
#SovietTankDoctrine #WW2 #BattleOfKursk
I also wear a suit when discussing Soviet tank doctrine
im surprised they kept speaking english at all and didnt just revert to the universal language of war.. german.
He should lecture in war colleges. Cadets must learn
@@Sir_Godz basically
@@skalderman after the revolution, we‘ll make sure to hire him.
Yay, my favorite show "Fifteen minutes with Dr Töppel" is back!!
I will agree that during Kursk, there were small counterattacks by the Russian armour formations: independent, separate tank brigades and corps (A Soviet tank corps is slightly smaller than a German Panzer divisions) to hit the flank of the penetrating Panzer Corps (about 3 divisions); however, it was hardly a problem of coordination that these tanks were thrown in piece meal against a larger attacking German tank force since there were manoeuvre plans for them as part of the defensive plan. These formations were attached to the defending rifle divisions (a tank company or corps) and corps (a tank brigade or corps) with explicit instruction to forbid breaking up these formation and use them as infantry support. Instead, they were used as flanking mobile counterattack forces. As the German ground forward, chewing up the front line rifle divisions, attempting to encircle them, the rifle regiments and divisions would continue to fall back to the parent divisions' and corps' second line. Their retreat was helped by these independent tank formations that fought to cause casualties, attrition, and disorganisation to the attacking German; not allowing them to rest. These formation were not of high priorities: they had Matildas, M3 Lees (coffin of seven brothers) but they were there to contribute. The effect of these attacks were that the attacking panzer spearhead started with 3 division abreast, then it had to use one then later two of those divisions as flank guard. Then the leading panzer division had to chop off its regiments to serve as more flank guards until there are hardly any more tank to lead the attack. Then the Soviet Tank Armies (~3 Corps each) crashed in. As far as a defensive plan go; that's about as good as you can be. use infantry to slow down the enemy, then prevent total encirclement by local mobile reserves. Identify the main enemy attacking axis to direct Army and Front level mobile reserves. Then ultimately go on the counteroffensive, which were planned before the end of the German attack.
Just like all historical talks. You start on Soviet tank doctrine and end up at the Wehrmarcht tank divisions, logistics and man-power losses. That is what I like. Great job!
I recommend everyone have a couple of beers and re-watch this episode with the english closed captions turned on. It is hysterical!!!
The two things that struck me the most about this video was Töpels comment pointing out that Germany had more than enough tank divisions but not enough infantry. That was a connection i had not made before and it makes perfect sense! The other was your comment MHV about the use of artillery against tanks. I was always under the impression that Artillery firing at tanks was a last resort outside of harassing/suppressing fire. I'd like to hear more about this in another video.
Many Miles Away in the Desert War in WW2 the British 25-pounder gun-howitzers were deployed in their secondary role as anti-tank guns during some of the battles, for example Dead Sunday.
Well, it is unusual simply because you need quite disciplined or experienced artillerymen to pull it off. Artillery are supposed to simply relocate if they take fire or get engaged, and yet here you are taking fire from the most powerful type of frontline force as it engages you. You need the confidence to apply your weaponry ina highly unusual way ina very stressful situation, or you will be overrun. You need either the discipline to rely on your training is a situation that feels like a disaster, or the experience to have seen this done and know it works. And either help with the fire discipline needed to fire in an unusual way. Discipline is a rare commodity in many armies because it takes training and confident troops, which are expensive to keep up, or experience, which is the most expensive thing of all to gain and the fastest to deplete.
Although possibly a good idea would be to occasionally rotate NCOs between direct-fire and indirect-fire companies; someone who can offer in-the-moment leadership when it counts.
UnreasonableOpinions with the 25-pounder batteries they were trained tor both direct and indirect fire, unlike most other RA batteries excluding the 2-pounder anti-tank batteries. But it wasn't commonplace for them to be used in this role and the only times I am aware of all relate to actions in the Western Desert.
More than enough tanks and not enough spare parts to keep them in operation. Because Speer liked to be able to report that he'd delivered a big number of tanks. So if he had enough parts to build 300 tanks and 100 tanks worth of spare parts which could keep most of them operable and repaired most of the time he would instead build 400 tanks and if they broke down or got damaged they stayed like that until the trickle of spare parts that were built got through.
Some very good, accurate assessments. For example, your remarks about artillery tactics are spot on. I speak from my experience as a Field Artillery officer. In my early training, we were told that artillery was not very effective against armor. Later, in actual live fire tests, the U.S. Army discovered that artillery is very effective against tanks. You can damage them, even knock their tracks off, strip away radio antennas, even knock them out with occasional direct hits. If nothing else, artillery forces the crew to button up, reducing visibility and speed.
It was reported that one of the big gunned Russian tracked units could not penetrate the Ferdinand the impact of it huge shell would still kill its crew , needing not fixing but recrewing
Did you shoot 155's?
@@andymaciver1760 Yes, although as an officer I usually directed others to do so. Occasionally I got to pull a lanyard, though. I also served in 105mm units.
@@cgross82 hell yeah!
the Ferdinand tanks were heavily armoured and while the largest calibre Russian tanks in the IS family could not penetrate the armour it was possible to kill the crew from a direct hit without penetration. causing them to be recrewed.
Before a battle Generals always sweat how much Armor, Artillery and Air Power they got but the first thing they always run out of is Infantry.
The title says this vid is on Soviet Armor Doctrine, *but is this really the case*
it is way more
JacatackLP lol, nice one
Military History not Visualized seriously though keep up the great work mate, you’re great at presenting military history without interjecting ideology where it doesn’t belong
I see what you did there!
wait until he makes a vid about the Grant/Lee tank and you`ll end up learning about the intricacies of the bloody summer of 64.
I've said for many years that why the infantry is called "The Queen of Battle" is not a reference to a tart sitting on a throne. It refers to what is the most important piece on the chess board. Your satellite guided missiles, multi million dollar stealth aircraft, or your "indestructible" tanks can not guarantee a victory untill the infantryman goes towards and occupies the objective.
Well, according to a professional infantryman I knew, infantry is the "Queen of battle because we always get screwed" and Artillery is the King of battle because "they know where to put the balls".
Real eye opener about Guderian. Your statement about depleted manpower was very interesting too, and added to the growing body of work dispelling the long time myth that world war 2 was all about tanks. I’ve read Basil Liddell Hart’s History of the Second World War; the more I read the more I wonder how much of his work was coloured by a few individuals like Guderian. He talks about inherent weaknesses introduced by the dilution of the panzer division to one tank regiment instead of two prior to Barbarossa, which reduced their punch. He then describes the increased proportion of infantry and artillery as a negative, reducing effectiveness and mobility. It’s easy to accept that until you dig deeper. More than anything else, it seems that Germany ran out of well trained soldiers.
from what I know many myths go back to Liddell Hart's work, I am happy I never read it. It was a different time and situation, different standards and sources were limited.
Military History not Visualized in hindsight he gives a lot of attention to the British and in particular Africa. A chapter dedicated to Crusader, another to Torch, the race for Tunis and so on. The Eastern front years get one chapter each. Perhaps he mainly relied on word of mouth opinions from generals and their memoirs (Guderian, Manstein) for the eastern front, while having a lot more detail and experience with the British. He could talk about Rommel escaping capture in the desert despite sleeping amongst British formations and German leapfrogging anti tank/panzer tactics, but Kursk received about 2/3 of a page.
yeah, there was limited or no access to most documents. Kursk is BADLY represented in some cases, e.g., Overy's How the Allies won, which as far as I know is really good, is deeply flawed when it comes to Kursk.
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized Liddell is the reason we think that WW1 generals were all useless horrible buffoons who cared nothing for their men and sent waves upon waves of men against machine guns. He's almost entirely the reason the entire "blitzkrieg" myth exists and he's also responsible for making Rommel out to be a military genius who who also a great guy (definitely not a Nazi and best mates with Hitler). For one guy he really has distorted history quite amazingly
@@lovablesnowman It is not just one person. Unless one has lived the era,understanding is difficult. Books written in 1969 made it clear the Soviets-read Stalin- had not allowed the West to confirm the death of Adolph Hitler. Virtually from the moment Soviet troops marched into agreed upon treaty victory positions,real information stopped then and there. Not just the death of Hitler. Stalin was convinced,right up to May 1945 ,the West might very well conclude a separate peace. Early in the convoys to Murmansk,even though putative allies were suffering and dying to get supplies to an ally,the very harbour codes,positions of navigation buoys,maps of Murmansk seaway and ships pilots were deliberately not made available to the mariners,ashore accommodation was disgusting and limited,etc. Information about ANYTHING the USSR had done was limited,subjected to politicized propaganda,and subject to change based on who achieved high command years after the war. One of the very first achievements of the brand new UN was to get Stalin and friends to remove themselves from Iran,despite clear treaties signed by Stalin and Molotov. The Lend Lease supplies by train were a river by 1945,and Soviet troops were there ostensibly to protect the railway. Realizing Stalin would not keep his word,Harry Truman shut down the supplies almost overnight. Getting the Russians out of a nonbelligerent country took effort and patience. Implying that there was some sort of failure by postwar scholars to get so much correct implies that they had access to documents the Russians had no interest in supplying. How do you come to accurate conclusions when there is little available information,and what there is remains flawed and subject to change ? Only with a brief period after the breakup of the USSR were scholars allowed into the archives. Confirming ,by the way that Stalin himself,countersigned by Molotov,had ordered the Katyn Forest executions,then blandly lied when the missing personnel were sought in changed circumstances . His signature was on that paper. By all means seek after what really happened. But there are valid reasons as well as ego driven ones as to why we had what we did.
The 450 Russian tanks of the 7 Tank Brigades that attacked "LAH" on July 12 had to go in two echelons. They were packed in so close the units got intermingled and the attack became chaotic. I'm not sure another 350 tanks would have made a difference at that time.
Tanks take ground, but it takes an infantryman to hold that ground. The Sergeant in the movie "The Big Red One"
Even that is an oversimplification. The tanks need the infantry to effectively take the ground as well.
Well, the thing about losing capability of engaging tanks with artillery in direct fire mode and by infantry assaults can be explained very easily - both approaches require great amount of training and discipline from the units involved. So it is common knowledge that quality of training in the German army decreased as war progressed.
1)Bad planning 2)Leader not having developed a good plan c, retreat 3)The enemy knowing your every move as they can intercept your messages 4) total war 5) wasn’t a world war it was a race war which doesn’t help recruitment
Very very good talk between both individuals here. Great stuff. Can, and WILL re-watch this again.
"Thank God the Russki's are only using 400 tanks in this attack..." said no German infantryman ever.
Guderian becomes alien and Buddha le Han
Note that Dr. Roman Töppel did not receive the questions before my visit, so he had no time to prepare. Dr. Roman Töppel's book on the Battle of Kursk is available in English, German, French and a few other languages. Check it out on amazon or your local bookstore.
No Kindle version?
@@simplicius11 There is nothing bad with what he said. It doesn't give a complete picture (here your clarifications are welcomed) but details are impossible in this format (short general discussion). I think that în his book things are different.
Artilley was still the king of the battlefield in WW2, combined arms tactics just made it more useful especially when it became self propelled.
@@simplicius11 you silly sausage you hes referencing how they broke through originally and the Soviet command got spookied Trust me this guy knows more than you about Kursk
Reading Dr. Toppel's book currently; highly impressed with level of knowledge/insight that he has about the battle and the background workings on both sides. Also this is the first book in my collection about Kursk that compresses critically important facts in compact format that is easy to read and understand for someone who is not professional historian. Maps are easy to understand and very well done. Thank you for recommendation.
thank you, I will forward this to Roman.
Roman wants you to know that he was very happy about your praise!
Really good talk. Makes me wonder if the reason so many prisoners were taken in various instances has to do with the fighting element being defeated and the support units being routed because they we unable to to fight their way out with the "spear tip" being broken. Love all your work.
it doesnt help the situation when there are so few transport trucks to utilize to either move in reinforcments and materials or retreat
Generally its a good rule of thumb that only half of any given formation is intended for frontline fighting, the rest is some form of support or command element.
i really love the videos you guys do together. at the end of this one you get into some really profound stuff. good work and thanks!
Love the talks with Dr. Toppel, would love to see more in the future
Nice suit
Is that a Hugo Boss? :-)
Really enjoy this format of the two of you talking. Brilliant. Thank you.
Great video, love the collaboration between you two. Obviously know what you’re doing! Keep it up
Thanks great stuff. Just bought the book.
Good chat, lots of detail
"Hitler said 'The tanks shall replace infantry'. And it didn't work at all!" bruh just have the crews drive up to the front and disembark
crackpot mechanised infantry lmao
"Drive me closer! I want to hit them with my sword!"
There's a point raised about the misuse of the field replacement battalions, which were supposed acclimatise the replacements and finish their training with local combat knowledge. A lot of these were used up in the 1942-43 fighting, which left units without a way of properly training replacements.
The British faced the same issues in Normandy, for example Operations such as Epsom. Monty had severe man power shortages and had to fall back on the plentiful easily replaced Armour Divisions and heavy bombers. The heavy loses outside Caen had excaerbated these issues, tired "over" experienced units who thought they'd done their bit in North Africa suffered ""dilution" as experienced NCO's and officers were stripped to "stiffen" green units who had sat in the UK, or were rotated home or died leading from the front. 7th Armoured never were able to match their 1943 operational competency, but 11th rose to prominance.
During this excellent presentation I kept thinking of the massive Porsche Elephant tank which didn't even have any machine guns mounted to defend itself in close quarters fighting. It proved practically helpless against infantry and was a failure at Kursk. A symbol of Herr Toppel's point. Even today only the infantry can seize and hold ground. It is their main role.
I would suggest reading Töppels book about Kursk. He talks about the Ferdinand there, and contrary to popular believe they did pretty well. According to multiple soldiers of the Panzerjäger-Regimet 656 (the unit with the Ferdinands) the muzzle blast of the 8,8cm PjK was demoralizing enough for the enemy infantry to stay at distance. Even the Soviet side supports these reports in saying that some Ferdinands were in fact burned down with Molotov cocktails, but not by Soviet soldiers. The Ferdinands were set on fire by their own crews after getting knocked out by gunfire or being immobilized with no chance of recovery. All in all the Ferdinand was actually quite successful at Kursk acting like a battering ram. Needless to say your point about infantry being essential still stands.
@@SchleiferGER thanks for the tip and for reminding me of the correct name for that tank.
Insightful discussion. The quote about Guderian's lack of modesty is a good life lesson for all of us.
It is especially interesting because Soviets had exactly opposite experience dynamics in comparison to Germans. While German capabilities and skills degraded as war progessed, Soviets actually improved while suffering much heavier losses. I encountered only one reakkt viable explanation for that fact - Soviet Union performed a massive educational reform in the middle of 1930 which increased drastically amount of people who were able to recieve education and first generation of children who were able to benefit from that educational reform became old enough to be drafted precisely in the middle of the war between 1942-44. So it is possible explanation for why Soviets were able to imrpove while suffering so much losses.
A few reasons: - In Soviet public schools, as in current public schools of many formerly allies to the Soviet Union, students are taught basic things: marching, crawling, rifle firing, handling, and field stripping, first aid, bandaging, throwing grenades, map reading, etc ... I grew up in Vietnam and I, along with all my classmates, boys and girls, was taught those things (except for firing a rifle. Bullets were expensive for our economy then). Even when they swept through a village and rounded up people to put into uniforms, these guys got "some" training. The rest of the training are generally done by the training battalions and units of the divisions and corps. - Age. Mid-level commanders and NCOs of the German army in 1942 were middle-age veterans of WWI. They were steady and calm and heard bullets and explosion so it's good. However, as anyone over the age of 35 knows, you slow down at that age. The age of the high commands also played a role. In 1942, Chief of Staff of the OKH, Franz Halder was 58. His counterpart, Vasilevsky was 47. You can go down the list and look at the various Army Group and Front (Soviet AG equivalence) commanders and see the same pattern. Possibly the best operational AG/Front commanders from each side were Guderian, Manstein, Mellenthin, Rokkosovky, Vatutin, and Chernyakhovsky. In 1944, they were 56, 57, 40, 48, 43, and 38, respectively. A study by a couple of Swedes authors pointed out that in 1941, the average age of a German Army and Army Group commander was 58. Their counterparts (Army and Front cmdr. in the Red Army) was 44. Fast forward to 1944-45 and the Germans were in their 60s and the Red commanders were in their prime. Being young gives you the aggression and boldness that often create successful military operation. In fact, Vatutin and Chernyakhovsky were so aggressive and bold that neither survived the war. Vatutin was ambushed by Ukrainian Insurgents and Chernyakhovsky was killed while riding on a Jeep near the front line. - There are many reasons for the younger Red Army commanders: the Great Purge, and the Red Army overall was a younger organisation. Also 1942-43, so many ageing commanders were lost in battles or after failures, demoted to unimportant areas. You barely hear about Voroshilov, Shaposhnikov, Budyonny, Timoshenko after summer 1943. They were of the same generation as Franz Halder, Guderian, and the likes. They retired to less important Reserve Fronts and districts and paved the way for the younger generation of the likes of Zhukov, Vasilevsky, Vatutin, etc ... to take over. Some of these guys saw meteoric rise in the ranks, jumping 2-3 command echelons in a year. The best example was Rokkosovky: he was fished out of prison, given a new set of steel teeth, then commanded a division in 1941. By winter of 1942, he was a Front commander.
A lot of the early soviet losses were "beginner's mistakes" and frankly due to a lack of motivation (who wants to support stalin? look what happens to people who oppose him...) so yeah Russian units fighting badly or simply surrendering without fighting is common for about the first three months. The survivors however are battle hardened. Meanwhile the new recruits are all in because this is what happens when someone invades your country to enslave and exterminate you. So the class of 1942 was shall we say much more "motivated" than that of 1941. Meanwhile in 1942 senior leadership has been finally fully purged and is learning all kinds of lessons like "Zhukov Zhukov and more Zhukov and by the way Fuck Timoshenko". So it's not only the ground forces who improve qualitatively it's also the leadership. Lessons fully learned in 1943 are applied with devastating effect in 1944. Oh and all along you are moving from BT to T34 and picking up Katyusha's and a bunch of allied trucks and radios. Had the war continued into 1946 the USSR likely would have went all the way to France but would have no nukes and so would ultimately lose against the Anglo-Americans.
@@QuizmasterLaw >so yeah Russian units fighting badly or simply surrendering without fighting is common for about the first three months. The thing about Soviets fighting badly or especially surrendering without fighting in the first three months is that everybody speaks about it like it is a fact, but to my knowledge nobody actually managed to provide a documented proof of mass surrender event from the Soviet troops in 1941. Plenty of Soviets surrendered - yeah, but they almost always surrendered in conditions in which no futher resistance was possible. Also I must point out that Soviet generalship wasn't purged with the exception of general Pavlov and his staff and some air force generals who were arrested before the war. So in that regard very little changed in terms of personalities in the command positions between 1941 and 1942.
Plenty of surrendering happened in the first three months. And not much at all after that. I bet you know why. I point out the surrenders not to attack the quality of the Russian soldier, who is a brave defender and a hard soldier able to subsist under conditions which European soldiers cannot. The Russian soldier is hard, competent, brave and when PROPERLY led cannot be defeated in a defensive battle. My view of the debacle which was the winter war is that Stalin was sorting out which generals were in fact loyal and competent versus which were either disloyal or incompetent. We can ONLY explain Timoshenko in that way and can also explain Zhukov that way too, though in the opposite direction. Lots of incompetent generals were exposed in 1940 and by 1942 were no longer combat commanders.
@@QuizmasterLaw >Plenty of surrendering happened in the first three months. And not much at all after that. Surrenderings were happening throughout the entire war right until the end. What is important is under what circumstances Soviets soldiers were actually surrendering? And the answer is that they surrendered only after no means of resistance remained available for them. So motivation was there from the very beginning. And I must note that first three months of the war were actually hardest on the Germans (most casualties suffered) until Stalingrad. They were literally loosing two times more men per day in June-July '41 than in November '41. >We can ONLY explain Timoshenko It is not hard to explain Timoshenko and plenty of others. In fact Stalin explained that himself in his response to Mekhlis proposition to remove Kozlov from the post of commander of Crimean front. Stalin answer was 'I do not have any Hindenburgs for you. You must deal with what you have'. Soviets were simply under serious defecit of trained and competent officers on all levels from the junior lieutenants to army generals. And the only way to solve it was through exposing all these people to direct experience.
Ooh! Slight objection on the point about 10. Pz.Bde at Kursk. The commander of the Panzer Brigade was furious with von Strachwitz (commander of GD Pz.Rgt) (it's in the after-action reports) that Strachwitz for misusing the Panthers, for refusing to cooperate with the Panther unit commanders and *stripping* the Panthers of artillery and infantry support. Based on some of the after-action reports, I would say that a lot of the German commanders relied on the new Panther, Tiger and Ferdinand tanks to do the work of the combined arms teams and the reports emphasise that *tanks must be supported to be effective*.
"they have not the skill" - Auszug aus einem Gespräch unter Akademikern
More Dr. Töpple please...👍
There's no such thing as a perfect battle. It does strike me, however, that the Soviet counter thrust at Orel put Model's force in desperate trouble. A couple of weeks later, there was a breakthrough against AG South. By December the Russians were over the Dnieper. And if Soviet operations lacked finesse - they could compensate with blood. I wouldn't underestimate the continued skills of the German Army. They had a qualitative edge well into 1944. Bagration was something of a turning point, as was the Allied breakout before Falaise - no doubt the Germans were losing their qualitative edge, and faced ever worse odds. But in 1943 it still took very hard fighting and a willingness to accept losses to push back the Wehrmacht. When you say infantry was "queen" of the battlefield - I think that really means artillery was top gun. US ground forces were never uniformly strong - too many skilled men were flying airplanes or on ships. But US artillery was good from day one - if you look at the allied casualties in the West (German casualties actually surpassed them in the West after D-Day) compared to Russian losses in the East, it's obvious that the US style of combat was a lot more efficient in terms of blood. That didn't matter in Stalin's world - or Hitler's. It mattered a lot in the US and UK.
"Soviet tank doctrine" *How German doctrine deteriorated*
Syphoning the best cadre (the nco's/officers, both combat an those responsible for training) of the Panzer arm to the Waffen SS panzer divisions or the Panzer Lehr aided in the decrease of the general quality of the German armed forces in WW2. It may have led to units with impressive combat record, but the high casualty levels of these units also meant that much of the experience was lost.
Even during the cold war the Soviet Union did not have a radio in every tank that could both transmit and receive. Only the platoon leader had a radio that could both transmit and receive. Also maps were considered classified documents so only the platoon leader had a map.
Good vid, cool guest
When will we get to hear you shout "panzergranate laden!"?
Ze russian schweins are spamming HE and destroying our wunderwaffen!
I'll also mention about Guderian that he was responsible for 2nd Pz Gruppe/Armee becoming badly overstretched at the end of Operation Typhoon - sometimes one can be too reckless!
Hmm.. The Germans WERE stopped at Kursk on July 12, after 1 week of their slow advance. At Prokhorovka, on July 12, the German 2nd panzer corp suffered high enough losses to stop advancing toward Kursk. Manstein's orders were very clear- capture Kursk ASAP, not to capture and hold Prokhorovka! Yes, the 5th tank army losses were higher, but our tankers made the whole Citadel operation no longer feasible.
As far as the question of tanks versus guns, it's a question of circumstance or rather of placing things in their proper perfective
Decisions get made within a certain context with certain factors in play. It a son of a bitch
It would be good if you could give examples of how the chain of command would have operated and what orders would have been issued.
Am I wrong to conclude that assigning more resources to enhance infantry regarding combined arms warfare (also meaning more mechanized / motorized infantry) would have been more effective than the increased tank production?
This is an interesting video in regards coordination. American authors are almost sneeringly critical of Ozawa;s tactical plan at the Battle of the Philippine Sea where he attempted to coordinate land and sea-based air attacks, and use the nearby islands to shutt;e his naval aircraft for attacks. This always struck me as a pretty clever plan, and one wonders about two things: 1. Would it have woirked if Ozawa had better aircraft and above all better trained pilots and commanders, and 2. If the USN had not the advantage in numbers and technology. I wonder if in a similar circumstance at this stage of the war if the USN could have pulled off a plan like this if the tables were reversed. That was not the case, and the guys that could have helped Ozawa pull it off and do some real damage ti the US fleet were sleeping with the fishes by then. If they were still operational and were working with a real carrier admirla unlike Midway.........US attempts at this done poorly early in the war at Midway, but of course, the USN had learned important lessons by 1944. There were still mistakes made in the battle by the USN, but the victors write the history and hindsight is always 20/20.
If I wasn’t reading like three books already I would pick this up
I love history . Can you make channel where you are decision man General, and what you do to win the battle, theoretical of course. Thank you . Best regards from Nevada
Could you do a video that looks at what happened in the Polish and Western campaigns that led to the reduction in the number of tanks per Panzer division before Barbarossa? I have read that it was just because Hitler wanted more Panzer divisions, but you guys hint that it was more a command and control issue here. Would love to know the reasoning! Great videos. I love how people still disagree with you even though you use so many primary documents hahaha
Might be covered eventually, started an article on it in German actually, but not sure when I will have time to finish it.
Attrition at it's finest. One infantry platoon is @ 40 people, while a heavy tank platoon is @ 15 people (3-4 tanks) and a medium tank platoon is @ 20 people (4-5 tanks). But infantry is more versatile then a tank.
Kannst du mal ein Video machen, wo verglichen wird, wie lange bestimmte Truppenteile auf dem Schachtfeld überleben. Habe mal den gelesen, dass ein Panzergrenadier nur eine Überlebenszeit von durchschnittlich 7min hatte
Ist auf der Liste, wir suchen noch nach der Originalquelle. Das Ganze hat eher Meme Charakter.
Hermann Balck, in his memoirs, rejects the tank heavy PzDiv of Guderian
The king of the battlefield is the tank but the queen is the infantry. (The last part is quoted, I think, by Manstein).
Who the heck said king of the battlefield is the tank?
So equipping the infantry better (more Sturmgewehr, mortars, AT weapons, APCs) would have had a greater effect than having more tanks?
I see the German Tank building emphasis as the reality of manpower losses & allocation. As you noted they were running out of able bodied combat capable infantry. So the 5 men in a tank taking out 20-30 Soviet Infantry looked good on paper. Tanks could be repaired and some of the German crew would survive to fight another day. Being smaller was an unwritten requirement for being a tanker. So smaller men ended up being used where they were an asset. The supporting Mechanics and other support troops did not need to be as physically gifted / strong / healthy for infantry combat duty. I suspect it was allocating the left over man power after the 41'-42' losses for their best potential. It was also good for morale to be going into combat with tanks even though you were all new. I have never really scene a graphic of the age of German troops. WW1 would have thinned out many men around 40 from being in the infantry. So I am not sure how the German Birthrate of Sons was like between the wars to produce a supply of young men from 1939-1943 at the rate faster than they were being lost.
6:45 - 9:05 Exactly right.
Late WW2 the Russians would have one or two infantry armies trying to force an opening for the tank army waiting in the back to exploit. Deep battle worked great for them 1944 on.
Yeah, once their officers learned how to actually apply the doctrine.
It's interesting that towards the end of the war the British started reducing the number of atmoured divisions and used the men as infantry.
Hi Again a great video. In March 1943 the Germans had just lost 500,000 men- Stalingrad and Africa. Do you think they decided they could afford to lose tanks and not men- because they did not have any more men?
Sam Stewart That’s a video I hope we get someday- the ticking clock of manpower. I want to know how realistic HOI representation is, that clock that’s always ticking down. He’s hinted at Britain running out of men after D day. But not said much on the German manpower.
@@nomobobby Well German manpower is pretty hard to describe. Since the Germans had the most troops at the ostfront in 1943! Germany was able to replace and even increase the size of the ostfront after the December 1941 counter attack, and was able again to replace and increase the size after stalingrad. But after 1943 it gets hard
Refreshing to see Germans talk about Whermacht mistakes...And pretty much unbiased. And in english!
Isn’t it possible that Guderian wanted huge amounts of tanks in view of the large frontages that the Panzer Divisions covered? It makes no more sense, but if a Panzer division has to cover 50km, they would need a lot of armour to adequately line all of that. On the other hand, Rommel just wanted huge amounts of anti tank guns (around 200 IIRC) for every division.
I disagree a bit on the German tank matter. While I agree that infantry is very important to work together with tanks, I think at Kursk, even if the German tanks there had more infantry and more support, the operation would still fail anyway. Kursk should have never happened. After the failure of Stalingrad and all, the strategic situation for Germany was defensive. They should have returned to the most strong line possible they could find there, like the Dniepr River, places like that, and wait for the Soviet to attack. The Germans lost a lot of units because they were caught off-guard by Soviet forces just after they cancelled the Operation Citadel because of the Invasion of Italy by the Western Allied. If they managed to work with a preparation for better defensive lines, retreating from the area around the Kursk salient, instead of attacking the place, their tanks would have had better results on the field. You don't need as much infantry when you're behind a good defensive system as you need to attack a strong enemy position. And, as long as I'm concerned, the Germans had some tactical victories at Kursk. Prokorovka was a German tactical victory. The Soviet won the battle on the strategic level. They had two really huge flank pincers to cover the entire own German pincers attacking Kursk at the time. Attacking Kursk may have been a bigger mistake than attacking blindly Moscow and Stalingrad.
Yeah. That was interesting. You don't have a lot of people talking about it but it makes sense that as things went south for Germany they were losing their veterans faster than they were making them. When I was in the military I went to ordinance school - and then was supposed to go to On the Job Training (OJT) at my permanent duty station. They didn't need any more mechanics so they made me a sentry - and - all that knowledge I had gotten in ordinance school - just kind of faded away. If you don't use it - you lose it. The point of this is - because I didn't get to apply what I'd learned in school - it didn't stick. With the Germans - they send their kids through training (which was probably abbreviated - mine was) but it is only after they get in a real unit that is involved in real operations - that they really learn anything. If these kids were sent to units where all the veterans were dead ... who was there to teach them? All they could do - was learn by dying. I don't know what the ratio is but it would seem that it would take a certain amount of time for new replacements to get enough experience to be able to step up and take the veterans place as death, wounds and disease thinned their ranks. Then - of course - who constitutes the bulk of the combat troops - and who takes the bulk of the casualties - the infantry. The Russians built 50,000 T-34's and the Americans built 50,000 M-4's (plus a bunch of other stuff) so what was always talked about was - the relatively low production figures for German Tanks. I can't imagine that this wasn't in fact a problem - but - I can see where losing your veteran infantry could be a problem as well. The thing is - you need a lot more infantry replacements than you do armored crew replacements - and as Germany began to run out of men ... they just didn't have enough - and those that they had were barely trained. Those Volks Grenadier's were terrible and just got slaughtered because they didn't know anything. I remarked somewhere else recently that the Germans also squandered a lot of man power on such as Luftwaffe Field Divisions. On the subject of making tank units - one thing they did was to create a number of Panzer Brigades late in the war instead of using them as replacements for veteran armored divisions. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_brigade I've heard that these units were formed partially because Hitler didn't trust the regular Army units any more, thinking them defeatist. However, I read/saw something some where, where a German veteran of one of these units talked about how horrible they were. The big point he made was that they had no specialized divisional support units - such as re-con units - so they were just blundering about with no idea what they were doing. Apparently what happened to these Panzer Brigades was that they were incorporated into existing Armored Divisions where they should have been in the first place. One other thing I've mentioned elsewhere - was that the German Army started expanding in 1934. For the British and the Americans - which were really Naval Powers - the expansion of their Army's came later and was on a smaller scale before their nations were actually at war. Because of that - with a number of years to take care of their expansions and a previous army that was in fact used as a training school for Officers and NCO's intended for when it did expand - the Germans were in much better shape veteran wise at the start of the shooting. One thing the Germans were not able to afford - was to lose massive numbers of troops the way they did at Stalingrad and Tunisia where they lost about 250,000 each. Losing half a million men over a few months in early 1943 was something they just were not going to recover from. As to Soviet Tank Doctrine - one thing they hadn't tried before - was charging the Germans at Prokhorovka to try and get in amongst them to obviate their superiority in ranged combat. kzhead.info/sun/hNVxodOrhmaCZps/bejne.html Since they couldn't shoot accurately on the move - they got slaughtered doing that and didn't do it again. .
Were all those books behind you actually read through?🤔
I suspect most of them. I guess people don't realize how many words they read on-line these days. In 20-30 years you can read a LOT. Say one book a week, 52 books a year, 520 books a decade...
top bloke toppel
If you want tanks to do all the job you only need 3 things: - convert some of them into APC's or IFV's, - convert some of them into SPG's, - convert some of them into planes...
Good doco
The relative German casualties at Kursk and Donbass combined were higher, then the relative Soviet losses in these battles! Otherwise, why did the Germans rapidly (within 2 months after the fight at Prokhorovka) withdraw back to Dniepr, that is 500 kilometers west of Kursk?
I know. To hear them describe it, you would think that the Germans were crushing the Soviets at Kursk. And yet, as you say, they retreated full speed to the banks of the Dneiper 500 km away. Truth: The Germans got their butts kicked at Kursk.
WOW...in '39 the panzer armored corps was 2% of infantry size and 5% of the construction corps! That isn't the "tip of the spear", it's the EDGE of the tip of the spear!
It takes a LOT of troops to support a tank. It's even more for an aircraft.
Which carrier battles did the Japanese win after Midway (1942) I guess Santa Cruz sorta.. 1 Fleet Carrier lost vs 1 Fleet Carrier Heavy damaged and 1 light carrier heavily damaged. Though the IJN lost more aircraft and more dead. I think the USN learned a bit faster that "1944" estimate
Isn't the question of the number of tanks still an open one? Massed armour is hard to coordinate and control but gives more materiel that would otherwise be unavailable short hand at a mighly mobile breakthrough. Sparse tank employment allows for more precise management and greater flexibility but could be inadequate to sustain exploitation. So fundamentally I think Guderian wanter bigger units for more congested breakthroughs, resulting in more units pouring through the gap that can continue without replacing the losses. Within the Wehrmacht there were proponents of both. Guderian for the former, Balck for the latter, for example. I think there exists a misunderstanding of how tanks are important. They are not to replace other parts of combined arms but are the most important component of all the best German tactics. So their importance differs from army to army. Also I think that Germans never wanted to focus solely on tanks. It was the lack of other components of combined arms that forced them to use tanks for everything. Such was most obvious on the western front where panthers spearheaded local attacks with very little artillery and no air support.
i think the point is that infantry drop like flys without tanks but tanks also drop like flys without infantry because of there lack of vision and agility there not very good at taking out AT guns the same way infantry could and the boxy armor on German panzer IIIs and IVs while good for infantry cover is very weak against the guns on Soviet t34s and KV tanks so without infantry to take advantage of that armor they might as well be vision impaired armor-less SPGs with turrets only much slower and more expensive then something designed for the purpose like a M18 Hellcat most of the German tanks were designed to be used with infantry against entrenched positions and not without infantry against enemy tanks they made tanks better suited to fighting other tanks later in the war the Panthers and the Tigers but they didn't have enough of these and they were still hurt a bit by the lack of infantry also i don't think massed tanks are essential for sustaining a breakthrough like you said once the initial breakthrough is made you want massed MOT Divisions to grab as much land as possible as quickly as possible and to try and flank and cutoff enemy forces there shouldn't be much resistance behind enemy lines so extra tanks are a unnecessary logistics nightmare that will reduce the amount of infantry and supplies you can send through the gap to exploit it before the enemy forms a new defensive line if you had to use extra tanks it would make more sense to split them into smaller divisions around the flanks so you can close encirclement with them after the infantry exploit the breakthrough or to keep them nearby in reserve so they can be rushed to the front after your infantry find the next enemy line
You guys really have to work on the sound it is really troublesome listening to this with joy.. but awesome topic
Very interesting video. I know that you don't like to cause controversy, but it would have been the right moment to flesh out the real German way of tank warfare and the differences between it and the British (Fuller) way.
Your comments about tooth-to-tail ratios make me wonder about the significance, in the bigger picture, of the relatively high tooth/tail ratio of the Red Army, which some sources place as high as 75%. As you describe, Soviet units often had trouble with co-ordination issues, and while there are surely many reasons for this, perhaps part of the story is that Soviet command and signals staff were undersupplied with manpower compared to their German counterparts: in other words, perhaps a fine degree of co-ordination proved impossible because the men trying to ensure this co-ordination were overworked.
Can someone tell me what construction troops are and do that they make up such a high proportion of the german army (1939)?
Fortress construction; later also the atlantic wall and flaktuerme. Railway repair too. It's like the USN CB ("seabees") but for an entire continent.
@@QuizmasterLaw Yeah, but i mean they make up almost 20% of the entire army and that in 1939 where the wehrmacht was mostly on the offensive and flaktowers and the atlantik wall werent a thing. In addition to that think to remember that most of the workers who built bunkers were POW's and forced labourers and it doesnt seem german that they were in the same department as the fighting troops.
You may know of the organization of the unemployed into military-like companies during the 1930s. It was also done in the USA as the civilian conservation corps. That's the origin or forerunner of what became the Todt organization. Construction projects in 1939? The Siegfried line / Westwall. In modern and late modern armies only around 17% or even as few as 11% of positions are actually combatants. All the rest is support.
On the list of German manpower it lists Contruction Troops and then Engineers. I always thought the Engineers contruct things so what is the difference?
construction troops are working behind the lines, e.g., railways, whereas engineers / pioneers build "near the frontlines", e.g. a bridge across a river, additionally, they are often used for destroying pillboxes, etc. as well.
not the best analogy, but well, it is like minecraft in creative mode (although limited resources) and minecraft in survival mode
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized Perfect, thank you! My grandfather was in Army Corp of Engineers and helped to build the pontoon bridges across the Rhine while being strafed by the Luftwaffe. I never thought to ask him this question before he passed 4 years ago.
@@Wallyworld30 Engineer in the military is a very broad term. Roughly, engineers do 3 things: build stuff, demolish stuff, and operate weapons too specialised for the current infantry iteration. Building can be split into two: things at the rear and things at the front. Stuff at the rear might include everything from HQ, toilets, kitchen barracks, hospitals, etc ... These might be the construction troops. Building things at the front might include everything from bridges to fortification. Combat engineers are the people with specialised knowledge in construction of fortified defensive position, so if you want a strong defensive position, you might want to attach some engineers to the unit. With specialised equipments like bulldozers, they can also construct better positions faster. Demolishing things include everything from obstacles, minefields, to enemy fortifications. When a new weapon system is introduced that is so new that it's sort of hard to train the existing infantry to use it or it hasn't been figured out how to incorporate the system into existing organisation, you give it to the engineer. It was everything from machine guns to flamethrowers and anti-tank weapons. Eventually specialist trainings with new system are incorporate into existing infantry organisation and troops even receive familiarisation training with them. For eg: most infantry unit will have a designated operator of machine gun, mortar, or rocket launcher but in better funded armies, troops also receive training to use them if needed. Tip: if a unit is totally encircled and there is little hope for a breakout but you might still evacuate some people; well sometimes the important commanders get evacuated but some of the most valuable people to evacuate first are the support units and engineers. Bakery company get evacuated out of various German encircled units late in the war.
@@VT-mw2zb Thanks for your detailed response. In hindsight I should have know the difference since I've had family serve in both positions. My baby brother is a professional construction worker and he actually got his start in the army 20 years ago doing construction while in the Army. He build houses and other buildings this was after the Hatian Earthquakes. My grandfather was in an Engineer for the US Army and helped build the Pontoon bridge over the Rhine that Patton famously pissed into the Rhine from.
The most important vehicle of ww2 was the various US 2 1/2 ton trucks
TÖPPEL SENSEI DAISUKI DESU
ARIGATO GOSEIMAS TÖPPEL-SAMA
There is a rumor of a use of nuclear arms at Kursk (specifically, a low yield tactical device designed to augment high explosives); I think this might be a use of fuel aired munitions? Allerdings ich wollte wissen, was Sie davon meinen.
"Panzer divisions with 400 tanks would never work" In the cold war Red Army, there were some divisions with 375 tanks...so obviously there is room for disagreement on this point.
At the same time, Hitler was only about weeks from attacking Swedeh. For this he set aside around 5 infantry division and a weak Panzer. With French Tanks but i 1 TIger and 1 Panxer 4 Company.
I swear either the allied lend lease was so effective by 1943 or the Soviet industry in 1943 was massive in order to produce that many tanks something I doubt it is true the Soviet industry was inefficient.
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Watching the video again.. I realized that you are saying something that ww2 German Generals said of the U.S. command. That (to paraphrase) The Americans don't read their manuals or follow their doctrine. ( of course they did but anything that didn't fit German evaluation they would see as wrong.) ... I could see how this would bother a German.. BUT is the Russian Citadel response surprising? .. the Russians were in a defensive posture....they had been preparing for the attack for months .. Germany had delayed for months .The Russians waited for Germany ... and it cost Germany more because they couldn't replace losses.
Was there ever a real chance of defeating the soviet union, and how would that plan had looked like?
flo jo should be covered again
More point if entire interview is redone in German
You mean infantry is the Queen of Battle, right?
Can't really do combined arms warfare if you're lacking infantry. The only thing they got left is to make the army believe that yes, tanks are the future. They couldn't say in training movies and propaganda that we lack manpower. Would've hurt morale. Though morale became soon bad anyway.
So Hitler wasn't a dumb man who couldn't see reason. He really didn't have any men to spare.
Can Dr. Roman Töppel name every German division present at the battle of Kursk? I bet he can in under 10 seconds.
ask he isn´t a man like dieter thomas heck - he may need a bit longer but i admire him for being a mythbuster by heart and a myth buster by intellect which i think makes him a peak trustworthy & fair historian
You will never reply but for me there was a big flaw with the Russian tanks: relatively few of them was equipped with radios and then, not very reliable. The other issue was the relative lack of much needed troops but this is because of the terrible losses sustained at the battle of Stalingrad but it is also an continued accumulation loss of manpower due to too many battles in 1942 like Leningrad, the surrender in Tunisia and so on not mentioning of course the material losses. Fact is that the turning point was the defeat of Stalingrad that truly Germany never really recovered despite Hitler actuated the emergency program... It goes without saying that those defeats was because of his awful strategic mistakes and a consequence of wrong political decisions...
> You will never reply but for me wrong > with radios and then, not very reliable. from what I know that changed due to lend-lease, but might have been changed before > It goes without saying that those defeats was because of his awful strategic mistakes > and a consequence of wrong political decisions... he had his fair share of those, but likely far less than the generals generally claim: kzhead.info/sun/aaqombmXoZ2CY4k/bejne.html
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized thanks for replying but I remember reading, years ago, one of the books of Paul Carrel that stated that Hitler emphatically wanted one of the cities, but I don't remember if it was Stalingrad or Leningrad, to die of hunger instead of immediately conquer it! Regarding the radio I always understood, perhaps wrong, not many was fitted with it altrough I knew that the Americans was supplying it together with tanks and airplanes. A note: I was not criticising you but I simply thought you were very occupied with all your things to do to answer such a small "fish" like me! I apologise...
I would stay away from Mr. Schmidt: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Carell
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized yes, I agree fully and I remember that I must have read some of his books around the late seventies when I was around 22 years old so I was quite a naive guy then...
yeah, I think back then nobody really knew. I read one of his books in the mid-nineties only learned in university about his background.
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The Soviet forces had some 200 Tanks dug in as pillboxes. Xruschev claimed the idea as his own. I get it from The Russo-German War 1941-1945 Albert Seaton. If that represents the truth, perhaps it was more due to lack of fuel on site. If that was the case, then those tanks buried might've been types not worth adding to the mobile forces (such as 5th Guards Tank) intended for the great counterattack. That might've simplified supply AND command and control to a considerable degree. Even a T40, dug in, or behind a berm, would be useful to deter infantry from following panzers "too close". Of course, fuel had to be saved for the BM-8 and BM-13 "Fordski" MLRS, since those were Higher Level units. "If you lose any, you will be very sorry." -Iosef Stalin (paraphrased)
Having a 2 manned turret (early on) for most of their tanks (even without radios) is very disadvantageous
real war
Didn't have enough infantry. Sure! But NOT ENOUGH OIL! is more a problem.
This stuff is the new punk rock of history. Here is the old one: kzhead.info/sun/eNSxgZmSe3Z3aZE/bejne.html
One point made is certainly right. Overall I wouldn't knock Guderian - he was a rare combat leader. It's very easy to knock military leaders that people at the time considered very good - the knockers get attention. But, Guderian was a bitter critic of Hitler's decision to lower the number of tanks in the Panzer Divisions between 1940 and Barbarossa. In that he was wrong. On paper a 1940 PD had nearly 400 tanks (if Pz Is and IIs count as tanks) and it was far too many. Even the tank heavy US armored divisions had half that. As it was the "encirclements" in 1941 often proved very porous because there wasn't enough infantry to close the noose. Actually I wonder if it was Hitler's decision at all. The German Army had historically been very good at analyzing their own performance. After Koniggratz in 1886, Moltke had the GStaff figure out what went wrong. (Quite a bit actually.) In 1870 Moltke's forces were much more lethal because they had rebuilt their entire artillery arm. A good staff would have looked at 1940 and looked for "bugs." An obvious bug was German tank armor was too thin. Arguably they would have seen that motorized infantry had been crucial and a lot of tanks never really got into action.
Kursk was lost when the infantry divisions proved utterly inadequate- not enough divisions; not enough size to these divisions (six vs. nine rifle battalions; reduced DIVARTY; completely inadequate distribution of PAK 40 L/46 AT guns. Not only incapable of sustained offensive operations but, worse, incapable of securely holding the flanks thus requiring drawing forces from the Panzerwaffe to provide flank protection-particularly on the west flank of 48 Pz Kp. and east flanks of III Pz Kp. and II SS Pz. Korps. Thoroughly diluted 4 Pz Armee striking power.
Yet they beat you and quite convincingly as well.
But they had lost the infantry. That's what you don't seem to be saying. Infantry is not something you can just throw together magically out of nowhere. It takes time to develop, train, and field. And to get it to run smoothly, you need veterans amongst them, but those veterans died, marching into Russia. And there was never a time after that in which the Germans could've rebuilt their forces faster than the Soviets could. So they had to find alternatives. Mannstein's request was just not possible to fulfill. He was not correct. He had already lost the war.
Ah, no you get to that! Nice.