General World War 2 Discussion Thread

Eh, casualties. Somenbjorn has already addressed a few important aspects, so just some quick points: Soviet KIA/DOW (died of wounds, ie. expired while already undergoing treatment outside the zone of frontline fighting or as longterm consequence of injury) exceeded Axis KIA/DOW by quite a magnitude, even though the precise relationship is for numerous reasons difficult to establish - data sets are not necessarily comparable and incomplete, etc.. David Glantz estimates about 14 million Soviet military dead (this includes deaths in captivity) throughout WW2, so including the far Eastern theate, while the upper end of Axis fatalities is estimated at about 5,5 million IIRC. Again, these are the high estimates, but there is alot of work still ongoing, for an introduction into these issues look for the works of Krivosheev/Overmans, which, while both severely flawed and outdated, contain alot of the datasets and serve as the basis most contemporary research at least references.

As far as casualty recording procedures are concerned, a few things as an adjunct:
- Germans did record any sort of wound and included them in their casualty figures, they however usually seperately recorded those who could stay with their units and those who required care at a hospital.
- Germans had seperate categories for DOW and KIA in their Heeresarzt reporting
- Soviet reporting system basically collapsed in 1941, there is also little to no data available on the German side for 1945

Eh, casualties. Somenbjorn has already addressed a few important aspects, so just some quick points: Soviet KIA/DOW (died of wounds, ie. expired while already undergoing treatment outside the zone of frontline fighting or as longterm consequence of injury) exceeded Axis KIA/DOW by quite a magnitude, even though the precise relationship is for numerous reasons difficult to establish - data sets are not necessarily comparable and incomplete, etc.. David Glantz estimates about 14 million Soviet military dead (this includes deaths in captivity) throughout WW2, so including the far Eastern theate, while the upper end of Axis fatalities is estimated at about 5,5 million IIRC. Again, these are the high estimates, but there is alot of work still ongoing, for an introduction into these issues look for the works of Krivosheev/Overmans, which, while both severely flawed and outdated, contain alot of the datasets and serve as the basis most contemporary research at least references.

As far as casualty recording procedures are concerned, a few things as an adjunct:
- Germans did record any sort of wound and included them in their casualty figures, they however usually seperately recorded those who could stay with their units and those who required care at a hospital.
- Germans had seperate categories for DOW and KIA in their Heeresartz reporting
- Soviet reporting system basically collapsed in 1941, there is also little to no data available on the German side for 1945

Doesn't Glantz state that axis suffered 11 million irrecoverable casaulties as well? Both numbers seem to be very high....

Doesn't Glantz state that axis suffered 11 million irrecoverable casaulties as well? Both numbers seem to be very high....

Nah, not as far as I am aware, even if you include prisoners/forced labour taken postwar, which obviously can hardly be called prisoners of war anymore. 11m might be more reasonable for total Axis casualties. The highest figure for irrecoverable I've ever seen stems from Krivosheev, about 8m IIRC in Grif Sekretnostij..., and involves generous amounts of funky mathematics/outright nonsense - and in fact raises some doubt about the scholarly quality of the rest of his book. If I am not mistaken even the official Soviet history which frequently operates in the realm of the fantastical was more methodoligically solid there. What we do know with a degree of reliability per Heeresarzt is that by the end of 1944, the Germans had suffered around 5,6-5,8 million total casualties (so including wounded, 2+ million KIA/MIA/DOW) on the Eastern Front, to which of course must be added the casualties of her Allies which however were much lower.

But ye, Glantzes' Soviet 14 m military deaths seems high indeed, even as a ballpark figure. Then again, Glantz, even if only via middlemen, enjoys a rare degree of access into the Soviet archives and is fairly well connected so I would not dismiss this outright. Anyways, there is a good deal of research currently ongoing, time will tell.

It isn't about incompetence but about focus.

The US has always had at it's core a very competent and well trained officer corps. But until 1945 it's response to any war was "it's over, let's go home and stop spending money on all this." After the Civil war the Army went from having a huge portion of the populace under arms to having a total of 10 active regiments who were not always at full strength or readiness.

Even after 1945 they figured there was so much material and once-trained personnel around that they could put it all back together competently in no time. Task Force Smith showed the fallacy of that plan/dream.

As to having the "wrong" doctrines, that is pretty much true to some degree or another of every army that went to war in '39, including the Germans. Theirs just happened to be better in '39 than that of others, and they had the opportunity to refine it and to "train" in more real conditions (Poland, France). But they still went into Barborossa with infantry divisions that were not fast enough to support panzers, anti-tank tanks, or a logistic arm that could support long term conflicts.

On the other hand, the US strategic doctrine was superior. I can't think of a single significant weapons system whose design was started after the US entered the war.

The US officer corp was a mixed bag like every other officer corp out there. You had good thinkers like Eisenhower and total morons like Patton who couldn't fight a war to save their own ass.

Ultimately the US did modernize fairly quickly and the USAAF as well as the Naval Air component were very well lead and saw a lot of advancements throughout the war, but in many places the army had be dragged kicking and streaming into the modern age, thankfully it finally go there thanks to people like Marshall.

You seem to have an interesting discussion going. But the picture thread maybe isn't the place? I've quoted you into the General WW2 discussion thread, which is probably the best place for it, dont you agree?
Now just hoping the notifications will work and link you to the correct thread.

So March 8th (Women's Day) a friend of mine sent me this link of women's photos throughout history, there's a lot of pictures from WW2. She was surprised of seeing fighting women in the Red Army, Soviet Partisans and French Résistance, also that most of the workforce in USA and UK was female.

The participation of women in direct combat throughout history has been passed over and ignored to a point that borders on active suppression. Even today it's not hard to find reactionary types denouncing as 'politically correct' depictions of female combatants, even when based on sound history.

Van Voort has pointed in the right direction; Nazi ideology virtually precluded the use of women in any role other than as breeder of future soldiers. Amusingly enough, a sub-title sometimes used by the magazine Ostara, which Hitler assiduously collected, was "Briefbücherei der Blonden und Mannesrechtler", or "newsletter of the blonde and masculists", confirming the close association between far right ideologies and reactionary anti-feminism that we see in the modern "men's rights" movement.

In relation to the above discussion on commanders, doctrine and modernisation, I've seen it claimed that Manstein invented, or at least conceptualised, the StuG. Can anyone confirm if this is true, because if so, it must be one of the few instances of a general actually inventing a weapon.

The participation of women in direct combat throughout history has been passed over and ignored to a point that borders on active suppression. Even today it's not hard to find reactionary types denouncing as 'politically correct' depictions of female combatants, even when based on sound history.

Van Voort has pointed in the right direction; Nazi ideology virtually precluded the use of women in any role other than as breeder of future soldiers. Amusingly enough, a sub-title sometimes used by the magazine Ostara, which Hitler assiduously collected, was "Briefbücherei der Blonden und Mannesrechtler", or "newsletter of the blonde and masculists", confirming the close association between far right ideologies and reactionary anti-feminism that we see in the modern "men's rights" movement.

As every so often, thats a tad too simple when it comes to the so-called "Third Reich" in all its heterogenity... Yes, there were no shortage of the more conservative strands within Nazi thought (people like Darré etc, the more "romantic", rural part of the BluBo crowd who however became successively marginalised as the war progressed) that propagated roughly similar narratives, and Hitlers complicated - to say the least - relationship towards women did not help the matter, however: You also had highly publicised figures like ie. Reitsch or Riefenstahl who could hardly have deviated from the "Heimchen-am-Herd-Mutterkreuz (housewive/"breeding machine" cliché) any more substantially.
As the war progressed and the situation deteriorated, women in Nazi Germany befan to play a very susbstantial role not only in farmwork and manufacturing, but also in civil defense, the Wehrmachtgefolge etc etc and finally even in dedicated combat units...

I might add that every single army who utilised women in direct combat roles at any scale abandoned the practice as soon as the situation allowed for. A prime reason for that was not merely chauvinism - although that undoubtedly played a role - but the fact that women formation rarely if ever performed to expectations. On average, men simply possess much high upper body strength, endurance and a few other traits desirable in combat arms; plus, in mixed formations virtually without fail the presence of women presented a major issue to cohesion, and as far as the maritime side of that is concerned I speak from personal experience.

All generalisations are simplifications, but that doesn't mean they are untrue. A few exceptional individual trajectories does not override the policy outlined in MK or institutional structures like the Lebensborn. And while you point out that women did get more involved later in the war, under press of circumstances, Germany under the Nazis did not mobilise a female work force on the scale which it had previously done in WWI.

As for female fighters, in pre-modern armies there was likely little that a commander could do about it. Saxo Grammaticus has a Viking era Danish king remark that the only way he can tell his female warriors from his male is that the former have longer hair. He probably couldn't have stopped them even if he'd wanted to, because combat was something freighted with immense personal meaning.

The idea that fighting women is only something societies resorted to under pressure is IMO extremely dubious, and depends in large part on interpretation of data. Frex, many bronze and iron age burials that were excavated some time ago were assigned to males on the basis of the presence of weapons, but more recent evidence based on analysis of bones and genetic data shows that they were actually female. The presence of women on the front line is not a historical outlier, it is actually persistent and consistent.

This is not to dispute that the majority of combatants in every era have been men, nor to argue against the significant upper body strength advantage that men possess. But while that is undoubtedly useful, it's not decisive - hand to hand combat is not primarily a matter of strength alone, but of technique. Countless martial arts practices show how such an advantage can be obviated, neutralised, or even turned against the one who has it.

As for the naval case, while the presence of women ship-board has long even held to be "bad luck", and while the situation does have some unusual aspects, such as long periods of isolation and a distinct lack of privacy, the historical record is again not nearly as clear as one might expect. This is probably because sailing is a relatively rare technical skill, and so all navies tend to be short of "man"power. But the British navy had a tradition that a sleeping sailor would be ordered to "show a leg" - if it was hairy it was male - which means that the presence of women was common enough to have entrenched its own traditions on the service. However, when women applied for the commemorative medals that were issued after the Peninsula War for events such as the Battle of the Nile, the Medals Committee refused: not because they disputed that the women had been present, or that they were deserving but because, in their own words, "there were many women in the fleet equally useful, and it [would] leave the Army exposed to innumerable applications." Backhandedly, they thus confirm that there were lots of women serving in the navy and that this was no secret.

And so we see that the idea that women should be precluded from direct combat is not an ancient idea at all, but a modern one. Indeed, some of those re-sexed weapon burials I mentioned are Sarmatian, from the plains of the northern Caucasus; in other words, exactly where Greek tradition located the tribe of female warriors they named Amazons.

The historical and archaeological evidence for female combatants throughout history is incontrovertible. The more interesting question is why we have seemingly decided to forget or ignore it.

I don't have much time right now, so I'll keep it brief, maybe expand later:

Germany under the Nazis did not mobilise a female work force on the scale which it had previously done in WWI.

True, but then again they did not mobilise the male workforce to a similiar extent either, which was a quite deliberate policy decision.

The idea that fighting women is only something societies resorted to under pressure is IMO extremely dubious, and depends in large part on interpretation of data. [...]

Hm. What notion are we discussing? I do not doubt that at virtually any stage in history at least a sprinkle of women participated in combat out of their own free volition, even when the mores of the day and age where highly inimical to the notion of women under arms, and I could provide more than a few examples thereof myself. With that being said, it strikes me there are both hard physiological and psychological factors grosso modo favouring men in combat to such a degree that their utter preponderance on the battlefield can hardly be considered surprising or attributed to societal norms primarily.

This is not to dispute that the majority of combatants in every era have been men, nor to argue against the significant upper body strength advantage that men possess. But while that is undoubtedly useful, it's not decisive - hand to hand combat is not primarily a matter of strength alone, but of technique. Countless martial arts practices show how such an advantage can be obviated, neutralised, or even turned against the one who has it.

Ceteris paribus, an advantage in strength and endurance goes a very long way, especially in hand to hand combat. Even been in a serious punchup, did boxing, jiu-jitsu etc? I've known a few women who could hold their own against average males, but they were very, very exceptional. At the higher levels of competition, this was out of the question. And I reckon this applies also for armed combat, perhaps exponentially so if large quantities of armour are involved. However, aside from these mundane considerations: Since you brought up mediaeval period: Consider ie. Visby, where we do have the largest archeological post battlefield sample at least I am aware of: No evidence of females, whatsoever. Or consider an example that might be more central to the Anglo world, Hastings: Is there any indication, archeological or otherwise, that women had any role in either Guillaumes host or Harolds' Fyrd? If anything, modernity and the proliferation of firearms have redressed the balance somewhat, if you'll humour me: God created men, but Samuel Colt made them equal. Have to go now, will address the naval aspect later.

With that being said, it strikes me there are both hard physiological and psychological factors grosso modo favouring men in combat to such a degree that their utter preponderance on the battlefield can hardly be considered surprising or attributed to societal norms primarily.

Of course, people also used to believe that there was hard evidence that "races" had different capacities for intellect, or certain types of work etc. The fact that these things are believed does not make them true.

Ceteris paribus, an advantage in strength and endurance goes a very long way, especially in hand to hand combat. Even been in a serious punchup, did boxing, jiu-jitsu etc?

Yes; Judo, Karate, and a touch of Kendo. One of the reasons I took these up is precisely because I'm a littler shorter than average. And one of the things I learned, is the the nominal advantage that a taller man might have over me can be turned into a disadvantage, because my shortness gives me a lower centre of gravity; and that can be used as a fulcrum over which that taller man can be thrown.

I've known a few women who could hold their own against average males, but they were very, very exceptional. At the higher levels of competition, this was out of the question. And I reckon this applies also for armed combat, perhaps exponentially so if large quantities of armour are involved.

And yet the reason that Danish king could not tell them apart except by their hair was precisely because they were all covered in chain.

However, aside from these mundane considerations: Since you brought up mediaeval period: Consider ie. Visby, where we do have the largest archeological post battlefield sample at least I am aware of: No evidence of females, whatsoever. Or consider an example that might be more central to the Anglo world, Hastings: Is there any indication, archeological or otherwise, that women had any role in either Guillaumes host or Harolds' Fyrd?

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. There is no reason to demand that this or that sample be assumed to be representative. All it is is a sample, chaotically selected. So no, I'm not aware of female skeletons found there. But I do know of skeletons found at Maiden Castle:

"The remains of 38 defenders of Maiden Castle against the attack of Vespasian and his troops in 43AD had been buried somewhat haphazardly, but with some ceremony. Of the 34 well preserved skeletons, 23 were male and 11 female. The majority were between 20 and 40 years of age and most had severe head injuries that occurred perimortem. The bones show dislocations, fractures and sword cuts, and in one case a Roman arrowhead was found still embedded in the thoracic vertebra."
- Cited as Kaslowski 1987, in Christine Quigley's Skulls And Skeletons: Human Bone Collections And Accumulations.

At any rate: I was not arguing that men and women have appeared on battlefields in anything like equal numbers. My point, rather, is that that "sprinkling" is consistent across both chronology and geography, and yet we tend to ignore it and seem to casually assume that war has only ever been a man's business. What is forgotten is that not all men are Schwarzeneggers and that not all women are dainty and delicate. Take the actress playing Brienne of Tarth in Game of Thrones; she's huge, few men would have a reach advantage over her, and I certainly wouldn't.

In the Tain Bo Cuailnge, the great hero Cuchulain is trained in combat by a woman named Scaife. And yet we skip past it, assuming it's just a bit of fantastical mythology rather than a fragment of cultural memory of real female fighters. That's what underlies constructions like kinde, kuche, kirche - not a recognition of reality, but an imposition of ideology on reality, forcing people into a stereotypical role even if that is not where their proclivities and talents lie.

Of course, people also used to believe that there was hard evidence that "races" had different capacities for intellect, or certain types of work etc. The fact that these things are believed does not make them true.

Strawman argument before the lord. There is very little if any empirical evidence underpinning the tenets of "scientifical" racism.
However, as far as differences between the sexes are concerned, it is not in any sort of dispute that on average, men are taller, have both proportionally and absolutely more muscle mass, are faster, and possess more endurance and resistance to cold than women.
Can we abstain from that sort of debating style if you don't mind?

Yes; Judo, Karate, and a touch of Kendo. One of the reasons I took these up is precisely because I'm a littler shorter than average. And one of the things I learned, is the the nominal advantage that a taller man might have over me can be turned into a disadvantage, because my shortness gives me a lower centre of gravity; and that can be used as a fulcrum over which that taller man can be thrown.

Well yes, a lower center of gravity can be situationally advantageous, the same applies to reach and other factors however. In general, why do you think it is that in any competitive martial art there are weight classes and women and men compete seperately? The same applies to most athletic pursuits by the way...

And yet the reason that Danish king could not tell them apart except by their hair was precisely because they were all covered in chain.

The mediaeval era was never my forte or academic interest, but is there any hard evidence that even in dark age warbands women were a regular occurance as actual combatants, on Viking raids or otherwise? It strikes me as odd that I've never heard of any Saxon, Frankish etc. source pointing to such.

Maiden Castle

Do you think this is a pertinent example? In a desperate situation such as a siege, where the defenders would be either put to the sword wholesale or sold into slavery at best, of course there would be a strong incentive for just about anybody to fight.

At any rate: I was not arguing that men and women have appeared on battlefields in anything like equal numbers. My point, rather, is that that "sprinkling" is consistent across both chronology and geography, and yet we tend to ignore it and seem to casually assume that war has only ever been a man's business. What is forgotten is that not all men are Schwarzeneggers and that not all women are dainty and delicate. Take the actress playing Brienne of Tarth in Game of Thrones; she's huge, few men would have a reach advantage over her, and I certainly wouldn't.

In the Tain Bo Cuailnge, the great hero Cuchulain is trained in combat by a woman named Scaife. And yet we skip past it, assuming it's just a bit of fantastical mythology rather than a fragment of cultural memory of real female fighters. That's what underlies constructions like kinde, kuche, kirche - not a recognition of reality, but an imposition of ideology on reality, forcing people into a stereotypical role even if that is not where their proclivities and talents lie.

Two things: First off, I don't think the role of women in warfare has tended to be ignored, rather on the contrary. In fact I think there has been a particular fascination with it perhaps precisely becaused it was considered unconventional - all throughout the ages you will find references to fighting women, sometimes highly publicised, starting in antiquity, ie. the Amazons, then you shortage of literary/mythological martial figures, Boudicca, Brunhild, the list could go on and on. Then in modernity you have phenomena like Dahomé, Kerenskis women bataillon, etc, whose facticity is not in question at all, but who were perceived to be oddities. Since we were talking about the Nazis, the taking of female prisoners almost always finds seperate mention in the German divisional war diaries and histories, and the Nazi propaganda in fact capitalised on the "Flintenweiber" in the newsreels, aiming to portray the Bolsheviks as particularly savage and uncivilised, until they realised that this in fact counterproductive as it had the effect of generating sympathy...
Second point, you strike me as falling victim to a particular narrative of your own in assuming that "hard" biological factors such as the differences in physiognomy between the average man and the average women only played and continue to play a peripheral role in determining the formers preponderance in the martial pursuits throughout the ages - you are confusing the descriptive and the normative plane here. Anyways, did not even get to tell the sailors yawn, will do so later.

Well I do agree that the use of women as combatants is often an act of desperation. So I was curious, as to why, in the most violent, desperate and bloodiest conflict in human history, everyone used women extensively as either workforce or combatants, but the germans. Now I'm a bit more informed on the subject.

Seeing we are talking about the history of women in warfare, I'll share a few good videos on the subject by Lindybeige (Lloyd, archaeologist/historian). So I agree with the youtuber and Leyawn on this subject. Women in combat were very rare, and there's too many myths that blow it out of proportion, especially with the current trend of using exceptional cases as a way to promote women's participation in warfare as a common occurrence. Cmon, Jeanne D'arc, Boudicca, they were pawns, symbols, they never fought for real or commanded armies. The Amazons are a complete fabrication, a female only tribe is unsustainable in the long term, heck would not last more than a single generation. Moreover cutting breast in those days would have most likely meant a slow and certain death.

Regarding the discussion about the findings of skeletons of "alleged" female warriors. Remember that swords were a symbol of high status. The finding women buried with swords, shields or armour, does not prove they were warriors, just nobles. Actually to discern if the skeleton was a warrior, they just looked for twisted spines (Archers) or extensive bone fractures (infantrymen). Maiden Castle is the exception not the norm, most women buried with armour & weapons do not exhibit any cuts & fractures.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tALpizMxU-8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrgovSZ32Yg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPmbDPsyt6I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSX7iT0n65Q

P.S : Lindybeige is quite the character, hilarious!

@Frencho, the Germans actually did use women both in the workforce and eventually in combat roles, just arguably later than their antagonists. The regime was not shy about advertising it either, ie. some footage from the "Wochenschau" propaganda newsreel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seFQAnag9o4

There is alot more if you look around.

"Personal experience?" How do you know about the middlemen?

I know an American who is part of the 'Glantz' club (glantz wrote the forward to his book, and they help each other)- who published a tactical history using extremely specific soviet unit information. He never mentioned this-in fact in our discussion he was more of the view that there was just so much that he wished more historians would work in the area. But in the US there is extreme disinterest in the subject matter.

In fact, Russian archival access is still highly restricted to Westerners, not only in theory but especially in practice. Even for citizens of the Russian Federation there are still serious hurdles and I am speaking from personal experience here. AFAIK everything above Front level is still restricted, as is most of the doctrinal stuff. Dave Glantz for example exclusively works through middlemen for his Russian archival research. I might add that his grasp of German stuff is pretty shaky. Don't get me wrong here though, he of course has made pioneering contributions.

You would have to have read most of Glantz' books, which takes a hell of a long time- to make that opinion. I have read most of his books. His books are either soviet focused or 'balanced'. I would agree that his German numbers info is incomplete in the soviet focused ones. However, German troop movements I have not noticed anything problematic. The 'balanced' ones (like Stalingrad Trilogy with John House) are heavily researched from the German POV and have no easily apparent evidence of being 'shaky'. If you have read it, please disclose what I am missing.

Overall, I would like to see more material that consists of all the troop movements and logistics tracking. I like that sort of thing- most op. histories are lacking in detail to me so I consider Glantz' technique #1. The Stalingrad Trilogy is a good model of how it should be. An even stronger focus on logistics intertwined with the narrative would make it even better.

Nipe is also very talented at composing Op history even if he is a W-SS mania and has no original soviet research...

I got myself much of the "Germany and the Second WW" set and found it sadly lacking in operational history. Definitely a lot of social sciences stuff, but the actual combat information was still too short.

Subscribed.

There are only a few universities in germany that are researching the field of strategic military history. The german army universities in Hamburg and Munich and some military institutes in Potsdam come to my mind.

Edit: But the topic of social aspects and war-crimes at university is still an important aspect to me.

Yea, I agree. All these battles were interrelated, and then finally the great retreat to the Dnepr. A "summer campaign" sounds reasonable although the Soviets did not name one.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the Kursk Operation should cover more than just Operation Zitadelle, certainly operation Kutuzov at the very least...
Would this idea be correct or would Kutuzov be its own "battle" (though where campaign ends and battle begins becomes a bit more blurry these days) go elsewhere do you think?

Just my opinion from time doing op. history and primary document readings (these are from the soldiers to each other). With the soviets, literally the numbers I just have to ignore and focus on the orders. All the general staff studies I have contain soviet estimates of german losses and forces that are inane.

With the Germans, I have rules of thumb- like divide their tank 'kill' claim by two-three and ignore how many tank were recovered or total loss (war is random). Their intel. tends to be closer to the mark-although not close enough- this is just a hunch from observation and confirmation.

US is somewhere between the Germans and Soviets, but closer to the Germans.

You are totally correct with the different measurements thing. Ultimately with war I like getting the numbers but consider having a basic knowledge of what they went to battle with, and their reinforcements ultimately more useful. Also, logistics. The rest- the losses, and whatever are sadly only guesswork.

Agreed with most, but this is the wierd part.


Well what claims? The ones made by Krasnaya Zvesda are often very poor, just like all countries propaganda during the war is very inaccurate. (Which is why I cringe whenever someone on the interwebs quotes wartime publications.)

Overall, I think people sometimes get too wrapped up in numbers

From the book Munro, Manstein (biography):

My personal opinion was that the STUG was definitely a no-no for blitzkrieg and concentration of almost all armor in PzGruppe I-IV was correct to optimize long range attack power in Barbarossa. The rise of the STUG imo went overboard. The problem with stug units was the formation/equipment was too weak logistically/inflexible for long range offensive operations & combined arms and it was better to fill the panzer divisions as much as possible.

Well, after the 'smash and grab' failed, the STUGs took off in the German Army.

In relation to the above discussion on commanders, doctrine and modernisation, I've seen it claimed that Manstein invented, or at least conceptualised, the StuG. Can anyone confirm if this is true, because if so, it must be one of the few instances of a general actually inventing a weapon.

Returning to German developments before the Second World War, Manstein’s role as
head of the operations division and then First Quartermaster in the General Staff required
him to explore the operational level employment of self-contained armoured corps and
armies, which at that time did not exist..............

Meanwhile, where Guderian and Manstein did differ in approach was in the role of
armour in supporting infantry formations. Based on his experience of the First World War,
Manstein (and the General Staff more widely) recognized the urgent requirement to
restore the offensive potential of the infantry in the face of the defensive power of the
machine gun. Whilst supporting the need for the strongest affordable contribution by
armoured forces, restrictions on matériel dictated that the mass of the German Army must
remain one based primarily on infantry divisions. Further, when Beck hesitated to risk all
on the new armoured formations it was at a time when the tactical value of tanks was
evident, but the shock effect of their operational level employment in deep operations had
yet to be demonstrated.

Manstein understood that if that potential were to be realized fully, then it made sense to
improve the fighting power of the infantry in order to conduct mobile operations as well.
He agreed with Guderian that it was not worthwhile (and here he diverged from Beck)
forming heavy armoured brigades to accompany the infantry in attack. If they were to be
established alongside the panzer corps, then Germany could only afford a very small
number of them. In this regard, the German Army did not follow the British route of
developing independent armoured or tank brigades to provide direct tactical support to
infantry divisions.59 For most of the Second World War, German armour remained
concentrated in its panzer (and, later, the motorized panzer grenadier) divisions. Rather,
the infantry divisions should contain new armoured fighting vehicles - the ‘storm artillery’
composed of assault guns.

If Guderian is regarded as the creator of the German armoured force, then Manstein
deserves greater recognition for his role in developing the storm artillery.60............Manstein produced a paper on storm artillery in the autumn of 1935. In so doing he
faced a wall of opposition from artillery, armour and antitank experts alike. It did not help
either that the senior leadership of the German Army at the time was composed of selfassured
artillerymen. Beck, for one, declared: ‘Well, my dear Manstein, this time you have
shot wide of the mark.’61 With Fritsch he was to have more luck, drawing the commanderin-
chief’s attention to the fact that the artillery could now resume its historical role in
taking a direct part in the battle rather than just providing indirect fire. Apparently this
appeal to the sense of honour of a former horse gunner convinced Fritsch, as did

Manstein’s suggestion that the new weapon should be manned by the artillery rather than
by the infantry. So ‘cap-badge’ competition, often the crippling bugbear of the British
Army of the time and long after, also played an important role in the German Army.
Despite its pride in the professional objectivity of its General Staff, which endures today,
the history of the storm artillery demonstrates that sometimes inter-arm pride and rivalry
can have a paradoxically beneficial outcome.
With the support of Fritsch, the German Army pressed ahead with the research and
development of the storm artillery with remarkable speed, bearing in mind the parallel
demands of the new armoured troops. Manstein was well supported by the Chief of Army
Procurement, General Karl Becker, who developed the first prototype based on the chassis
of a Mark II armoured fighting vehicle mounted with a short 75-mm gun, the lack of a
rotating turret distinguishing the ‘assault gun’ from a tank. Field trials of the first
equipments were undertaken in the winter of 1937/38 and combined arms exercises in
1938/39.62 By the autumn of 1937, Fritsch had signed the order for the production of
sufficient assault guns based on the chassis of the Mark III tank to equip all active infantry
divisions with a storm artillery detachment of three batteries of four guns initially (which
was raised subsequently to six), by the autumn of 1939.63 In addition, each of the new
panzer divisions were meant to receive a detachment, and the reconnaissance detachments
of the infantry, panzer, light and motorized infantry divisions a platoon of assault guns
each.

These ambitious plans were never realized. As Manstein recorded bitterly after the war,
after Fritsch and he had left office in early 1938, the new commander-in-chief, Colonel
General von Brauchitsch, cancelled the order. It would appear that this was a ‘realism’
economy measure rather than reflecting any change in doctrine. The fact was that the
German Army was expanding at a rate faster than the rate of procurement for heavy
weaponry would allow. Thus only six assault-gun batteries were raised and trained in the
first half of 1940, and only four of these independent sub-units were employed in the
French campaign.