Major Military Planning Errors in WW2

silverharp

I'll focus on germany for this one, and more on military planning as opposed to who they fought when and where. My basic assumption is that Germany didn't appear to realise that they had limited resources , energy , materials and men, so should have focused their efforts more.

1) Surface fleet - Their surface fleet and their investment in battleships seems to have been a waste as they never came near being able to take on the Royal Navy, had they focued on U boats they probably could have blockaded britain at the start of the conflict.

2) The Luftwaffe should really have become an arm of the Army and focused on fighters and ground support instead of bombers which served no strategic purpose. the question here is could a serious investment in ground attack aircraft have made a serious difference in North Africa and Russia?

3) Tank strategy - the tiger tank program should never have gone ahead, the mark 4 was a good tank and they should have focused on increased production of these.

4) V1 V2 and arguably even jet fighter development should have stayed in the lab. however I guess at this stage they were going to lose anyway

marcsignal

well i'd agree with all 4 points there, but taking hindsight into account too. There seemed to be so many monumental mis-judgements made. i think we must also consider the level of corruption going on with the industrialists, in the context of the level of nepotism that existed. Heinkel, for example built a jet fighter called the He 280 which was way ahead of its time and already, pretty much well tested by 1942, yet Messerschmitt won the contract for the ME 262 because Adolf had a better relationship with Willi Messerschmitt than Professor Heinkel.

TerrorFirmer

Hard to argue the surface fleet really as Hitler genuinely did not intend to go to war in 1939, the Kreigmarine was in the middle of what it was eventually supposed to be able to put to sea. The impending war was always going to be Russia, where a strong Navy did not matter so much either.

The Luftwaffes only real mistake was a lack of heavy bombers. The Stuka was used very effectively as a ground attack aircraft when armed with 75mm cannon and took a great toll on Soviet armor.

Agreed on the Tiger, it was a good tank but didn't have the numbers to make a difference. They should have stuck with the Soviet Doctrine of mass production with slight modifications to deal with the changing battlefield - the T34 and Panzer IV both lasted until the end of the war this way but their 1941 variants wouldn't have, and Germany deprived itself of great numbers of it and other assault guns just for tanks like the Panther and Tiger.

V1 and V2....total waste by the time they came to be deployed. Technically brilliant but practically useless. Me262 was one of the few weapons that actually could have hugely impacted the course of the war had it come into service even a year earlier....didn't help that when it did come into service it was assigned as fighter-bomber.

Germany's - rather, Hitlers - worst flaw was always believing in offense even at a major disadvantage. Kursk and the Ardennes being two examples; Kursk decided the war in entirety, the Ardennes shortened it, and never had a hope of success to boot. Not to mention the disastrous and ridiculous 'hold your ground' ethic, responsible single handedly above all else for the collapse of the Eastern Front from late 1943 onwards.

silverharp

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

The Luftwaffes only real mistake was a lack of heavy bombers. The Stuka was used very effectively as a ground attack aircraft when armed with 75mm cannon and took a great toll on Soviet armor.

what advantage ? I would argue that strategic bombing wasnt worth the resources commited to it


Marcsignal wrote

" i think we must also consider the level of corruption going on with the industrialists, in the context of the level of nepotism that existed. Heinkel, for example built a jet fighter called the He 280 which was way ahead of its time and already, pretty much well tested by 1942, yet Messerschmitt won the contract for the ME 262 because Adolf had a better relationship with Willi Messerschmitt than Professor Heinkel."

good point

TerrorFirmer

silverharp wrote: »

what advantage ? I would argue that strategic bombing wasnt worth the resources commited to it

I think you'd be hard pressed to support that take on bombing, the bombing of refineries was what completely grounded the Luftwaffe and most of German armour from 1944 onwards. Virtually every German offensive from Autumn 1944 was stopped, fell short or was abandoned because of fuel shortages which allowed absolutely no window outside of the predetermined plans. With long range bombers, from a German perspective, they could have made a much better job of destroying Soviet heavy industry, which would have gone a long way towards stripping the Red Army of the reserves it built up in late 1942 and 1943 after being dismantled and relocated.

silverharp

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

I think you'd be hard pressed to support that take on bombing, the bombing of refineries was what completely grounded the Luftwaffe and most of German armour from 1944 onwards. Virtually every German offensive from Autumn 1944 was stopped, fell short or was abandoned because of fuel shortages which allowed absolutely no window outside of the predetermined plans. With long range bombers, from a German perspective, they could have made a much better job of destroying Soviet heavy industry, which would have gone a long way towards stripping the Red Army of the reserves it built up in late 1942 and 1943 after being dismantled and relocated.

first part, no argument , but I was saying that for Germany it served no strategic purpose. It is worth discussing if Germany could have destroyed Russian heavy industry but Russia is a big country, and it would seem that Germany didnt have had the resources to throw against russia which would need to have been a multiple of that used in the battle of britain.

TerrorFirmer

silverharp wrote: »

first part, no argument , but I was saying that for Germany it served no strategic purpose. It is worth discussing if Germany could have destroyed Russian heavy industry but Russia is a big country, and it would seem that Germany didnt have had the resources to throw against russia which would need to have been a multiple of that used in the battle of britain.

Well, not really - the Red Air Force was no match for the Luftwaffe, who only really lost air superiority as late as Autumn 1943 in the east (if you look at summer 1943 in both theaters - over Germany the Luftwaffe was definitely failing but yet at Kursk the Red army was unable to force aerial superiority, and German planes had far higher kill ratios in terms of air and ground targets) ....the Luftwaffe lost a great many pilots/resources because of Allied raids, tie that in with the crippling fuel problems and so on.....

Nearly all of the Soviet Unions heavy industry has always been in the western regions (look at the treaty of brest-litovsk in 1918, they lost 50-55% of their industry by just ceding parts of the ukraine, poland, baltics) , it doesn't really matter how big the country is, if Germany could have more effectively crippled/destroyed that industrial capability earlier on in the war which it might have done with a heavy bomber force it wouldn't matter how big the Soviet Union was - not in the timeframe of an aggressive war anyway.

Tenger

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Nearly all of the Soviet Unions heavy industry has always been in the western regions.................it doesn't really matter how big the country is, if Germany could have more effectively crippled/destroyed that industrial capability earlier on in the war ..................it wouldn't matter how big the Soviet Union was - not in the timeframe of an aggressive war anyway.

1) Surface fleet: I agree that the prestigious surface vessels were not worth the investment in time and resources. They played their role in the 1940 invasion of Norway which was vital. Apart from that they wasted resources an men needed elsewhere. The Bismarck/Tirpitz were unable to carry out their missions as the Allies had comprosmised German Naval comms.
The German had planned an Naval expansion called Plan Z,with the early start of the war this plan was stopped and U boat became the mainstay of Kreigsmarine efforts.-2 carriers were laid down in '36 and '38 but neither completed. They started to convert 3 ships to Escort carriers in 1942 but gave up in 1943 due to lack of resources,what a waste.

2) Luftwaffe role: German combined ops required that Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe work closely together. This worked until the Luftwaffe ran low on resources. They lost too many pilots in Battle of Britain,this hampere efforts during Op Barbarossa. A problem with the Heavy bomber idea is that it may have lessened the resources the Luftwaffe had for close air support.
On the other hand-A major reason why the Soviets were able to defeat the Germans was that in 1941 the Red Army was able to slow their advance sufficiently to allow whole factories to be dismantled and moved east beyond the Urals. With a decent Heavy/Long Range bomber the Luftwaffe could have used their air dominance to hit Soviet industry behind the lines and/or keep hitting industrial targets even when the Wehrmacht were stalled at the gates of Moscow.

3) Tank strategy: German tanks were over engineered. Very well made but very expensive. German tanks were capable of withstanding a lot of hits but were harder to recover from the battlefield. Major repairs mean the tank had to be returned to Germany raher than using Field stations. A problem was the investment in Tigers, King Tigers their specialised varients. Am not sure but I think a Tiger cost 3 times the cost of a PvIV,. Perhaps a better plan would to have concentrated on more PzIVs and Stugs with the PzV Panther as the only heavy tank. (Incidently the Panther formed 50% of German tank strength in Normandy) Look at the Soviets and US forces, lots of one model (T34/M4 Sherman) which kept getting upgraded. The Soviets also had the KV/IS series of heavy tanks,the US were slower with their M26 Pershing)
Germany produced over 50,000 tanks during the war,this figure is dwarfed by that produced by the Allies: 50,000 Shermans, 57,000 T34 varients.

4) Experimental weapons: The V1 and V2 were a waste of resources for the little effect they had.
Jet aircraft could have done huge damage if they were introduced earlier,as said above there were several viable designs but Hitler wanted the Me262 as a bomber,a large enough fleet of these before fuel was running out would have decimated the allied bomber fleet and possibly halted them at least temporarily.
Also in the final months of the war the StG44 (Sturmgewehr 44 ) proved its worth in firefights with the Red Army. Hitler had opposed its development,the army got it through by calling it an Machine pistol (MP43/MP44) as Hitler had stopped all 'rifle' development. Just looked at wikipedia for the Stg44,they have been found in use by militias in Iraq,now thats German engineering!


Germanys problem was that the war began earlier than they had expected. They did not have their armed force completely 'ready'. On the logistical side they did not have a streamlined war effort unbtil Albert Speer was given more power in '42 or '43,not sure on that date. As an example in 1939 some German Light (Leichte) Armoured divisions used Czech tanks (Panzer 38t), some infantry units used foreign weapons. And at one point in the war they were 47 different types of radar set at work. Another logistical problem was that the Allied bombing campaign diverted valuable 88mm cannons from anti-tank and tank usage to AA defense.

Bibliography:
Richard Overy-How the Allies Won WWII
Peter McCarhy-Panzerkrieg

Beano

Bramble wrote: »

...
Also in the final months of the war the StG44 proved its worth in firefights with the Red Army. Hitler had opposed its development,the army got it through by calling it an Assault Rifle.
...

slight nitpick but it was allowed to continue because they called it a machine pistol. MP43->MP44->STG44