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Originally Posted by Adm.Lee
The Germans who only sent out replacement soldiers at the end of the month? Who had to combine companies nearly every week to have even half-strength battalions in some regiments? Who regularly scraped up whatever soldiers were nearby, such as transients or hospital dischargees, and sent them willy-nilly into combat as "replacement" platoons, with little or no integration into the command structure or unit?
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By the end of the war, yes. At the start, no.
The German policy in 1939 was to ;et a unit drop to a certain level due to attrition, then pull it out of combat for a period of time. New soldiers then joined the unit and were integrated/indoctrinated while the veterans were resting. Then, after a period of time, the unit was sent back into action.
This system probably worked well until the first half of 1943, with Stalingrad, Kursk and the fall of North Africa, and continued to deteriorate the rest of the war.
The US, OTOH, just threw new soldiers arriving at the front into units in combat. Many veterans didn't bother to learn the new guys' names, since they expected them to be dead in 2-3 days. Some wouldn't bother to get to know a replacement until he had survived a couple of weeks.
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When the American army could make attacks, take casualties and have units at full strength again in two days? That's what the system was designed for, and as far as that goes, it worked. Where it fell down was in our small army in the ETO.
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More accurately, the US did have enough riflemen in the war. Other troop types were generally available in adequate (in some cases abundant) numbers.
For example, if doctrine had allowed the Sherman to be armed so it could hunt and kill other tanks, there really would have been no need for all the independent tank destroyer battalions.