Conscript Armies

[Legbreaker]

Now that was sheer brilliance.
Beyond a (relative) handful of personell, the entire army consisted of little more than radio traffic.
My understanding is that Patton was less than impressed at this particular assignment and like many at the time, couldn't understand the need for such levels of deception.
Of course one has to remember that barely a generation before, military intelligence had very few tools - reports from the front, spies and occasional balloon observers. Airborne recon, radio intercepts, even radar was still cutting edge and virtually unknown to the average person.

Today's militaries are spoilt by comparison with all the sattelittes, planes, radio, radar, internet, etc, etc, etc. Take just wiki for an example. Even though much of the information there is not classified, or could be inaccurate, how much intel can be gained from just half an hour there? How long would it have taken to gather the same info 100 years ago?

Originally Posted by Mohoender

The intension was to confuse the foreign intelligence services which had the worse difficulties to identify and locate German units.

While this may or may not be true, the creation of new units while allowing existing ones to fade away is madness. Existing units have exisiting support netowrks, command structures, etc. A new unit needs all those things created.
In my opinion, it's probably about ten times harder to create a new division than to simply assign the same personnel to exisiting units as replacements.

If the Germans had the manpower to do both, then the idea has some serious merit. Alternatively, simply renaming exisiting units would have a similar confusing effect without many of the associated problems.

[Mohoender]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

While this may or may not be true, the creation of new units while allowing existing ones to fade away is madness. Existing units have exisiting support netowrks, command structures, etc. A new unit needs all those things created.
In my opinion, it's probably about ten times harder to create a new division than to simply assign the same personnel to exisiting units as replacements.

If the Germans had the manpower to do both, then the idea has some serious merit. Alternatively, simply renaming exisiting units would have a similar confusing effect without many of the associated problems.

About Germany in WW2, the organization was much more complicated that what you describe.

1) Several of the core units were never allowed to fade away and remained in action through the entire war (the 7th Panzer, for exemple).

2) Others were allowed to fade away and were recreated later. In fact, that essentially occured when a unit was entirely destroyed. I think that was the case for the 15 Panzer which was lost in Africa and rebuilt in France later.

3) Several were paper division that never existed really, sometimes with no personnel assigned at all. Many of these units were rear area units with little combat capability.

4) Other units were changing name as they were upgraded. going from infantry to motorized, then to panzergrenadier and eventually to panzer. These units had a tendancy to keep the same number assigned to a different denomination.

5) Units truly fading away appeared only during the last stage of the war (late 1944-1945). Then, this occured only at the division level. Surviving elements of the previous division (Regiments, Battalions...) Were simply taken from the previous division and reassigned to the new one. As a result, the 233 Division became the 233 reserve panzer in late 1943 (about that) to finally become the Holstein Panzer in 1945. Regiments that had not been destroyed being reassinged to the Holstein Panzer. In addition (since 1943), when it was needed, some elements were assigned to a kampfgruppe for some times (I think that the first ones appeared in Africa in 1943).

Here is an excellent site on German Panzer Division. Sorry it's in french but for once, a frenchman has been better than anyone in making a site (too bad he never made a translation of it). Nevertheless, hit "Unités" on the oppening page, then chose between "Heer, Waffen SS or Herman Goering". At last, chose any unit and you'll find its composition with changes made overtime (you might not understand the comments but you should be able to find your way around).

http://pagesperso-orange.fr/did.panzer/depart.html

Here is another excellent site but it is not focused on the German army. It includes elements on every country participating in the war.

http://www.orbat.com/site/ww2/drleo/

[B.T.]

When I look back to my time in the Bundeswehr, I have to point out, that the standards and the store of knowlegde varied a lot.
The basic training was the same for everyone: 3 months of infantry training (how to march and shoot, learn the ranks, learn about life in barracks, learn to crawl through the mud and stuff like this). Exception from this rule were the drivers: they had a shortened basic training of 6 weeks and then made their "military driving license" in another 6 weeks.
But after basic training?

Several units were trained in a "Kampfkompanie" (= Fighting unit). These were trained for the rest of their time in the military. In an ordinary week we were on the training area for 3 days and spent one day at the firing range. For 12 month.
But the majority of the troops were stationed in some barracks far (from a young Germans point of view!) from home and they had not really something to do. Many young Germans hung in there, waiting for the end of their time in and spent their payment on alcohol and cigarettes!
So: Some conscripts were fine and had a quite good training, others did not know anything. (A lot of the guys from my school never had to shoot with the MG3 or the Uzi. The guys in my unit were familiar with both after 6 weeks.)

On the other hand: The two most inspiring leaders I got to know, joined as conscripts and stayed later on. Both were officers and both taught us a lot about democracy. This, in my mind, is the strongest argument for a conscript army. People join the army as officers, who had never before even wanted to join. And some of them are excellent teachers and leaders.

[dragoon500ly]

In a WWIII setup, I feel that the US would activate Selective Service in the 1995-1997 time frame.

The down side of the US Army replacement system is that the soldier is treated as just another "spare part" to plug into the logistics system. During WWII this resulted in fresh replacements being assignd to a combat unit, in all too many cases, right before the unit returned to combat, and in some cases (Normandy and Hurtgen Forest), the replacements would be assigned to the front line, during pauses in the fighting. Any reading of any of the regimental histories tell of new replacements reporting for duty in the morning, and being wounded or dead that same afternoon.

[Webstral]

The handling of replacements is an important issue. It seems that the US Arrmy has learned that unit integrity is important, if Iraq and Afghanstan are indicators. However, we received some augmentees about 2/3 of the way through the tour. They just showed up and were distributed. (A California National Guard unit that had not been mobilized for OIF 3 was mobilized for 120 days and parceled out among the components of 29th Infantry Brigade).

During the Battle of Poland, there would be enormously strong pressure to send the fresh meat right to the front. Canon indicates that NATO losses were heavy during the drive across Poland. It's hard to imagine that losses were not extraordinary during the withdrawal. I wonder what guidance SACEUR would have given on the subject.

Much the same is probably true of the fighting in Korea during the same timeframe. The drive to the Yalu would have resulted in massive casualties. Senior commanders, anxious to keep up the momentum, would have wanted their fresh privates commmitted ASAP. They would be aware of the "model" formula that says a unit should be in hard action for a week, followed by rest, refit, and retraining for two weeks. No one ever seems to follow that rule, though.


Webstral

[dragoon500ly]

It really is a commander's worst nightmare, you get a influx of green-as-grass replacements, your brigade is committed to heavy fighting an the line units have taken a mauling...do you use the replacements to bring the reserve up to strength and then rotate a mauled battalion out of the line, or do you parcel out the FNGs, knowing that most of them won't make it their first week.

When I was still in service, my time was split in between tanks and scouts, I know that tank crews were trained to operate with a minimum of three men, but the effectiveness of the crew in that case was down almost 30%. Toss in a brand new loader and the average crew as down to 50%. The scouts could operate short 2-3 men in the sections and were a lot more effective.

To think of a infantry company, understrength by 30%....ouch!

[HorseSoldier]

Originally Posted by dragoon500ly

To think of a infantry company, understrength by 30%....ouch!

My understanding is that is 70% wasn't unusual for US infantry units in Vietnam, going out on operations. Armor and ground cavalry units did not necessarily do a whole lot better -- I can recall reading something David Drake (the sci-fi author) wrote about his Vietnam service where three man crews were typical on their M48s and two man crews weren't unheard of at all.

[copeab]

Originally Posted by dragoon500ly

To think of a infantry company, understrength by 30%....ouch!

Units in 2000 seem to be more like 80-90% understrength ...

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by dragoon500ly

To think of a infantry company, understrength by 30%....ouch!

Considering one exercise I was on our company was at only 25% strength - 10 man plattoons (x3), plt HQ of 2 men, plus Company HQ, 30% down isn't too bad (that was normal for us).
Naturally we got totally creamed when we assaulted an enemy position numbering barely a dozen men who'd had no more than 30mins to prepare their position. Besides CHQ, there was only one survivor - me, and that was more through sheer luck than anything.

[Adm.Lee]

I'd like to mount a small historical defense of the oft-maligned Army replacement system. In WW2, the individual replacements often were casualties within 24 hours of arriving, often after spending many boring days or weeks in a replacement depot with little or no training. The defense of the system is that the US Army was able to keep its divisions in the line constantly at an effective (not full) strength, hardly ever having to withdraw them for replenishment. [Which was good, since Ike almost never had any reserve divisions to replace shot-out ones on the line.]

What most divisions and regiments learned was to hold their replacements for some refresher training, and to cycle them in when a company came off the line for a week or so. When things got too hot, then this got tossed out the window.

In short, it worked well enough, but only from the higher command's point of view.

Anyway, back to the '90s. SACEUR's going to have even fewer divisions to rotate then Ike did, but with at least as high a casualty rate. Towards the latter half of the Battle for Poland in '97, both sides are going to need a lot of replacements, really quickly.

[dragoon500ly]

While I agree that the WWII Army was able to keep its divisions at effective strength, the cost, physically and mentally was excessive. While the Army Air Forces were able to rotate bomber crews home after 25 missions, the infantryman was never allowed that, his lot was to endure from the beginning to the end of the war, unless he suffered a crippling injury, or had earned a high enough decoration to be be shipped home to help drum up the war effort. The replacement system that was used was a complete and utter waste of manpower, instead of the replacements being used as labor to load/unload supplies, or left twiddling their thumbs in some repple-depot, they should have been run through a training program to teach them how to survive and fight on a battlefield. Then sent to their division and introduced into the infantry regiments, allowing time for them to enter their platoons and become part of the units. That the US Army used the replacement system in the manner that they did, was a utter disgrace. And nothing was learned. The same system was used again in Korea and again in Vietnam.

Just for a historical trivia, a single rifle company of the 3rd Infantry Division, during the period from 1942-1945 suffered a 200% turnover in personnel, of the 1942 grunts, only two were left on VE-day, the supply sergeant and Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier of WWII.

[HorseSoldier]

Originally Posted by Adm.Lee

I'd like to mount a small historical defense of the oft-maligned Army replacement system. In WW2, the individual replacements often were casualties within 24 hours of arriving, often after spending many boring days or weeks in a replacement depot with little or no training. The defense of the system is that the US Army was able to keep its divisions in the line constantly at an effective (not full) strength, hardly ever having to withdraw them for replenishment. [Which was good, since Ike almost never had any reserve divisions to replace shot-out ones on the line.]

The system used in Vietnam is usually critiqued even more vigorously -- the individual replacement system on 12 month rotations undermined unit cohesion, fostered an every man for himself angle, and so on and so forth.

I recently reread The 13th Valley by John DelVecchio which, though fiction, is based on his service with the 101st late in the war (70 or 71). One of the characters in the book talks or thinks about the strength of the Vietnam era system, since cherries coming into a unit are always guaranteed to be surrounded by experienced guys, and get the benefit of in country finishing school sort of training programs run by their divisions. Same character contrasts this with units that deployed in country as new units and collectively suffered higher casualties because so few knew the basics of survival on the battlefield in SVN.

Anyway, interesting different point of view to encounter compared to the conventional wisdom all of us got fed during the volunteer army era. Makes me wonder if a bigger issue weren't other aspects of military personnel policy back then that undermined small unit leadership (shake and bake NCO academies, rotating officers from the line to staff jobs halfway through their tours).

[HorseSoldier]

Originally Posted by dragoon500ly

In a WWIII setup, I feel that the US would activate Selective Service in the 1995-1997 time frame.

I can't see the US activating the Selective Service system at any point before the Bundeswehr crossed the Inter-German Border.

Prior to that you've got the PRC-Soviet fight going full tilt, and the US and other NATO nations pouring support into the PRC. Political leadership, in my opinion, is not going to risk a huge gesture like a return to the draft that might make the Soviets fear that they are about to be on the receiving end of a two front war. Too much aggression (or actions that a paranoid authoritarian regime might consider aggressive) could easily be taken the wrong way and possibly provoke a nuclear response from the Soviets. And not a tit-for-tat T2K nuclear attack, but possibly the nation-wiper first strike that both sides feared during the Cold War.

My guess/personal take is that once the Sino-Soviet War goes hot, the US government boosts spending on all sorts of military programs, with some of that going to the PRC and some of it going into bringing the reserve component more up to date. Additionally, more money would get pumped into recruiting and bonus programs, etc., to encourage voluntary enlistment in the active and reserve components. The reserve component would likely get additional money for training and (maybe/god willing) some of that would translate into identifying and trying to correct the problems that came to light IRL when the Nat'l Guard round out brigades fumbled their Desert Storm mobilization.

Much lower profile, Selective Service gets dusted off and looked at, ready to be put into play, but the government doesn't take that step until after the European war starts. Even then, they might not immediately put it into play, potentially waiting to see if the war will be a quick German reunification and then a peace settlement. Again, I don't think anyone would want to send the Soviets the message that it's war to the knife and the panzer columns are heading for the gates of Moscow again (even if that's exactly what it started turning into as the war developed).