Evaluating The Armies And Generals Of 1914

[Tony Evans]

Pretty much covers the last month of the war that you cite, eh?

 

Not exactly. If you refer to the volume I mentioned, you'll note that one of the major depots developed over the winter of 1944-45 (IOW, months before the end of the war) was Verdun, where all rail sidings within 30 miles of the town were utilized (p421). Up until the final push into Germany that would have been within 50-100 miles from the front line.

 

Rail is easily exaggerated

 

Rail is much more easily underestimated.

 

as is this silly notion of "high force-to-space,"

 

It's not silly at all. It's a foundational concept of operational analysis. The most obvious example is that you can't maneuver around an enemy if he has enough force to fill up the available maneuver space. That's why the Race to the Sea turned out how it did. (To bring things back on topic.)

 

It sounds like a borrowing from Ovary, IOW a firm grasp of the obvious. Napoleon's operational method also worked well, but mostly in the dense road network of W Europe.

 

Ho hum.

 

I sincerely hope that misspelling is an oversight, Ken. I don't think you have the authority to make it stick as an insult. And while I do possess a couple of Mr. Overy's works, I'm much more widely read WRT to operational art and logistics.

 

Finally, as in all of life, in military affairs and history the obvious really isn't all that obvious a lot of the time. The widespread imperative to deprecate logistics and strategic mobility is a perfect example. The fact that you can't fight without "beans, bullets, and bandaids" is one of the most obvious things. But because people find it "Ho hum" (to borrow a turn of phrase) they neglect to study it much at all, very much to the detriment of their overall understanding.

Edited August 28, 2014 by Tony Evans

[Ken Estes]

Ho hum again. Instead of worrying about a typo and supposed 'authority' for imaginary insults, one might use alleged deep reading in logistics to find evidence that the US Army caught up with its lasting supply and services problems via the tenuous rail connections [wow, all sidings used near Verdun? what a discovery]it perforce struggled with for the rest of the war. Some throughput stats, perhaps? This is why your flummoxing is of so little interest compared to what Rich brings to the table.

 

It's always amusing to see persons allege they have embraced the god of logistics without having a fig's notion of what it entails.

 

Any 'authority' for your "high force to space" routine?

 

Such a bore.

Edited September 22, 2014 by Ken Estes

[T19]

Gentlemen, keep to the facts at hand, lets not make this more of a pissing contest for past transgressions and perceived slights

[Richard Lindquist]

 

Having read through it tho I see there was a bit more to it:

 

- the idea wasn't to use US troops as individual replacements but as full battalions inserted into British brigades

- the French were in on it too until they realised how long and how resource heavy it was going to take/be

- it was driven by the very real manpower shortage the BEF was facing by the end of 1917

 

That said, I dunno if it would've worked out in practice on the political level altho Pershing did do a good job of stonewalling the arch-fibber and conniver Lloyd George. However, it's not quite as it's been presented then, as Perfidious Albion seeking to shield its sons with the bodies of former colonials on an individual basis.

 

BillB

 

Bill; The Balfour Mission to the US shortly after the US declaration of war included a General G.T.M. "Tommy" Bridges who proposed to US CofS Scott that the US immediately send "five hundred thousand untrained men at once to our depots in England to be trained there, and drafted into our armies in France."

[Ken Estes]

 

 

 

That's kind of interesting as Conrad is (or maybe, was) held up as the best of the A-H generals yet he failed to translate his abilities into positive results. There's lots of books out there about the A-H Army during WW1. Having a hard time deciding which one to get. Suggestions appreciated.

 

 

Hi Al,

 

Apart from the classic works by Gunther E. Rothenberg, I confess to not being up on the latest scholarship and titles for the K-u-K Armees. The Wawro book I mentioned above was rated "a masterful account" in a recent review by Samuel R. Williamson, Jr., himself a noted US historian of WWI and author of Austria-Hungary and the Origins of the First World War.

 

Geoffrey Wawro, A Mad Catastrophe: The Outbreak of World War I and the Collapse of the Hapsburg Empire.

 

Gunther E. Rothenberg, The Army of Franz Joseph

 

"the 'military monarchy' of the Habsburgs was the least militarized state in Europe. (x)" "This army which, as Schiller put it, Wallenstein called forth from the void, is gone. Its bugles no longer sound across the plains of Podolia and Hunngary; its signal horns no longer shrill...(222)"

[Al]

Thanks Ken. I'll check in to those.

[Tony Evans]

...find evidence that the US Army caught up with its lasting supply and services problems via the tenuous rail connections

 

The evidence has been provided, in qualitative form. Holding out for quantitative evidence is of course your option.

 

Any 'authority' for your "high force to space" routine?

 

Sigh...as if such a basic concept needed proof. Still:

 

"The high ratio of force to space dominated operations in France during the four years of World War I and, along with the unparalleled primacy of the defense, strongly influenced events in other theaters. Just as too little force to space could render operations indecisive, so did too much, as operations in the fortified Netherlands had long demonstrated. Without flanks, the primacy of the tactical defensive over frontal attacks asserted itself and produced a stalemate."

Jones, Archer, The Art of War in the Western World, Oxford University Press, 1987

Edited August 29, 2014 by Tony Evans

[Colin]

I understood that the Allies had dedicated rail troops to run and maintain the rail lines to the front, using a narrow gauge to supplement the mainlines. did the Turks or A-H forces have the same?

 

Was there a normal distance from the front that the narrow gauge started or was it always situational, dependent on the existing civil infrastructure?

[Ken Estes]

Ho hum once again. Nothing to show, dodging lack of evidence that the US Army relied on rail for ETO logistics, then relying on a broad-based survey of a retired Civil War historian writing for a general audience for authority on a convoluted measure of WWI effectiveness. I hesitate to ask if anybody has echoed Jones. I have that book but seldom have used it for anything.

 

Still rather boorish.

 

Back to more important work.....

[Murph]

Lions, Donkeys, what a shame. Great thread BTW.

[Murph]

Back to Generals. What about some of the German generals at the Corps and Army level? Competent or not? All I have for reference on WWI is Keegan's book, and The Great War in Africa by Farwell.

[Al]

From what I have read it seems that behind every famous German general was a brilliant chief-of-staff - usually a Lt Colonel.

[MiloMorai]

American rail ops in the ETO

http://web.mst.edu/~rogersda/umrcourses/ge342/Railroads%20WWII%20ETO.pdf

[Ken Estes]

It's never so simple.

 

The rails north of Marseilles and east [not north] of Paris were much less damaged by the withdrawing Germans. Hence, motor transport began to work the short run to Paris and the long haul of the Military Rail Service began to take effect once the enemy had been pushed back.

 

The key ref in the Green Book series may be found in the Technical Services part, The Transportation Corps: Operations Overseas:

 

page 342:

 

Behind the growing clamor for railway

equipment lay a significant shift from motor

to rail as the principal means of supporting

the U.S. armies—the railways, as

the prime long-distance carriers, were assuming

a larger proportion of the line of

communications hauling. In the last quarter

of 1944 the Paris area became an extremely

busy railway center and an

important truck-to-rail transfer point.

During October alone, 798 freight trains

arrived at the French capital from Normandy

and Brittany, and 999 freight

trains departed for northern and eastern

points with U.S. Army shipments. From

November on, more than half of all tonnage

forwarded from the rear areas in

northern France moved by rail.

 

 

p. 344:

 

On 15 December

1944 the 2d MRS attained a daily peak of

50,000 tons moved by rail, after which

came a sharp but temporary downward

trend because of resurgent enemy activity.

 

An advance echelon of the 2d MRS was

established at Antwerp on 7 November

1944. Headed by Colonel Beeler, it supervised

the planning and development of

that port for rail traffic. In the first month

of activity at the Antwerp Terminal, 268

freight trains were dispatched, moving a

total of 150,824 tons. Operations were

never seriously affected by the almost constant

 

 

German bombing of the port. The

rail cars were diverted to remove supplies

from endangered areas. Although no units

of the 2d MRS were in direct contact with

the Germans, enemy strafing and bombing

resulted in considerable damage, especially

at Soissons where bombs set fire to

cars loaded with ammunition and temporarily

halted activity on the main line.130

Although it had been hoped that all

railway lines west of Paris could be released

to the French as early as 1 December

1944, action had to be postponed, first

because of the delay in opening the port of

Antwerp, and second because of enemy

activity in the Ardennes. At the close of

1944 the 2d MRS had a total of 757 officers,

26 warrant officers, and 16,763 enlisted

men on the Continent. In addition

to the headquarters, there were five railway

grand divisions, eighteen railway operating

battalions and two detachments,

four railway shop battalions, five railway

workshop (mobile) units, and ten hospital

train maintenance platoons and sections.

708th Railway Grand Division, the first to

function in Belgium, was responsible for

the rail support of the U.S. First and Ninth

Armies.

By mid-December 1944, railway troops

under the jurisdiction of the 708th Railway

Grand Division were operating almost

within sight of the enemy. The 740th Railway

Operating Battalion was operating as

far forward as Malmedy, Belgium. The

advanced lines in Holland and Germany

north of Malmedy, extending as far east

as Herzogenrath and Geilenkirchen, were

then being operated by Company C of the

734th Railway Operating Battalion. The

German counteroffensive soon forced the

evacuation of the forward railheads at

Malmedy, Eupen, and Herbesthal.

The activity of the 2d MRS was broadly

affected by the Battle of the Bulge. Supply

movements declined from 50,000 tons to

approximately 30,000 tons per day between

15 and 20 December. Rail shipments

were held back pending improvement

in the tactical situation, and many

rail cars were diverted to remove supplies

from endangered areas. Although no units

of the 2d MRS were in direct contact with

the Germans, enemy strafing and bombing

resulted in considerable damage, especially

at Soissons where bombs set fire to

cars loaded with ammunition and temporarily

halted activity on the main line.

 

 

 

 

 

There are charts p.349 showing rail tonnage soaring over motor transport haul E of Paris and N of Marseilles. So, I

hand it to Evans that rail was the significant line transport means in NW Europe from some point after September 44, not later as I thought. However it is not clear when rail was functioning W and N of Paris, such that motor transport line haul was no longer needed and Antwerp did not come into play as a source of supply until 1945. It would appear that the Red Ball and ABC etc. motor transport runs remained essential for operations notwithstanding the restoration of rail in the COMMZ.

 

 

 

Finally, p. 340:

 

 

It would be difficult, indeed, to overestimate

the significance of the role played

by motor transport in the war against

Germany. It served as the principal longdistance

hauler on land pending the restoration

of railway service, provided close

and flexible support to the advancing

armies, and performed vital port clearance

and base-hauling functions. In appraising

its performance, it is necessary to bear in

mind that the theater chief of transportation

did not receive the personnel or the

number and type of vehicles he considered

essential for OVERLORD, and that the

drivers and equipment that were made

available were called upon to support a

tactical advance that outstripped the timetable

set up for OVERLORD. Improvisation,

overwork, inadequate maintenance and

communications, and rough operating

conditions all attended the effort to keep

the armies supplied. Despite the difficulties,

U.S. Army truck units engaged in

port clearance, static operations, and line

of communications hauling moved 22,-

644,609 long tons and covered 702,925,988

ton-miles in the period from 17 June 1944

through 31 May 1945. When asked in late

1944 to list the outstanding achievements

of the Transportation Corps in the European

theater, General Ross gave prominence

to the operations of the Motor

Transport Service. The basic credit for its

accomplishment, he said, belonged to the

soldiers who drove the trucks day and

night, in all kinds of weather, and all too

often without adequate rest and food.

These men, he added, had done a "wonderful

job."

 

 

 

p. 338:

 

The first U.S. supply train entered Berlin

on 27 July 1945. [p. 352]

Edited August 30, 2014 by Ken Estes

[Colin]

Did they bring stock over or just used existing rail stock in the ETO?

[Richard Lindquist]

Did they bring stock over or just used existing rail stock in the ETO?

Both

[Ken Estes]

Did they bring stock over or just used existing rail stock in the ETO?

 

 

Again from the Transportation Corps: Overseas Operations:

 

 

Despite wartime handicaps the French

railways were in reasonably good operating

condition, although two years of

bombing had left much destruction, especially

on the lines west of Paris. As the

Germans retreated, they did considerable

damage, but not to the degree expected

by the Allies.

....

The French civilian railway personnel

co-operated wholeheartedly with the U.S.

Army, taking over complete operation of

the trains much faster than originally contemplated.

Since demolition of the right of

way was less than expected, requisitions for

most track material for this area were canceled.

However, the expansion of rail

traffic was handicapped for a time by the

shortage of motive power and rolling stock.

French equipment was employed exclusively

until late October 1944, when the

first four American 65-ton diesel-electric

locomotives arrived. Altogether, ten diesel

locomotives and eighty-seven 2-8-0-type

steam locomotives had been ordered for

southern France, but deliveries of the latter

lagged. Considerable railway equipment

was obtained by transfer from North

Africa and Italy. By the end of 1944 additional

shipments from the United States

brought definite relief.

[p.340-45 passim]

 

 

As an add-on to detail my previous post, demonstrating that motor transport continued to be essential:

 

 

"The Red Ball route was terminated as a

large-scale operation because additional

rail and inland waterway facilities had become

available, and because new ports

such as Antwerp had been acquired, from

which supplies could be moved with

shorter inland hauls. To meet the continued

need for an expedited movement of

a limited amount of supplies from Normandy

to Paris, a so-called Little Red Ball

route was established on 15 December

1944. For a month it provided fast delivery

for high-priority items by means of

a single truck company with five-ton

truck-tractors and ten-ton semitrailers.

The average daily tonnage carried was

approximately 100 tons. The route was

discontinued on 18 January 1945, by

which time the railways were able to

furnish express service. [p.335]

 

The ABC (Antwerp-Brussels-Charleroi)

Express Route was established to

clear incoming supplies from the port of

Antwerp. The initial operation lasted from

30 November 1944 to 26 March 1945 and

was based on a surge pool, or marshaling

yard, outside the port area. There, motor

convoys dropped empty ten-ton semitrailers

(the only type of equipment used in

this haul) and picked up loaded semitrailers

for the forward trip to the depot

areas near Liege, Mons, and Charleroi.

Other marshaling yards were set up at the

points where the convoys dropped loaded

semitrailers and picked up empties for the

return trip. Truck-tractors placed in each of

the marshaling yards facilitated the shuttling

of the loaded and empty semitrailers

and reduced turnaround time considerably.

During the 117 days of the ABC operation,

nearly a quarter of a million tons

were moved forward approximately ninety

miles to the dump areas from which the

U.S. First and Ninth Armies were supplied.[p.336]"

 

 

Thus we are well into 1945 before the US Army rail caught up with the advance. Obviously, each type of transport, above all, sealift [incl. inland], proved necessary in the ETO, and rail service continued to have serious gaps. The mechanization of the US and to a lesser extent of the British armies, continues to rank as the key logistics advantage of the Western Allies in WWII. No longer were armies tied to rail service as in WWI.

[BillB]

Billb. U should read Pierre Butons Vimy Ridge. It gives a good account of te politics and the rational of the Canadian thought process at this time.

Actually mate, at risk of ruffling your feathers a bit, I have read Berton. Well at least part of it; I gave up on it about a quarter way through because I simply couldn't get on with the rah-rah Canadians-were-all-great-and-everybody-else-was-crap/stupid/incompetent tone it which it's written. Altho it did inspire me to go off and discover that there was more to it.

 

That's what happens when journos and such get to writing history I suppose. The Aussies have John Laffin, we have Max Hastings and the Cousins have John Mosier...

 

BillB

[DogDodger]

John Mosier

I bought The Blitzkrieg Myth on a whim after seeing it on the shelf at the bookstore. That was the last time I bought a book without researching it first...

[BillB]

 

 

Having read through it tho I see there was a bit more to it:

 

- the idea wasn't to use US troops as individual replacements but as full battalions inserted into British brigades

- the French were in on it too until they realised how long and how resource heavy it was going to take/be

- it was driven by the very real manpower shortage the BEF was facing by the end of 1917

 

That said, I dunno if it would've worked out in practice on the political level altho Pershing did do a good job of stonewalling the arch-fibber and conniver Lloyd George. However, it's not quite as it's been presented then, as Perfidious Albion seeking to shield its sons with the bodies of former colonials on an individual basis.

 

BillB

 

Bill; The Balfour Mission to the US shortly after the US declaration of war included a General G.T.M. "Tommy" Bridges who proposed to US CofS Scott that the US immediately send "five hundred thousand untrained men at once to our depots in England to be trained there, and drafted into our armies in France."

 

Cheers for the heads up Richard. Done a bit of digging though and again there's a bit more to it. From my reading the request for troops was an afterthought in support of the French asking for a US Expeditionary Force soonest. See here:

 

 

 

"In discussion with American officials, Balfour and General Bridges asked for ships, food, and financial aid and received assurances from their hosts that all would be forthcoming. However, neither Briton initially asked for American troops. It was only when the Viviani mission arrived from France, and Marshal Joffre, its military representative, made an overt appeal for an American expeditionary force, that Bridges conceded that some few thousand American soldiers might be allowed to enrol in English units. Since Joffre was quite willing to let American troops carry American-made arms and fight under their own flag, the British proposal was rejected. Having already secured their primary objectives - material and financial commitments - and having laid the groundwork for future cooperation, the Balfour mission departed without ceremony at the end of May". (Anne Cipriano Venzon (Ed.), The United States in the First World War: An Encyclopedia (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 63

 

Now that again doesn't sound much like Perfidious Albion seeking to use (ex) Colonial manpower as human shields to protect their own men.

 

BillB

[Tony Evans]

So, I hand it to Evans that rail was the significant line transport means in NW Europe from some point after September 44, not later as I thought.

 

This may come as something of a shock, but IMO I deserve no great credit. My assessment of the situation depended entirely on a gestalt understanding of factoids like the ones I presented. Taken together, those factoids do have a definite meaning. But I also understand the perceived imperative to see compiled statistical data, presumably from reliable sources.

 

However it is not clear when rail was functioning W and N of Paris, such that motor transport line haul was no longer needed and Antwerp did not come into play as a source of supply until 1945. It would appear that the Red Ball and ABC etc. motor transport runs remained essential for operations notwithstanding the restoration of rail in the COMMZ.

 

The disconnect here, I think, is a semantic one -- what meaning do we assign to the reality of motor transport having to significantly extend the reach of rails, all the way to the end of the war. To me, the significance is that the railheads had come as far as they did by the last month of the war. When you look at the map supplied by Ken (below), You can see that the truck routes were depending from railheads hundreds of miles from the initial landing beaches. This was certainly aided by the opening of Antwerp and the relatively light pre-invasion damage to rails in the south of France. Still, given the fluid nature of operations, it seems not at all remarkable that the railheads wound up, in some cases, almost 200 miles to the rear. That's a good sign -- a sign that your army is moving ahead quicker than the rails can be made to catch up.

 

 

[JWB]

Truthless

[Tony Evans]

Getting back to WW1, i find it somewhat curious that force-to-space ratio is considered to be a "convoluted measure of WWI effectiveness".

 

First of all, force-to-space ratio is not a measure of effectiveness. It's a measure of battlefield state: how much force exists in a given area of operations.

 

Secondly, it's not a convoluted at all. It's a very simple -- though not simplistic -- concept. A given level of force in a given space dictates capabilities and opportunities. If one doesn't have enough force to cover all of the bases, as it were, then one does not have a sufficient capability to accomplish the mission. On the other hand, in the same situation, the enemy is presented with opportunities for maneuver and attack that he might not have had, had the opposing force been greater. Taken to the other extreme -- and this was the state of force to space on the Western Front in WW1 -- if both sides have so much force that the available maneuver space can be filled up by forces in adequate strength to prevent decisive action, then stalemate occurs. It's no more obscure than that.

 

Having said all of that, of course force-to-space ratio can be taken too far as an analytical tool. For example, it is not solely numbers that matter. The armies of 1914 were indeed several times larger than the armies of 1870 or 1815. But in numbers alone, given 19th Century tactical troop densities, they could not have extended across much of the hundreds of miles of front, nor filled up the tens of thousands of square miles over which they operated. Given modern weapons, however, the actual force that any unit of a given size -- say a 1,000 man battalion -- could project was much larger. And that force, thanks to modern rifles and machine guns, could be projected over greater distances and in higher volumes per unit of time. This in turn gave the armies the ability to cover the huge distances and great spaces that they did cover.

 

It just wasn't weapons that modified force-to-space considerations. As Stephen Biddle points out in Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle, British defensive force-to-space was relatively high in the spring of 1918, in the Operation Michael attack sector. Traditional theories of attacker-defender ratios or minimum threshold defender-space ratios would predict a sure defeat for the German offensive. The Germans succeeded because they employed a more modern offensive system against a relatively primitive defensive system. Numbers simply didn't matter as much as skill.

[firefly1]

Truthless

.

 

( I feel like David Cameron - UK posters will get the reference. )

 

"Factoid" is often used on the web here as what it is in simple English useage - a small fact - I have not heard of the other definition.

 

( LOL - see brackets above. )

 

.

[firefly1]

 

 

 

............. The mechanization of the US and to a lesser extent of the British armies, ............

 

.

 

The British had much lesser problems with logistics on the Continent than the US (they still had some) for many reasons ;

 

1: Better estimates of reserves required - they planned for more wastage (their main problem was manpower)

 

2: They used less

 

3: They planned their logistics better ( BUT STILL failed to properly resource and organise )

 

4: All this whilst having a much wider range of equipment to support.

 

------------------------------------------

 

Re. Rail transportation - both the US and UK produced specialised locomotives (suited to UK and Continental rail loading gauges) and rolling stock. Great efforts were taken to transport these to the continent.