1. Devers and Eisenhower had staff experience from WWI as did MARSHALL.
2. Fox Conner.
3. Ridgeway (example)
4. Clark
Therefore I do not agree with any of the above description offered of the American officers as offered, that they were less than I described.
2. Same again. If by Philippine Islands service one means the American officers did not go overseas?
3. Same again. The proof is the doing. The Americans carried out a better mobilization in WWII based on their WWI experience. I so stated this was the case.
4. And still fouls up during Kharkov, and is the exception, not the rule in an army generally full of Kuliks in 1941.
British EASTERN COMMAND survived ABDA and continued its incompetencies even when it gained a good general in William Slim. Mountbatten (Dieppe Raid) was in place in August 1943. Prior to that fiasco of service, he failed to perform acceptably as a destroyer commander off the Dutch coast and got his ship torpedoed out from under him. He did another bolo off Lizard Point, Cornwall, with another fish in the belly because he was a lousy naval tactician, as well as a rotten staff officer (The previously mentioned Dieppe will be proof of his staff-work.). His St. Nazaire Plan was a disaster that managed to work out in spite of the Keystone Kops elements. Did I mention how he fouled up off Crete? So they had to get him out of the Royal Navy, they did; and the Army wanted him nowhere important in Europe, either. Pack him off to America where he infuriated the USN with his political ineptitude and technical incompetence while he allegedly commanded the under repair HMS Illustrious. It was the Gatehouse treatment for that man. The Americans said NO THANK YOU after he made himself unpopular at Pearl Harbor with pronouncements that had nothing new or unknown to PACFLT or which was "helpful". So... off to INDIA where he bollixed Burma up. If not for Slim and a chap (Mountbatten's chief of staff who was supposed to keep him out of trouble, sicced on him by Churchill or was it Brooke?) by the name of Allason, the Japanese would have reached as far as Rawalpindi. That man was a a disgrace.
Wavell? The less said about HIM after 1942, the BETTER.
I suggest you read here. You do not really understand the Plan Dog Memo or Harold Stark. Or how Rainbow Five was Option C and was Marshall.
Well.
Except these are also AARs and first sourced and therefore not filtered second or third hand. Also these are LESSONS LEARNED as in the Lorraine Campaign and the Roer Dams accounts plainly show.
True, and about the only common point of agreement so far.
Because the metaphor was ill chosen and it was a German scout element in a meeting engagement that devolved into a typical infantry / combined arms brawl? Pardon the writer for waxing literary instead of giving the clear Dutch-dry Martin van Creveld description of the action.
Or in the United States. National Archives have duplicates of German national archives of the Hitlerite regime as well as SHAEF records.
True, but there are the archives.
True.
They cussed him out. Especially Collins. Hence...
I do not agree with any of this characterization that I have described the Americans inaccurately or sourced the accounts incompletely. The battle narratives clearly show post-hoc where the Americans thought their own leadership failed. You wrote it yourself.
If you read that, then what is the problem with the source material?
Eisenhower has no 'Staff experience' which would normally be defined as on the Staff rather than line of units in combat. In WW1 he is in 65th engineers then commanding a unit training tank crews, ordered to France the war ends, this is not staff experience. Its Valuable because he learns whats needed to mobilise an arm for war.
Devers has no Staff Experience, he is an instructor at the school of fire then XO and Commander of Artillery units never deployed.
Marshall Does, he is assistant CoS to first division. Does very well and comes to Pershing's attention because he informs him of the logs and admin deficiencies facing 1st Div then the AEF where the Meuse Argonne attack is largely unsuccessful until 4 October, which is the date the Germans ask for an armistice and a week after the BEF have breached the Hindenburg position making continued defence on that line pointless for an extended period.
Clark has very brief time commanding a unit and is then wounded.
Your assertion was that
The Americans who did command in WW2 were Fox Conner men. They were far better prepared as staff and command in their careers than your average Russian or British field grade of the same era. Most of them had WW1 experience at field grade and knew the shambles of the AEF . They knew how to plan from nothing. They knew logistics far better than their allies and they came up with the WALLY plan that won the war in the west. That was Europe. See 3.
They did not have anything like the WW1 experience of any other army, and were far better prepared that the average Russian or British Field Grade officer of the same Era. This is patently absurd. They were not. They were much better prepared for WW2 than their WW1 counterparts although to be fair all around in WW1 the army has maybe 1917, in WW2 the US Army has 1940,41,42 and for most of them 43, and part of 44 to prepare. Which is indeed one of the lessons of WW1 The Navy and Air Corps are ofc engaged more heavily from 42 on
Fox Connor seems able given the omnishambles of the AEF he inherited but hardly unusual or spectacular amongst the Entente senior commanders at the time. What he is is a major influence on Eisenhower. This is good. He is a smart capable guy who spends three years tutoring Eisenhower and may well be the most capable soldier Eisenhower ever met, but he never commanded a formation in battle.
Ridgeway Okaay, the source implies Ridgeway was chosen for his ability to run sports programmes not because he was one of the finest division commanders in the US army in WW2 and a successful Corps commander, former Military Representative on the UN chiefs of Staff Committee and at the time of appointment a direct report to the Army Chief of Staff.
The Specific comment on Overseas relates to service in France during WW2 amongst the Normandy Division commanders. In Fact two do serve outside the US, on the Pancho Villa Expedition. But the PI is not at war after 1902, hot to be sure and murder on the Polo Ponies but its not chasing guerillas around the Boonies.
So Malinovsky was involved in a defeat at 2nd Kharkov. Big deal. He is a Soviet General Officer involved in Barbarossa and Blue. They all were. But in terms of command experience prior to the war far greater than any US General and he then goes on to Swing army groups around like a good un, and manages the logistics of the Transbaikal Front.
And ABDA dissolved 22 Feb, Slim takes up command of BurCorps 19 March, So the Eastern army by your assertion is a compete mess for less than a month. Yea so what.
Also your obviously ill informed loathing of Mountbatten has nothing to do with the point at issue. Any more would me Criticising Stark, King, Halsey, every commanding officer of USN forces involved in the Guadalcanal battles, Stillwell, Fredendal, Clark, Truscott, Halder, Model or the Grand ole Duke of York.
So we are not mention Wavells monumental efforts at food relief during the Bengal Famine or his efforts at the Simla conference.
The Plan Dog memo November 1940 has three recommendations
'Until such time as the United States should decide to engage its full forces in war, I recommend that we pursue a course that will most rapidly increase the military strength of both the Army and the Navy, that is to say, adopt Alternative (A) without hostilities.
Under any decision that the President may tentatively make, we should at once prepare a complete Joint Plan for guiding Army and Navy activities. We should also prepare at least the skeletons of alternative plans to fit possible alternative situation which may eventuate. I make the specific recommendation that, should we be forced into a war with Japan, we should, because of the prospect of war in the Atlantic also, definitely plan to avoid operations in the Far East or the Mid-Pacific that will prevent the Navy from promptly moving to the Atlantic forces fully adequate to safeguard our interests and policies in the event of a British collapse. We ought not now willingly engage in any war against Japan unless we are certain of aid from Great Britain and the Netherlands East Indies.
No important allied military decision should be reached without clear undertanding between the nations involved as to the strength and extent of the participation which may be expected in any particular theater, and as to a proposed skeleton plan of operations.
Accordingly, I make the recommendation that, as a preliminary to possible entry of the United States into the conflict, the United States Army and Navy at once undertake secret staff talks on technical matters with the British military and naval authorities in London, with Canadian military authorities in Washington, and with British and Dutch authorities in Singapore and Batavia. The purpose would be to reach agreements and lay down plans for promoting unity of allied effort should the United States find it necessary to enter the war under any of the alternative eventualities considered in this memorandum.'
Prior to that he is outlining a series of scenarios for wars, recapitulating on the Existing Plan Orange and the issues with it and and asking 'Shall we' with the clear emphasis being that Britain will need assistance in the. Atlantic. The RAINBOW plans are not 'Marshalls' they are from the Joint Board which is 'joint' comprising all the war planning elements of the US military and are then Superceded by the ABC-1 discussions ar early 1941. The US position prior to this is described here.
https://history.army.mil/books/wwii/csppp/ch12.htm
So what you have is November Presidential Election. Stark send Navy planning memo up. ( and possibly so does the Army but its not leaked later) then in December prep for the meeting with the British, then the meeting and ABC-1 which is the strategic controlling document for the war going forward. This is a normal planning process with the service chiefs conscious that there is no mandate to FDR to go to war.
Yes there are AARs, very extensive ones. But the histories particularly the early ones -1946 - to 70s at the earliest filter those to make a readable history and in doing so make statements that may or may not be accurate. What they certainly do not do is incorporate the German or Air force perspective of the same operation. Elements of the US official histories go into a lot of detail on some aspects, unfortunately thats not on the operational or tactical level of warfare. so the Best Lessons learned on Lorraine I have found is this.
Combined Arms Research Library.
www.ibiblio.org
which is noted as 'This overview serves as a point of departure for more in-depth studies, sets the stage for the analysis of unit operations from platoon to corps, and furnishes a useful reference for studying branch operations in battle' It is also VERY critical of the US handling of formations.
And references back to the same 1950s histories with the same issues, and thats fine its an introduction. its not a 269 page book on how the canadian army reinforcement and replacement system worked. nor an analysis of German tank recovery in Normandy. There will be papers, particularly doctoral and masters thesis but you have t dig, so dig.
What you are assuming in trusting these histories is that the original editorial process was complete and accurate and the only correct interpretation of the facts as known. Well it is not. There will always be multiple interpretations possible but asserting that an author writing in the 1950s when , for example ULTRA was secret is the final word is STUPID. Any history relying on the Halder Edit of German Military History is wrong because we now know he was lying through his teeth.
Thats the problem with the sources.
If they are waxing lyrical you might not want to quote them at me as a source. And Van Creveldt is Israeli
The US does not have the 'records of the 'Hitlerite Regime' most of the fun ones were either bombed by the RAF or stored in East Germany now in the Bundesarchiv. Or in the USSR.