Does military doctrines really exist in real life? I was wondering about that today and since my hoi4 thread failed to catch up I decided to ask it here.
What led me to think that is that I asked a few years ago in post 1900 about Germany adopting another school and going for artillery, something that led people to tell me that those things doesn't exist like shown in hoi4. Today I was looking after a few figures in "Home of the Brave" chosen to lead some doctrine's and I noticed that all guys chosen for "mass assault" are infantry leaders, so that means that everyone who agrees that the infantry is the queen of the battlefield is a supporter of mass assault?
Is the 1950s Bundeswehr a mass assault army then?
They do, but HOI4 land doctrines are a very simplified way of looking at things. This is a video game after all. People are correct to say that it isn't like in HOI4. There's no one set doctrine. They represent a certain mechanic; armor for MW, artillery for SF, planning system for GBP, and infantry units for MA.
Infantry is the cornerstone of every doctrine because armor and planes can't hold positions by themselves. Actual nations followed a mix of several land doctrines. Nationalist China ran on a mix of GBP and Mass Assault, for example, while the US Army was the only fully mechanized force in WW2, down to their all-motorized supply chains, and SF doesn't really reflect that.
Modern warfare as we know it; everyone mechanizes sooner or later, like in MW. Everyone uses combined arms, like SF. Everyone gets around the map and plans grand strategy, like in GBP. Everyone mobilizes the reserves and uses guerrilla tactics against a stronger enemy, like in MA.
The 1950s Bundeswehr was a sensible combined arms force running on the 'American doctrine', which is closest to Superior Firepower. The British canon path is GBP -> Assault, because C3I is something they invented and the British pre-war were a very mechanized force. They lost most of their vehicles at Dunkirk but mechanized back quickly. The Japanese are closest to GBP -> Infiltration, but their doctrine in China was closer to Superior Firepower in the Chinese view. The Chinese kept getting hit by artillery and planes and tanks, while the better-equipped Americans, Australians and British had the Japanese using guerrilla tactics and close-range infantry attacks with mortar support against them.
Mobile Warfare for the Germans was just the latest evolution in Prussian maneuver warfare that had defeated France and made them attempt Schifflein in 1914. It wasn't super radical.
The thing is that HOI4 tries to represent the different fighting styles of the main WW2 nations, while making them broad enough to be used by minor nations. But it's still a giant simplification. Actual doctrines are a mix. Countries that used guerrilla warfare would have the speed focus of MW without vehicles, elements of GBP Infiltration, and Mass Assault for the rest, for example. You also have cases where countries with the same land doctrine fought each other. Both sides of the Spanish Civil War arguably used GBP.
