6th Panzer Army may have been impressive by German standards at the end of 1944, but not by WAllied or Soviet ones. It also faced a lot more than just the 99th and 2nd Infantry division: the 1st and 9th Infantry Divisions as well as the 5th Armored Division were also deployed opposite the 6th Panzers area of responsibility, with the the 30th Infantry as an immediate reserve. The actual assault on the 99th and 2nd positions was also botched, being a largely infantry assault with little in the way of artillery or armored support: most of the panzer and panzer grenadier forces opted to bypass to the southeast while the breakthrough sector was far too wide and the artillery concentration as a result far too dispersed: 1,200 guns over a 130 kilometer breakthrough sector. By comparison, Soviet artillery concentrations tended to focus about 3-8 times those number of pieces on breakthrough sectors between 1/5th to 1/10th that size*.
The 6th panzer army's initial frontage was only 23 miles wide, but General Dietrich's assault force concentrated in less than half that area. According to Dupuy, 6th panzer army concentrated at least 657 light, medium, and heavy guns and 340 multiple rocket launchers for the initial bombardment - or roughly 55 to 65 pieces per km of front. Dietrich also had a 6 to 1 superiority in troops at the breakthrough points. Both of these were less than what the Soviets commonly preferred (200 guns/km and a 10:1 superiority in manpower), but it wasn't exactly a slap. Although I don't have the German fire plan on hand the barrage was described as massive and German guns typically fired more rounds per barrel on the western front than in the east, where they still out-shot the Soviets. Fortunately for the Americans, much of this fire was ineffective because of Hitler's orders against pre-registration, lack of trained fire-control personnel and equipment, and the dug in US positions.
The 1st SS panzer corps (1st and 12th SS panzer divisions, 3rd parachute division, 12th, 277th, and 326th volksgrenadier divisions, and 150th panzer brigade) attacked on the seam between the 99th and 106th divisions' sectors. The
numerical imbalance was particularly large in front of Krinkelt, where two 99th Division regiments (the 393rd and 394th) were opposed by the 3rd parachute division and two volksgrenadier divisions, with the two panzer divisions making their attacks the next day. But, although the Germans were able to gain ground they could not destroy the US forces and the cost incurred by them was horrendous. Then the American front line consolidated and they went nowhere.
On the whole, the German force deployed for the Ardennes was vastly weaker then any corresponding Soviet offensive force would be for such an ambitious operation. It's operational superiority in men and material were inadequate and sometimes even non-existant, it's tactical superiorities were even worse. Most of it's forces were far worse trained and motivated then even the "green" and "inexperienced" WAllied divisions. The logistical planning constituted little more than wishful thinking as did the exploitation plan, and the breakthrough plan called for too few troops to try and do too many things with too little resources and not enough training. Execution was also botched: only the mechanized units showed any enthusiasm and dash until they inevitably ran out of fuel. Leadership was mostly unenthusiastic, the infantry poorly motivated, and the artillery support crippled by both excessive dispersion and ammunition shortages. Also, it's a quibble but while the 106th infantry division was gutted, but not completely destroyed. Enough of the division survived that it was reconstituted in a few months, much like the German forces which retreated from Normandy.
On the whole they might have been weaker, but on the tactical level there were cases where US troops were outnumbered 15 to 1. Training and motivation is also questionable: to the Germans, they were fighting for their home soil and were determined to protect their 'fatherland' from the Allied invaders. Additionally even the volksgrenadier divisions were formed on the basis of veteran NCOs and German officers were almost uniformly good.
Finally, the fact the WAllies were able to successfully redeploy such forces rapidly was largely as a consequence of the geographic and resources of the German breakthrough. The quantities involved for the timespans given are hardly unique: during the summer of 1944, when the Soviets launched Operation Bagration in Belorussia, the German High Command was able to redeploy similarly sized from Western Ukraine once they recognized the offensive was ongoing (which took them several days) in a similar timeframe. The difference is that whereas the WAllied redeployments to the Ardennes found themselves joining the already-present frontline forces in an ongoing breakthrough battle, the German redeployments to Belorussia found themselves with the breakthrough battle having already taken place before they were even ordered to the scene, all of the frontline forces already overrun or encircled, and huge Soviet forces wheeling freely through gaps in the line that such numbers were just too paltry to plug. The redeployments thus found themselves struggling to fight just to save their lives rather than stop the enemy. The WAllies were also aided by the fact that the Ardennes was the only place the Germans were launching a major offensive so they could concentrate their reserves and forces there. Nowhere else were there even pinning attacks... the Germans simply didn't have the strength for that.
What forces did the Germans throw into Byelorussia that were comparable to Eisenhower's reinforcements? On what scale and over what timeframe, and over what distances?
One can hardly count Nordwind as a major offensive, save for the delusional mind of Hitler. The Germans didn't even commit a fraction of the forces they did for the Bulge to it.
At least 17 divisions took part when combined with 'Sonnenwende' - the German 19th Army's attack from the northern flank of the Colmar pocket.
Let's also take a moment to appreciate the scale here: the Bulge was fundamentally only one major offensive on a single major axis and a handful of minor ones conducted by a single army group. By contrast, the Soviet 1944/45 winter-spring offensive involved no less than three major coordinated strategic offensives, each one conducted by up to 2-4 army groups on a similar number of axis and a utter host of minor offensives for distraction, diversionary, and pinning purposes.
*As a rule, the Soviets found that for breakthrough sectors, a width of 12 kilometers in closed terrain and 15 kilometers in open terrain is the minimum, with 20-35 kilometers being the ideal. Any more, and your forces are liable to become too dispersed to achieve a breakthrough. Any less, and you run into the twin problems of congestion and enemy artillery fire from the shoulders being able to interdict the insertion of tactical and operational exploitation echelons, which resulted in excessive casualties and slow penetration. On the few occasions they actually attempted an operational concentration, the WAllies made the latter mistake: their breakthrough sectors tended to be 6-7 kilometers wide.
Nor were all other sectors stronger. Weak points in the front are inevitable. To achieve the overwhelming tactical concentrations they did against the Germans from what were much modest strategic and operational superiority, the Soviets likewise had to economize on assets in passive and non-essential sectors, relying on deception practices to make those sectors seem stronger then they actually were.
I don't deny that the Soviet army could concentrate far greater, more amply supplied forces for a multipronged offensive than the Germans could in 1944. The contention is that the conditions that existed in the Ardennes in December of that year cannot be pasted 1:1 to the Allied frontline on the Elbe and North German plain. Weather conditions, detectability, and force ratios would be much different.
This makes a lot of assumptions: firstly, it assumes that the massive concentration is detected. Given the scale and effectiveness of Soviet maskirovka techniques, proven effective not only against the Germans but also against the Anglo-Americans in subsequent Cold War proxy wars, this is dubious. Secondly, the opening of the attack would involve a coordinated and deeply sophisticated preparatory bombardment with heavy air and artillery attacks against WAllied artillery and assumes that WAllied artillery would be able to cope with this. Despite it's greater tactical proficiency, WAllied artillery on the key breakthrough sectors is liable to fair no better in countering Soviet artillery concentrations that outweigh them 35+:1 than the Germans did. They would most likely be too busy getting counterbatteried to death to effectively provide defensive fires.
Massive concentrations, by nature, tend to be difficult to conceal. I think more of the deception on the Soviets' part was not that an attack wouldn't come, but rather the direction and objectives of the attack once it actually started. Once the hypothetical attack began, even allowing for the Allies to be caught off-guard as to the above, it would be extremely difficult for the Soviets to suppress their artillery because of the latter's shoot and scoot capability, redundant communications networks, and pressure by Allied tactical air power.
This was observed on numerous occasions even when the balance of ground forces was drastically in favor of the Germans; for example, at Mortain, during the 6th Panzer Army's own assault in the Ardennes, and even in Nordwind (where the Germans had an advantage in terms of number of divisions committed). They couldn't actually crush the American units and where their maneuver forces were able to bypass them they left behind 'islands' of resistance that were still in contact with artillery to the rear. At Hoefen in December 1944 a single field artillery battalion, the 196th, fired 3,600 rounds from its twelve 105mm howitzers in a single 9 and a half hour period, while at Monschau on December 18th the 62nd armored field artillery battalion's 18 SP guns fired 1,826 rounds and "E" troop, 38th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron (with 6 x 75mm SP guns) fired 941 - these were
regimental level actions.
Thirdly, WAllied air attacks against Soviet concentrations would, by necessity, bring them down to levels where they would invariably entangle with the Red Air Force in conditions which the VVS was built to fight in far more effectively than their WAllied counterparts (ie: low-altitude dogfighting over the heads of troops).
How effective would the VVS be in countering literally thousands of western ground attack aircraft? For the Soviets at least, even with all their experience, pitched air battles
on the scale of Khalkhin Gol in 1939 were rare and the density of aircraft there was several times higher than the average on the Eastern Front in World War II. Zhukov even commented that he never saw such air battles like those he witnessed in Mongolia.
If the fighting against the Japanese in a remote border skirmish represented the most intense air combat faced by the VVS (or close to it), they would be in for a rude awakening against the Anglo-Americans.
Fourthly, those CAS aircraft which are able to make it past the immense air battles would then have to contend with heavy Soviet AAA presence: during the Vistula-Oder offensive, the Soviets protected their key breakthrough sectors with dense AAA concentrations of up to 50 AA guns-per-kilometer. And finally, there is the assumption that those CAS which makes it past both the VVS and the AAA would be excessively disruptive to the concentrations, but this does not jive well with the actual historical evidence of the Red Army's experience conducting breakthrough-exploitation in the face of air attack: the Luftwaffe as well in the summer of 1944 made notable attempts at attacking massed Soviet tank assaults exploiting breaches in their defenses. During the L'vov-Sandomierz Offensive, for example, the Luftwaffe launched concerted air raids at two Soviet tank armies moving through the Koltuv corridor as they sought to penetrate the German defenses. The Koltuv Corridor was unusually narrow for a Soviet breakthrough sector and as a result the Luftwaffe was provided with an opportune target rich environment. Despite this, there is little evidence they had much impact on the Soviet advance despite numerous Soviet reports detailing the constant raids.
Probably because Luftwaffe strength on the Eastern Front was anemic. According to "
Strategy for Defeat" pp. 285-286, Luftflotte 4 covering the Rumanian-Hungarian frontier consisted of only 845 aircraft, of which 205 were fighters and 390 ground attack, while Luftlotte 6 covering Army Group Center's front had 775, of which 100 were fighters, 100 ground-attack, and 370 bombers. Therefore over that whole enormous area the Germans had only about 305 fighters, 400 ground-attack planes, and 370 'long-range' bombers (without commentary on operational readiness). As if this weren't enough, the wiki article notes that the German commander, General Harpe, had no direct control over the air forces!
Compared with this, the USAAF alone had 5,559 heavy bombers in theaters vs Germany in April 1945, along with 1,444 medium bombers, 1,069 light bombers (including 977 A-20/A-26), and 6,003 fighters. And of course, the USAAF alone accounted for only a bit more than half of Allied air strength by numbers. Could you imagine how the long supply columns necessary to sustain armored or mechanized forces would have got on under these conditions? Likely the end effect would have been to force the Soviet army (like the Germans and Japanese) to restrict their movements to night-time or poor weather conditions, which in turn would have hampered their ability to conduct offensives (or any movement at all).
At the time of surrender, only 4 Allied armies were in contact with Soviet forces: the American 3rd, 1st, 9th, and British 2nd. The British 8th Army in northeastern Italy was also in an uneasy stand-off with Soviet equipped Yugoslav armies at the extreme southern end of the front. The American 15th Army was still mopping pockets of resistance in the Ruhr area while the Canadian 1st was finishing off the Germans in the Netherlands. The US 7th were further to the southwest, moving into Austria border. A Soviet assault westward would effectively see the Soviet forces in Eastern Germany, which would be 3 Soviet Army Groups (the 3 Belorussian Fronts) attacking up against a British and two American armies on the Western German Plain, two Army Groups (1st and 4th Ukrainian Front) against 3rd Army in Czechoslovakia, and the remaining two Soviet fronts, plus the Yugoslav armies, rushing towards a meeting engagement with about 3 WAllied armies in central Austria and Northeast Italy. For out-of-contact forces, the Soviets have their two Baltic Fronts (basically two more army groups) and the WAllies have three armies (the US 15th, the Canadian 1st, and the French 1st.
Really, the fact the Soviets have only one less Army Group (and unlike Soviet corps, divisions, and what have you, Soviet Fronts really were Army Group Strength) then the WAllies have armies rather says everything about the balance of combat power on the ground.
Your implication, I assume, being that Soviet forces near the border would have crumbled those armies before reinforcements could arrive?
That there are no obvious salient doesn't mean much: what matters is whether the Soviets can rapidly force breakthroughs through the WAllied frontlines on the key breakthrough sectors and achieve maneuver. Once they do, being fully motorized doesn't render one any less susceptible to all the problems that occurs when you have a mess of operational maneuver groups and forward detachments running around in your rear areas, raising all hell and endlessly pre-empting your attempts to redeploy. Air support is something both sides have, so ultimately it's a wash in operational-strategic terms.
What if the Soviets couldn't 'rapidly force breakthroughs?' The Allied armies weren't the hollowed out Army Group Center; massed infantry attacks would only lead to tragic results against a VT-barrage. What if their timetable were thrown off by a few days and then armored reinforcements showed up? If their exploitation forces failed to break out into the open then the offensive itself would have basically failed, while smaller 'flying columns' would face similar circumstances as Kampfgruppe Peiper in the Ardennes.
This was seen later in Manchuria: even when small mobile forces were able to create seams in the Japanese defense, they alone lacked the weight to bring about the complete collapse of resistance or undermine the IJA's withdrawal. And of course the Western Allies were far more powerful than the Kwantung Army.
They don't have to. If Stalin is smart, he can offer the French pretty good terms: total freedom, reparations from Germany, even the retention of their own occupation zone in exchange for dropping out of the WAllied coalition.
These are terms that France basically got anyway. Also, I would doubt that the French government would take such a promise seriously knowing how Stalin has operated in the past.
No German divisions were actually outright destroyed at Normandy. Mauled and gutted, yes, but not destroyed. The headquarters and significant cadres were able to escape back to the east to be reconstituted and refilled, returning to action in the autumn first to block the WAllied advance towards Germany and eventually attempt the Battle of the Bulge. The Colmar pocket was small (around 25,000-30,000 men) and mostly a French show, although American involvement was significant. The Ruhr Pocket was enormous and inordinately successful, but was conducted against forces that had effectively lost all combat value and even the very will to fight. It was also the only preplanned operational encirclement conducted by the Anglo-Americans in the entire Northwestern European campaign, with the Falaise and Colmar pockets being improvised (and in the latter case, almost accidental). The only other operational encirclement conducted by the Anglo-Americans in Northwest Europe was the pinning of the Fifteenth Army against the English Channel. It was a total failure: all German forces were successfully evacuated. That's a grand total of two successful pockets (the Ruhr and Colmar), one partial success/partial failure (Falaise) and one total failure (the pinning of the Fifteenth).
By contrast, the Soviets conducted fifteen operational encirclements in 1944 alone, all preplanned, in which more than 200 German divisions were destroyed. Around half of the pocketed formations were destroyed within twenty days, 30% held out for up to one-and-a-half months, and 20% managed to either partially or wholly escape encirclement.
"
The battle for Normandy had cost the German army a total of 1,500 tanks, 3,500 guns, and 20,000 vehicles. They had lost around 450,000 men, 240,000 of these killed or wounded. More than 40 German divisions had been destroyed."
Going into greater detail, this is what happened to each of the
divisions subordinate to the German Seventh and Fifteenth Armies during the Battle of Normandy:
- 265th Infantry Division - disbanded Oct. '44 (remnants trapped in Atlantic pockets)
- 275th " - destroyed at Falaise, reformed at Aachen
- 343rd " - surrendered at Brest September '44
- 353rd " - lost over half its strength by the time of the breakout at Falaise, reorganized as VGD
- 77th " - surrendered at St. Malo 15 August '44
- 266th " - surrendered at Brest Sept. '44
- 91st Luftlande Division - destroyed Cherbourg June '44 - escaped remnants later rebuilt and mauled by Third Army at Rennes
- 243rd Infantry Division - destroyed Cherbourg June '44 - remnants defended bocage territory and combined with 77th ID above
- 319th " - Channel Islands
- 352nd " - destroyed June '44 (it was opposite Omaha beach); remnants amalgamated into other divisions. Reformed as 352nd VGD
- 709th " - surrendered Cherbourg June '44
- 716th " - withdrawn from Normandy 10 July 1944
- 2nd Fallschirmjaeger Division - surrendered at Brest Sept. '44
- 3rd " - almost destroyed at Falaise - reformed with replacements from 3 Luftwaffe Field Regiments
- 5th " - withdrawn to Netherlands
- 344th Infantry Division - reorganized
- 348th " - disbanded
- 17th LW Feld Division - disbanded
- 245th Infantry Division - avoided heavy combat until Allied advance into Low Countries
- 711th " - suffered heavy casualties at Cabourg (NE of Caen), pulled out of the line
- 18th LW Feld Division - reorganized
- 47th Infantry Division - destroyed Mons Sept. '44, reorganized as 47th VGD
- 49th " - fought at Mons, reorganized with fortress regiments
- 19th LW Feld Division - sent to Italy
- 48th Infantry Division - driven back to Metz (later absorbed into 559th VGD)
- 84th " - destroyed at Falaise, reorganized
- 85th " - escaped Falaise with 1.5 infantry battalions, 2 field pieces, and misc. support troops,
- 326th " - destroyed at Falaise, rebuilt as VGD
- 331st " - destroyed Sept. '44
- 346th " - retreated to Holland
- 712th " - fought in Holland, sent to East
- 182nd Reserve Infantry Division - destroyed at Caen, reformed and deployed in Slovkia
- 1st SS Panzer Division - lost all tanks and artillery
- 12th " - nearly destroyed, ordered to retreat to Germany 8 September 44
- 17th " - practically destroyed, reduced to four kampfgruppen
- Panzer Lehr Division - practically destroyed, as few as 5 tanks and 6 105mm howitzers remaining by Sept. Commander General Bayerlein described Pz Lehr as "annihilated"
- 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division - fought only in Italy
- 21st Panzer Division - practically destroyed at Falaise, merged with 16th LW Field Division
- 89th Infantry Division - 'crushed' during Operation Totalize and taken out of the line
- 276th " - nearly destroyed, reorganized as a VGD
- 277th " - destroyed at Falaise, reorganized as a VGD
- 708th " - destroyed at Falaise, reorganized as a VGD
- 2nd Panzer Division - nearly destroyed at Falaise, absorbed 352nd ID
- 9th " - nearly destroyed at Falaise
- 116th " - nearly destroyed at Falaise, 600 men and 12 tanks escaped
- 2nd SS Panzer Division - lost most of its tanks, still reported personnel strength as 12,357
- 9th " - escaped encirclement, pulled out of the line to rest at Arnhem
- 10th " - broke out of Falaise pocket, retreated to Belgium and was sent to Arnhem
- 16th LW Feld Division - destroyed, reorganized
- 272nd Infantry Division - escaped Falaise, retreated to Germany
===============================================================================================
Total: 38 infantry/LW/parachute divisions (22 destroyed), 12 panzer (c. 8 destroyed)
I mean, if you count "destroyed" as 100% casualties - no one escaped - then the total will be lower but the incidence in both theaters would go down. Volume II of "The Collapse of the German Army in the East" lists 32 divisions destroyed on the Anglo-American fronts during the summer of 1944 as opposed to 52 on the Eastern front during the same period (pp. 886-890). Of the 32, 18 were reorganized (56.25%), while of the 52 on the Eastern Front, 28 were reorganized (53.85%). In neither case were either panzer or panzergrenadier divisions disbanded, and the fact that certain divisions were reorganized suggests that at least some elements survived to form the 'seeds' of the reconstructed units. So from this, there is little evidence that German divisions defeated on the Eastern Front were any more thoroughly beaten than those in the West.
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