Can Axis Win?

Hindemburg was just a father figure the German Army used for PR work to rally the civilians
This is not actually true. Hindenburg was extremely useful in a tandem with Ludendorff for his imperturbability and calm. Ludendorff may have exhibited periodic levels of tactical virtuosity, but was so nervy and antsy that he frequently lacked the confidence to follow through with his plans, most egregiously at Tannenberg (although to an extent those plans were preordained). Hindenburg's ability to seem like a commander and calm his partner down was invaluable in a sense far beyond PR.
AdA said:
Just on a final note, German WW1 plan was allways (fron Schieleffen on) to deal with the west rapidly and then deal with russia with time and ressources. This is a "grand strategy" and one that alternate nazi germany could have developed.
It's not clear that that actually was the way Schlieffen - or, shit, Moltke - thought. There's a great deal of scholarly argument about that right now.

Also, as a general note, Falkenhayn thought about war differently from pretty much every German general officer in the war. As it turned out, he was much closer to the right track about Germany's ability to conduct the war than anybody else of import was. The comparison to Sam Grant is particularly weird because Grant has the (somewhat unfair) reputation of being willing to spend men for victory, whereas the cornerstone of Falkenhayn's plans was to spend matériel instead of men. His was an attritive style of warfare, yes, but one that focused on achieving a high kill-to-death ratio (as it were), grinding up the enemy whilst suffering few casualties of one's own.
 
Grant, etc

Let´s clarify the Grant thing: Falkenhein was the first WW1 (TOP) General to understand (after the failure of his Ypres drive) that the war was going to last years and be won by the side that made better use of it's ressources. He used is ressources, material and human, with the aim to do more demage than he took. US Grant was the man who understood that the South would be broken by keeping up the pressure until the Federal superiority of ressources exauthed them not by a single masterfl campaign. They though like boxers that keep punching were it hurts and preserve their energy, and weren't looking for a quick knock out blow. That's what I meant by paying the bill, not that any one of them was a "butcher". Falkenhein original plan for Verdum was something Grant would of understood, and that many in the German high staff didn't...

Hindenburg was extremely useful in a tandem with Ludendorff for his imperturbability and calm
Well, if thats not what you want from a "father figure" than what is? Xmas cards?
Generals like Hindemburg are useful. When you have a great staff... A guy who lets other work, and actuaklly makes their work easier, is allway better than a guy who has dumb ideas and forces them down on a subservient staff. But than again I have years of staff duties under my belt so I tend to like armies were they actually let the staff work.
In 1914 when Luddendorf told him that Hoffman's plan was a good one Hindemburg said "OK, run with it, I'll handle the Kaiser." Best thing he could have done. If he had tried to impose a "leaders touch" he could have ruined things. Like I said, a father figure. Staff Oficers love them. I know I do...
 

Hindenburg was extremely useful in a tandem with Ludendorff for his imperturbability and calm
Well, if thats not what you want from a "father figure" than what is? Xmas cards?
Generals like Hindemburg are useful. When you have a great staff... A guy who lets other work, and actuaklly makes their work easier, is allway better than a guy who has dumb ideas and forces them down on a subservient staff. But than again I have years of staff duties under my belt so I tend to like armies were they actually let the staff work.
In 1914 when Luddendorf told him that Hoffman's plan was a good one Hindemburg said "OK, run with it, I'll handle the Kaiser." Best thing he could have done. If he had tried to impose a "leaders touch" he could have ruined things. Like I said, a father figure. Staff Oficers love them. I know I do...
The point was that you implied that Hindenburg was utterly useless in a military sense (actually, you didn't imply it, you straight-out said it: "just [...] used for PR work to rally the civilians"). It seemed like you were saying that he was only useful for Christmas cards and the other Hindenburg tchotchkes that Germans cranked out by the millions during the war.

Obviously staff work is important, but staff work was one of the few things that the German army did extremely well. Commanders who could project calm and inspire troops, though, were at something of a premium. In those early days, of the higher commanders on all sides, you had Joffre, Hindenburg, and maybe Foch, Haig, and the velikiy knyaz...and that's it.
 
And...

I said "Hindenburg was just a father figure for the German Army used for..."
Two ideas in the same sentence. He was a father figure and he was a useful PR tool.
If it read like Hindemburg was justa father figure for the german army only used for PR... that was not what I meant and I not what I wrote.
Sometimes being just a father figure is enought...
Not every commander is a genius. The ones who aren't and act like they are are the most dangerous ones. Hindemburg never tryed to act like a genius...
 
AdA: Er, no. Grant was frugal with his men's lives and was too sensitive to come up with something like Verdun. Falkenhayn was hands-down the best German general of WWI but note the crucial problem here: the Germans of WWI booted him out for the idiot junior officer who was far past his Peter Principle at Tannenberg. The other key difference between Grant and any of the WWI generals is that in WWI both sides had machine guns and poison gas and other nasties that could stop attacks and did stop attacks before they fairly got started in the West, while in the East the Germans' senseless strategic flip-flopping did nothing to collapse the Russian Army, the land-reform issue and the heavily class-related problems in the Tsarist Army did.

To compare Falkenhayn with Grant is frankly-put absurd, Grant was in a different era and he was able to accomplish the kind of sweeping maneuvers that communications relative to size of army, terrain, and firepower made extremely difficult unless you were exceptionally good at warfare, and Falkenhayn did accomplish this in places like Romania.....but at the same time in the most crucial theaters of the war he lost out to the incompetent and thuggish Terrible Two who had the same absolute lack of strategy and incapacity to conduct a plan of operations that marred the WWII German Army. The root of the Germans' no-strategy five-options operations with the operation in practice never being executed in any serious attempt by its own designers performance in WWII is the performance of the Terrible Two in the East and in the West of WWI.
 
Beauty in the eyes of

Snake, we have a different take on this subject, and I'm not going to keep on a subject we will never agree on.
I stand by my Grant/Falkenhein reference in the terms I used. The ciscunstances of the times are implicit when you compare people from different eras. Grant was not the same type of person, nor the same type of General (Grant was not really a General Staff type in fact) but they had much in common in the way they faced reality and dealt with it. In 1864 Grant's aim was to bleed the south to death. He would have understood Verdun quite well...
Can you sugest a Civil War General that would be a better reference for explaining Falkenhein's logic to Americans?
Regarding your obvious aversion to Ludendorf, military historians (as in military men writing about history), of the 20/30 were much more generous to him, and they were closer to the facts. Your responses seem quite emotional, and I find that too strange to base a conversation on.
It's wrong to credit Ludendorf with work done by Hoffman, Mackensen, etc. But it happened in his watch, and there are lots of worst commanders in WW1 that don't get half the hate mail he does...
 

Deleted member 1487

Snake, we have a different take on this subject, and I'm not going to keep on a subject we will never agree on.
I stand by my Grant/Falkenhein reference in the terms I used. The ciscunstances of the times are implicit when you compare people from different eras. Grant was not the same type of person, nor the same type of General (Grant was not really a General Staff type in fact) but they had much in common in the way they faced reality and dealt with it. In 1864 Grant's aim was to bleed the south to death. He would have understood Verdun quite well...
Can you sugest a Civil War General that would be a better reference for explaining Falkenhein's logic to Americans?
Regarding your obvious aversion to Ludendorf, military historians (as in military men writing about history), of the 20/30 were much more generous to him, and they were closer to the facts. Your responses seem quite emotional, and I find that too strange to base a conversation on.
It's wrong to credit Ludendorf with work done by Hoffman, Mackensen, etc. But it happened in his watch, and there are lots of worst commanders in WW1 that don't get half the hate mail he does...

Falkenhayn was a far better general than Grant. He understood that his army couldn't compete in manpower, so he set up a scenario to grind up his weakest foe with firepower. It was a sound idea, but military intelligence fed him bad information, so he kept things going far longer than they should have once it became clear that the strategic principle was not in effect.

Also Falkenhayn has Mackensen's patron. He utilized him at Gorlice-Tarnow, a Falkenhayn plan BTW, because of his skill vis-a-vis Hindenburg and Ludendorff. That doesn't mean Falkenhayn didn't make mistakes or gamble (race to the sea), but he did have an inordinate amount of success that is directly attributable to his vision and plan.
Check out Robert Foley's book titled "Germany strategy and the path to Verdun" for more information.

Grant was much more like Zhukov. He had superiority in men and material, wide open spaces, and no qualms about sacrificing men to achieve an advantage. Grant didn't waste men on the level of the Soviets of course, but as battles like Cold Harbor show he didn't hesitate to lay down lives to achieve a critical victory.
 
AdA-No, they aren't. Grant won his war, Falkenhayn did not win his and did not even retain the highest seat in the German military by the halfway point through is war. Grant, by contrast, in all truth created the circumstances that put the CSA in a position of diminishing returns from the first phase of the war, and was the only general on either side to understand properly concepts of maneuver and how to utilize all resources available as they were supposed to be. This says more about everyone else than it does about him. In the grand scheme of things, the guys that win wars are always better than the people that lose them.

Wiking-Except that Robert E. Lee is never given credit for that kind of war despite chewing up a full quarter of CS manpower with a repeated pattern of senseless frontal assaults into superior firepower. Grant, despite being a Union general and on the offensive in every battle save the first day of Pittsburg Landing had less casualties sustained in his four years of combat from Belmont-Appomattox than Lee did from the Seven Days-Appomattox. It should be noted that in attacking this aggressively Lee did a great deal to lose the Confederacy the war to win Lee battles.

*Lee* is Falkenhayn, not Grant. *Lee* is the brilliant tactician without parallel on the losing side of the war. Lee is the one that sought to bleed his enemy white and destroy his armies ala Koniggratz. Grant wanted to capture enemy armies via maneuver, not refight Napoleon Bonaparte's wars, which in the event Nappy Bones Apart also happened to lose. Grant's not got any real parallels in the WWI Allies and is more equivalent to either Rokossovsky or Vatutin on the Soviet side of WWII. Zhukov preferred frontal attacks far too much and had more than one instance, such as with Operation Polar Star and with Operation Mars where that was a disaster. Grant had repeated instances of turning battles there theoretically should have been no way to lose into victories. Which is more in line with what the Germans did at a tactical level at several points in both wars than with what Zhukov's usual pattern was in WWII.

Regardless, Falkenhayn did nothing to stop Germany losing its war, Grant single-handedly won the Union its war.
 
winning is not all

Snake's argument is like saying keke roseberg must be better than stirling moss, for he was World Champ and Sir Stirling wasn't.

I think Lee is overrated. He won battles that were poorly led from the oposition side, didn't exploit his wins fully and swiftly. Compare him with the elder Moltke for contemporary mesure.

Why does everybody hate Zhukov? It's hard to perform surgery with a chainsaw, and with the post purges Red Army he was handling a battle axe, not a dueling sword.

How about Vassilevsky as a Falkenhein comparable leader? He did win the war, so I must find someone in the losing side to meet snake's criteria...
 
Actually winning *is* all as the primary object of an army is not to parade prettily or to teach lessons in tactics, an army is to fight another army and win its battles and ultimately its wars with that army. Armies don't exist to parade and make people squee about their tactical brilliance, they exist to win wars. Period.

Falkenhayn is indisputably the greatest leader on the German side in WWI, but at the same time he pretty much did not retain his high-command position after 1916 and his greatness to his contemporaries must have really been lesser than it is to people almost a century after the fact.
 
Snake's argument is like saying keke roseberg must be better than stirling moss, for he was World Champ and Sir Stirling wasn't.

I think Lee is overrated. He won battles that were poorly led from the oposition side, didn't exploit his wins fully and swiftly. Compare him with the elder Moltke for contemporary mesure.

Why does everybody hate Zhukov? It's hard to perform surgery with a chainsaw, and with the post purges Red Army he was handling a battle axe, not a dueling sword.

How about Vassilevsky as a Falkenhein comparable leader? He did win the war, so I must find someone in the losing side to meet snake's criteria...


Because looking at Zhukov objectively; he sent a lot of men to their deaths for reasons that had nothing to do with the quality of the red army and everything to do with his command of drawing up the campaigns and actions

Not to say that overall Zhukov wasn't a fairly talented commander; his pump fake attack on the Mius followed by the deluge attack on Belgorad was a tactical and strategic masterpiece that was more decisive than Bagration and more effective than sickle cut... and that wasn't against the B team either; his forces in that battle comprehensively and totally kicked the shit out of Manstein's army group south

however, the man had some fucking doozies to his credit that he persisted with long after any chance at strategic or tactical gain had passed (mars, polar star, hell 3rd kharkov's backdrop was created by his over optimisum, the east prussian 44 drive... the 41 winter counter attacks which were launched on too wide of a front and pressed after the army was spent leaving them too weak to beat the germans back in the spring)... this is to say nothing of the pressure he bowed to on seelowe heights and berlin which ultimately lead to tens of thousands of unnecessary Russian deaths
 
Not to mention that there are other Soviet generals who were just as effective and who did really skilled things without anything approximating those casualties. Like Rokossovsky, Vatutin, Malinovsky......Zhukov's problem was that he always aimed for overwhelmingly powerful frontal attacks, it was a predictable tactical move from him. His successes came from the "overwhelmingly powerful" part of that phase, his failures came from the "frontal attack" part of that phrase.
 
Lee was a great commander at the tactical level, he knew how to win battles, and he usually won them while being outnumbered. He deserves praise for that. Where he was lacking was at the strategic level; he could not piece together a war winning strategy. As was said to Hannibal; "You know how to win battles but not how to use them."
 
Which is precisely why Falkenhayn was different in a better fashion: he knew how to win battles in a fashion that mattered. It's worth noting that when he was on the Eastern Front the Central Powers won big, when he wasn't and the Terrible Two were, well.........:rolleyes:

And all this matters because the Germans went not for the guy that knew how to win battles and that mean something but for the two idiots who didn't know how to do either.
 
Which is precisely why Falkenhayn was different in a better fashion: he knew how to win battles in a fashion that mattered. It's worth noting that when he was on the Eastern Front the Central Powers won big, when he wasn't and the Terrible Two were, well.........:rolleyes:

And all this matters because the Germans went not for the guy that knew how to win battles and that mean something but for the two idiots who didn't know how to do either.

Luddendorff would have done better if he just kept to his usual habits of masterbating to himself in a mirror whilst letting Max Hoffman run the war :rolleyes:
 
The problem with Falkenhayn was that he won no spectacular victories ala Tannenberg that would give him the credibility to continue with his attrition strategy long term.

Remember that following Cold Harbor people in the North were calling Grant a butcher and felt his campaign had accomplished nothing. They focused on their own losses and did not have a rational detached view that it didn't matter how much they suffered so long as the South suffered even more. It was only the capture of Atlanta that restored public confidence. Prior to that Lincoln expected to be defeated in the 1864 election.

If the Germans could have actually captured Verdun and given the public a tangible triumph perhaps they would have left Falkenhayn in charge for the duration. As it was his strategy only appeared to produce horrendous casualties without winning any major victories.
 

Deleted member 1487

Lee was a great commander at the tactical level, he knew how to win battles, and he usually won them while being outnumbered. He deserves praise for that. Where he was lacking was at the strategic level; he could not piece together a war winning strategy. As was said to Hannibal; "You know how to win battles but not how to use them."

Eh, Lee was only as good as his corps commanders. Once he lost Jackson, his string of victories ended. He still had the excellent Longstreet, but he didn't listen to him. Lee is highly overrated and coasted on the aptitude of his subordinates.

@Snake: I don't think you can really compare Falkenhayn and Lee except superficially. Both of their strategic imperatives were different. Falkenhayn knew that time was against him, i.e. waiting would mean the Entente would use its manpower and material to bury Germany and they would bankrupt themselves to do so.

Lee just had to wait out the Union, but instead wanted to try and force a quick end to the war through maneuver despite lacking the logistics and manpower to invade the north. He let himself get sucked into the battle that the Union wanted to fight and lost his best troops in an ill-conceived invasion that would under no circumstance have won him the war. The Union had a limit to the losses it would take and the length of a war it would put up with; the Entente did not thanks to trade with the US and European concept of total war. The US Civil War was a fight to exhaustion; the Great War was a fight of annihilation.


The problem with Falkenhayn was that he won no spectacular victories ala Tannenberg that would give him the credibility to continue with his attrition strategy long term.
Uh, Gorlice-Tarnow and the Eastern Front campaign in 1915?! He inflicted over 1 million casualties on the Russians and saved AH from defeat. He also had the Serbian campaign under his belt and the defensive victories of 1915. These were all far more important that the victories of Hindenburg and Ludendorff; Tannenberg wasn't a H-L victory either: it was designed by Prittwitz and his staff (including Hoffmann) before H-L showed up. They just approved it and took all the credit after it was already in motion. There is a reason that Hoffmann went around telling people about where Hindenburg slept before, after, and during the battle.
Let's not forget the unpublicized losses of Ludendorff. The 2nd battle of Lodz in January 1915 cost Germany 100k+ casualties for no gain; their cavalry maneuver during the 1915 campaign was smashed at Minsk with the loss of most of the force, just as Falkenhayn predicted; also the 2nd Masurian campaign was far less successful than portrayed in the German media at the time. H-L's reputation was based on propaganda, pure and simple.

The problem was that Falkenhayn told the politicians that the war was unwinnable in 1914 and 1915 and that they needed to make peace; H-L told Bethman-Hollweg that they could win the war, despite having little understanding of the situation outside of Prussia, which Bethmann stupidly believed. In fact he was so willing to believe them because a victory was the only way he could save his job, which was far more important to him than saving Germany! Of course there is much more to the story that just this, but it all hinged on politics. H-L were willing to meddle in politics to achieve their ambitions, while Falkenhayn still respected civilian institutions and focused only on military matters. Falkehayn was brought down by politics, not his battlefield conduct. He just wasn't prepared for the dirty games of the terrible two.


Remember that following Cold Harbor people in the North were calling Grant a butcher and felt his campaign had accomplished nothing. They focused on their own losses and did not have a rational detached view that it didn't matter how much they suffered so long as the South suffered even more. It was only the capture of Atlanta that restored public confidence. Prior to that Lincoln expected to be defeated in the 1864 election.
By then the South was already beaten. It just took some time to bring the Confederates to heel. The US public was unaware of what was really going on.

If the Germans could have actually captured Verdun and given the public a tangible triumph perhaps they would have left Falkenhayn in charge for the duration. As it was his strategy only appeared to produce horrendous casualties without winning any major victories.
That was part of the problem. They couldn't, but it wasn't necessary for the plan to work. The public might have wanted it, but like at Cold Harbor the public wasn't privy to the strategy behind the operation, nor was much of the army, for security reasons. But ultimately the plan was sabotaged by faulty intelligence that suggested the French were actually being ground to pieces, though they really weren't. Had Falkenhayn known the truth he would have abandoned the operation and focused on something else, saving his job and probably Germany.
 
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Lee knew that time and strategy were both against him at Petersburg. That didn't stop him from butchering thousands of men to assuage his daddy issues and George Washington complexes during the longest battle/campaign of the war. And Falkenhayn even IOTL had at least the *appearance* of doing well at Verdun at times. Lee was a passive defending general the whole way through in a fight he knew was lost before it began and kept fighting into 1865.
 
Winning

Winning is not everything to evaluate merit. Doing better than anyone would have done in the circumstances you fought in is. War is not fair, history should be.
Zhukov worked under strict stavka control. In Berlim he was the frontal part of a two pronged assault with konev doing the flanking move. He was the anvil to konev hammer. In a unique soviet way, he pushed the anvil so hard he beat the hammer to the finishline. Was it costly? Sure. Factor in how many germans were wiped out in the fighting and it makes more sense.
If you want to accuse someone of stupidly wasting lifes look no further than huertgen florest. And what about Pershing and is outmoded frontal attacks on the german lines in 1918?
 
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