French Methodical Battle, Soviet Deep Battle two sides of the same coin?

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Saying "The Soviets were incompetent because they took higher casualties" misses the point. The Soviets didn't care about casualties, so they didn't design their tactics to avoid higher casualties. It isn't incompetence if you achieve your objective with what you think are acceptable casualties, even if those casualties are objectively high. If the Soviets hadn't been able to afford these losses that would be another story, but clearly they were able to.
I'm not saying they were incompetent I'm saying the doctrine was faulty because it relied on taking unnecessary losses and against serious foe like the US or even against the Germans one on one without side theaters it wouldn't have worked in the end. The Soviets won in WW2 because of the efforts of their allies, without which the Soviets would have bleed themselves out with their tactics/strategy. The entire point was contrary to the idea that the Soviet doctrine was a flexible initiative based doctrine, it was in fact a very rigid methodical method that resulting in unnecessary casualties; perhaps that was the only method that the Russians/Soviets could make work given their society/economy, but objectively the Soviets got lucky that they didn't have to face Germany unencumbered or NATO later on.
 
I'm not saying they were incompetent I'm saying the doctrine was faulty because it relied on taking unnecessary losses

And why do you say the losses were unnecessary?

The reality that you are trying to deny is that from late-'42 onwards, the Soviets formed special maneuver groupings of their best troops to react to the unexpected, and allowed for that in their plans. They followed a forward pull theory on their breakthroughs. The leading commanders would find the path of least resistance and then punch through, and those behind would shift over and follow them through. They were willing to change their overall operational plans to react to events, and designed them with increasingly realistic goals and margins for error. These are not the actions of a very rigid force.
 
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Deleted member 1487

Apparently they did. I only learned this second-hand (asked about on another forum), so take it with the relevant weight. Still, it likely does not alter the numbers substantially.
It actually does if we don't know how many of the wounded were able to return to active duty.


It maximized the concentration of scarce forces lacking any sort of reserve.

Largely, yes. And they were incapable of mustering the requisite numbers because they did not have the first clue of what the Soviets were planning. They believed, largely as a result of an extraordinarily successful Soviet deception campaign, that the Soviets would launch an assault from the L'vov direction aimed towards the Baltic States. In this, they were guilty of not only falling for Soviet deception efforts but also for mirror-imaging
You are proving my point here; the German defenses were a complete mess yes the Soviets with all the advantages in the world possible couldn't inflict favorable casualty ratios; they took the worst of it not exploiting success, but breaking through it would seem and then trying to follow up on the success of pocketing German troops. But as you said German defensive resources were bunched up at the front due to lack of reserves, which made them vulnerable to Soviet mass artillery and shock armies that could punch, theoretically at least, right through German front lines due to the massive superiority of concentrated Soviet resources and deception efforts, plus Hitler forcing them to defend fixed positions, playing right into the Soviet operational plan.


Actually, we are talking about how good a doctrine is and the main measurement of that is not casualty ratios but results. And in this, Deep Battle achieved a ton more then Methodical Battle did and ultimately even more then Blitzkrieg did (given that the Soviets won WW2 and the Germans did not).
But if the results are only achievable after the Germans had shifted 1/3rd of their armor and all their reserves to the West after the Allied landings at Normandy, all of their airpower to defend their collapsing economy from strategic bombing onslaught, and had 500k men locked down in Italy with a shrinking resource base the results obtained were at too high a cost relative to the amassed advantages and would have been impossible without the Wallies military and LL efforts; the doctrine didn't produce results the total war situation that left Germany with virtually no resources to defend enabled the Soviets to blitz their way to victory at heavy cost.

Were the Soviets receiving more L-L in 1943 or 1944?
difficult to tell considering the delivery periods are broken into half year periods (i.e. july 1942-june 1943, and then July 1943-June 1944). Probably somewhat more in 1944 than in 1943, but the amounts given were crucial to amass the resources collected in 1943-44 from liberated territory, including mobilized men from the occupied territories (I already provided a number of sources on that in our other discussion)

Why should you care that you took twice as many casualties when those casualties have no effect on your fighting capability?
They would have in different circumstances, my entire point is that the success of Soviet doctrine was only possible because of massive Wallied support on other fronts that enabled the Soviets to have such a weak target to attack; even with all the accumulated advantages they possessed they couldn't do it without taking twice the losses of the defender, though I've already provided two examples of attackers inflicting equal or greater losses from 1943-44 with different doctrines.

Not really. The French did not embark on the same degree of scientific.
Check out their artillery doctrine they were way ahead of the Soviets there in 1940 and with time would have honed that to an equal level as 1945 Soviet doctrine.

Given that the Soviets had unofficially abandoned Deep Battle during the Winter War, yeah, okay.
Fine, but are you really going to say that Winter War experience had no impact on Shock Army doctrine?

In a de-jure sense, no. In a de-facto sense they did though. It was the entire purpose of tank armies.
WW2 experience evolved into it.

Erm... an Operational Manuever Group describes a role, not an organization like a CMG does.
Sure, which did not exist as a role in WW2, but developed into it post-war.

Incorrect. The Soviets developed their doctrine, abandoned it for political reasons, tried to return too it, abandoned it again when war came before they were prepared to it and as an adaptation to the circumstances of mid/late-1941, and the returned too it for the final time. The French, as pdf27 noted, abandoned Methodical Battle after the Germans demonstrated how poor of a doctrine it was and never had the time to develop anything new because they were practically already defeated.
They didn't abandon methodical battle, they just switched up how they fought it; rather than a fixed line they focused on hedgehog defenses, which is an adaptation of doctrine, not abandonment of it.


So, no, had the French survived they would not have further developed Methodical Battle. They would have instead abandoned it and developed something new. This new thing may have resembled Deep Battle, but probably with some detail changes.
No they would have tweaked it like the Soviet did their DB doctrine rather than throwing it out after the defeats of 1941.
 
It actually does if we don't know how many of the wounded were able to return to active duty.

No it does not. It increases the margin of error, but not substantially. As I observed earlier, permanently disabled tend to make up a very small margin of battle wounded.
Also, confusingly, when getting the quote below I found the statement from the same source just a few sentences up that the 180K in irrecoverable losses does include the permanently disabled. I hate it when I find such utterly contradictory information.

You are proving my point here; the German defenses were a complete mess yes the Soviets with all the advantages in the world possible couldn't inflict favorable casualty ratios; they took the worst of it not exploiting success, but breaking through it would seem and then trying to follow up on the success of pocketing German troops.
Actually, the Soviets did appear to take the worst of it when they were exploiting success. Walter Dunn comes right out and says it in the Battle for White Russia, 1944 on page 230: "Most of the Soviet casualties came in the final 7 weeks, in contrast to the initial 2 weeks when the Germans experienced their greatest losses while facing the Soviet blitzkrieg".

But if the results are only achievable after the Germans had shifted 1/3rd of their armor and all their reserves to the West after the Allied landings at Normandy,
Those would have made a difference had they deployed in the east in 1944, but not a substantial one. Certainly not enough to alter the outcome of the war.

Also, the Germans did not deploy all of their reserves in the west. A substantial quantity were kept in Germany and ultimately sent East in response to the losses suffered from Bagration and it's associated offensives.

all of their airpower to defend their collapsing economy from strategic bombing onslaught,
The German war economy did not begin to collapse until after Bagration. The peak of German oil production was July 1944. The peak of their production in steel was September 1944. The Luftwaffe was attrited as much in the periphery (a category which includes the Eastern Front) as it was over the Home Front.

would have been impossible without the Wallies military and LL efforts;
And WAllied LL efforts would have made no difference had the Soviets not gained the competence to utilize them.

They would have in different circumstances, my entire point is that the success of Soviet doctrine was only possible because of massive Wallied support on other fronts that enabled the Soviets to have such a weak target to attack;
This is only half-true. It was the relentless attrition of the previous two years, suffered largely (but not exclusively) on the Eastern Front, that weakened the Germans to the point where Bagration could have been such a massive success. And lend-lease was ultimately only necessitated by the massive losses to the Soviet industrial base in 1941-42. Just as the Germans were economically encumbered in their war with the Western Allies, the Soviets were economically encumbered by damage to their industrial base which far outstripped anything the WAllies strategic bombing campaign managed to achieve.

Check out their artillery doctrine they were way ahead of the Soviets there in 1940 and with time would have honed that to an equal level as 1945 Soviet doctrine.
It would not be the same doctrine, but it would probably be one that is just as effective.

Fine, but are you really going to say that Winter War experience had no impact on Shock Army doctrine?
Given that Shock Armies were not formed until December 1941? And that their formation was a response to the experience accrued during the German attack in summer '41? No.

Sure, which did not exist as a role in WW2, but developed into it post-war.
Once again: in a de-jure sense, yes. But in a de-facto sense it did exist. Bagration actually contains an excellent example: the 5th Guards Tank Army basically performed the role for the northern wing of the offensive while two cavalry-mechanized groups were used in the role for the southern wing. The post-war development of the Operational Maneuver Group was not actually a new concept, just the formalization of an already existing practice.

They didn't abandon methodical battle, they just switched up how they fought it; rather than a fixed line they focused on hedgehog defenses, which is an adaptation of doctrine, not abandonment of it.
No, it's quite a transparent abandonment. Altering the fundamental way you do things, rather then the details, is called "abandoning doctrine" not tweaking it.

And quite frankly, the French would have been (and were) right to abandon their doctrine. A military which clings to a bad doctrine after it has been demonstrated to be a failure is not one that is going to last.

No they would have tweaked it like the Soviet did their DB doctrine rather than throwing it out after the defeats of 1941.
The Soviet tweaks were to the details of their doctrine, but after late-1942 (which is when they finally readopted Deep Battle) they did not adopt a fundamentally whole new approach. The meat may have been different then the pre-war theory, but the skeleton was the same.

Mind you, the Soviet armed forces would regard this entire conversation as pretty nonsensical as their definition of doctrine was very different from the Western definition.
 
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Flexibility and other matters.

Whatever the flexibility the Russians had between front and corps ( a lot, and a lot more than the Germans in practice) it starts falling down at lower levels where the dying happens.

Simply put a WW2 Soviet rifle corps commander can order an attack but really can’t call it off and has limited means to support it. The bulk of the artillery is limited to either direct fire or predicted fire on a timed basis rather than observer controlled and that’s what does the one sided killing e.g. at Iassy the prep fires destroy the german artillery and a whole ID. But doing that is decided on the map before the attack goes in.

The issue at higher level is a judgement as to when to insert follow on echelons and particularly the Mech corps which can provide momentum beyond the reach of the pre positioned guns. There is a lot of flexibility on that but once committed that’s it for a good while.

French artillery doctrine 40 is far superior to Russian 42 (comparison with 41 may be interesting) but the loss of staffs and signallers cripples Soviet artillery throughout the war. If you want to say different start by describing the soviet meteorology system at battery level.

The postwar (45/ 46) British assessment was that Soviet practice in 45 was at about 1915 British levels that’s based on POW interviews with German’s and observation. Certainly Germans coming to the west were repeatedly warned that US or British artillery was devastating, always, in minutes, Russian just occasionally scary.

The Russians ‘solve ‘ their artillery problem with large numbers of cheap vulnerable SU with light guns ( and smaller numbers of larger SU with big guns and thick armour) and high level controlled predicted fire, which is a bit hit and miss and was ditched by the western nations after 1916.

I would disagree with the idea that the French would ditch their pre war system. Incidentally Methodical battle is not the only translation, controlled or directed battle may be better. They adopt it for good reasons, casualty minimisation. And the main problem with casualties is not the break in but the German counterattack.

If the 40 campaign does not result in a disaster the French system will have worked to some extent. The very limited reach of the 36 regulations attack will be ditched. But the DLM and DCR postdate the 36 FSR and with the DLM and DCR things will change.
 
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They didn't abandon methodical battle, they just switched up how they fought it; rather than a fixed line they focused on hedgehog defenses, which is an adaptation of doctrine, not abandonment of it.

....

No, it's quite a transparent abandonment. Altering the fundamental way you do things, rather then the details, is called "abandoning doctrine" not tweaking it. ...

I am unsure what this repeated reference I see to "hedgehog" or strong point, or non linear defense as being something new that magically appeared as a technique in the French army in June 1940?

In front of me is a map of the defense positions of the French 55th Division at Sedan as laid out before 10 May. (taken from Doughty 'The Breaking Point'). this map clearly shows the defense as a new work of strong points - clusters of MG & cannon bunkers pill boxes, with local reserves of rifle platoons/companies in protective bunkers. These strong points are laid out in zones, not lines, & multi layered. A magazine article has a map of the Morrocan divisions defense at Gembloux, which shows a similar network of strong point clusters, mutually supported by MG fires, mortars, AT guns & and light artillery. In that case the positions were hastily dug protective works, not concrete but the layout is much the same. Another map in front of me is a schematic of the French 4th Army defense system in 1918. It is a similar series of zones, each made up of 'hedgehogs' of strong points of MG & light artillery with local reserves of rifle units for counter attacking.

I could go on with this, but I've not yet in thirty five years of reading about this campaign seen a 'linear' tactical defense system drawn from a actual French or other contemporary source. Several such appeared in pop history books, but seem to be drawn from the authors imagination & not any actual French, German, or other legitimate documentation.

The main difference between the French defense deployment in May & June 1940 is the latter was spread very thin. The strong points were clustered to cover the highways & were to few to fill the intervals. Rommel in his account of the campaign described covering these defense positions with fire & feint attacks while the main body of his division passed through the adjacent gaps.
 
In front of me is a map of the defense positions of the French 55th Division at Sedan as laid out before 10 May. (taken from Doughty 'The Breaking Point'). this map clearly shows the defense as a new work of strong points - clusters of MG & cannon bunkers pill boxes, with local reserves of rifle platoons/companies in protective bunkers. These strong points are laid out in zones, not lines, & multi layered.

Just because you have fortifications which are organized into zones does not mean you have a hedgehog defense nor a defense-in-depth. Are they positioned to support each? Are they capable of defending themselves from all directions?

The main difference between the French defense deployment in May & June 1940 is the latter was spread very thin.

From an operational perspective, a thin defense is a linear defense.
 
Just because you have fortifications which are organized into zones does not mean you have a hedgehog defense nor a defense-in-depth. Are they positioned to support each? Are they capable of defending themselves from all directions?



From an operational perspective, a thin defense is a linear defense.

Do you have preferably an online source for me to look at Soviet tactical drills at the tactical, operational and strategic levels? Just something else for me to look at for a TL.
 
Simply put a WW2 Soviet rifle corps commander can order an attack but really can’t call it off and has limited means to support it.

Actually, by 1944 a Soviet corps enjoyed a substantial fire power advantage over it's German counterparts.

Organically, a 1944 Rifle Corps consists of 3-4 divisions which each have(assuming they are at full-strength which is a given if it is in a critical attack sector) have nearly 166 heavy machine guns, 183 mortars (38 of which are heavy mortars which are as powerful as the divisional howitzer), 48 AT guns, and 44 artillery pieces organic to it's TOE.

For comparison, a German 1944 Infantry Division's TOE at full strength (which was never the case in 1944) gives it 90 heavy machine guns, 82 mortars, 30 AT guns, and 48 artillery pieces. German corps composition varied quite a bit but the average for 1944 seems to have been 3 divisions.

As you can see, in organic terms the only place the a full strength German infantry division (and thus full-strength German infantry corps) has an advantage is tube artillery. Of course, since no German infantry division on the Eastern Front in 1944 was more then 3/4ths of their TOE (and even those were extremely rare), that advantage remained theoretical.

Then you add on whatever additional fire support the corps/division has been granted by higher command. For the Soviets this could include, but were not limited too: Army Artillery Regiments, RVGK Artillery Regiments, AA regiments, mortar regiments, tank regiments, guards heavy tank regiments, guards mortar [Katyusha MLR] regiments, sapper regiments, self-propelled gun regiments, and AT regiments. In 1944 the Soviets had 1,511 such support units.

The Germans had them too, although with different names. But they only had about 1/3 of them: 643, mostly in battalion size.

The bulk of the artillery is limited to either direct fire or predicted fire on a timed basis rather than observer controlled and that’s what does the one sided killing e.g. at Iassy the prep fires destroy the german artillery and a whole ID. But doing that is decided on the map before the attack goes in.
Then why do I see all of these interviews with Soviet artillery observers in various history books?

The postwar (45/46) British assessment was that Soviet practice in 45 was at about 1915 British levels that’s based on POW interviews with German’s and observation. Certainly Germans coming to the west were repeatedly warned that US or British artillery was devastating, always, in minutes, Russian just occasionally scary.
Probably because they were never the ones who received the full weight of a Soviet barrage. In 1944-45, the general trend was that Soviet barrages shattered what they targeted so comprehensively that Red Army infantry were able to practically walk through their lines. The only time trouble arose was when the preparation fire was not aimed at a particular key point, generally as a result of an intelligence or planning failure (this is what happened at Seelow Heights). This very rarely happened in the west.

Simply put a WW2 Soviet rifle corps commander can order an attack but really can’t call it off and has limited means to support it.

Actually, by 1944 a Soviet corps enjoyed a substantial fire power advantage over it's German counterparts.

Organically, a 1944 Rifle Corps consists of 3-4 divisions which each have(assuming they are at full-strength which is a given if it is in a critical attack sector) have nearly 166 heavy machine guns, 183 mortars (38 of which are heavy mortars which are as powerful as the divisional howitzer), 48 AT guns, and 44 artillery pieces organic to it's TOE.

For comparison, a German 1944 Infantry Division's TOE at full strength (which was never the case in 1944) gives it 30 heavy machine guns, 82 mortars, 30 AT guns, and 48 artillery pieces. German corps composition varied quite a bit but the average for 1944 seems to have been 3 divisions.

As you can see, in organic terms the only place the a full strength German infantry division (and thus full-strength German infantry corps) has an advantage is tube artillery. Of course, since no German infantry division on the Eastern Front in 1944 was more then 3/4ths of their TOE (and even those were extremely rare), that advantage remained theoretical.

Then you add on whatever additional fire support the corps/division has been granted by higher command. For the Soviets this could include, but were not limited too: Army Artillery Regiments, RVGK Artillery Regiments, AA regiments, mortar regiments, tank regiments, guards heavy tank regiments, guards mortar [Katyusha MLR] regiments, sapper regiments, self-propelled gun regiments, and AT regiments. In 1944 the Soviets had 1,511 such support units.

The Germans had them too, although with different names. But they only had about 1/3 of them: 643, mostly in battalion size.

The bulk of the artillery is limited to either direct fire or predicted fire on a timed basis rather than observer controlled and that’s what does the one sided killing e.g. at Iassy the prep fires destroy the german artillery and a whole ID. But doing that is decided on the map before the attack goes in.
Then why do I see all of these interviews with Soviet artillery observers in various history books?

The postwar (45/46) British assessment was that Soviet practice in 45 was at about 1915 British levels that’s based on POW interviews with German’s and observation. Certainly Germans coming to the west were repeatedly warned that US or British artillery was devastating, always, in minutes, Russian just occasionally scary.
Probably because they were never the ones who received the full weight of a Soviet barrage. In 1944-45, the general trend was that Soviet barrages shattered German defenses so comprehensively that Red Army infantry were able to practically walk over their lines. This very rarely happened in the west.

Do you have preferably an online source for me to look at Soviet tactical drills at the tactical, operational and strategic levels? Just something else for me to look at for a TL.

Unfortunately, no. I only know about the system via this book and Donnelly only gives a few examples rather then anything comprehensive. It's a very late-Cold War work, but it clearly took the most advantage of perestroika as all of the people I have talked to elsewhere have stated it holds up to a post-Cold War scrutiny. Not everything within applies to the Red Army within World War 2., as again it's a Cold War piece, but probably 90-95% of it does given that a lot of Soviet Cold War stuff is directly developed from World War 2.

As a minor nitpick, the Soviets drill system was exclusively for tactical maneuvers and as such did not extend above the regimental-level. A Soviet junior officer was supposed to use his knowledge of the current military norms and the correlation of forces of the situation to know which drill to order executed. Above the regimental-level, norms and correlation of forces were something to be used in planning operations.
 
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30 machine guns by division? that is low even for second rate division in second rate army (like Polish or Italian) early in the war. Perhaps more machine guns were organic to lower order units - batalions or even companies. It seems imposible to that such division could impress Wallies with machinegun firepower as they did.
 
30 machine guns by division? that is low even for second rate division in second rate army (like Polish or Italian) early in the war. Perhaps more machine guns were organic to lower order units - batalions or even companies. It seems imposible to that such division could impress Wallies with machinegun firepower as they did.

Whoops! I screwed up, that is actually supposed to be 90 machine guns. In any case, the numbers does leave out squad-level machine guns. If you want to count those, then add 337 machine guns to the Soviet division and 333 to the German one.
 
30 machine guns by division? that is low even for second rate division in second rate army (like Polish or Italian) early in the war. Perhaps more machine guns were organic to lower order units - batalions or even companies. It seems imposible to that such division could impress Wallies with machinegun firepower as they did.

That's 30 heavy machine guns. The Germans didn't deploy any M2/DShK class infantry weapons, so unless MG34s and 42s on tripod mounts were counted as HMGs, 'machine fun' in this sense means old school eater cooled machine guns like MG08.
 
That's 30 heavy machine guns. The Germans didn't deploy any M2/DShK class infantry weapons, so unless MG34s and 42s on tripod mounts were counted as HMGs, 'machine fun' in this sense means old school eater cooled machine guns like MG08.

Actually, those machine guns usually were MG34/42s. The Soviets were generally a mix of Dushkas, SG43s, or PM1910s.
 
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I would disagree with the idea that the French would ditch their pre war system. Incidentally Methodical battle is not the only translation, controlled or directed battle may be better. They adopt it for good reasons, casualty minimisation. And the main problem with casualties is not the break in but the German counterattack.

Missed that remark earlier. To many pop histories tend to cast French doctrine in a shallow & distorted light. "Methodical Battle" has come to take on a meaning other than its use three or four decades ago.

...

If the 40 campaign does not result in a disaster the French system will have worked to some extent. The very limited reach of the 36 regulations attack will be ditched. But the DLM and DCR postdate the 36 FSR and with the DLM and DCR things will change.

Its also liable to evolve. the leader like Gemelin who were responsible for the doctrine as it existed in 1940 would be largely gone or were already retired. Daladier had been preparing to retire Gamelin in May, but the battle intervened. With a new generation of leaders & battle experience doctrine will evolve. maybe a lot, maybe a little, but it would evolve.
 
Just because you have fortifications which are organized into zones does not mean you have a hedgehog defense nor a defense-in-depth. Are they positioned to support each?

Yes

Are they capable of defending themselves from all directions?

Yes.

As much or more so as the alleged "hedgehogs" of June were.

From an operational perspective, a thin defense is a linear defense.

The Weygand Line was organized in depth. It was 'thin' in that it lacked a third to half the combat formations needed to create a complete web mutually supporting positions. Its depth was not relevant as both the forward & rear positions were too few to effectively support each other. Clustering the defending positions around the main routes made it more of a blocking or delaying deployment. The number of combat formations was too few to turn this into a solid defense.
 
As much or more so as the alleged "hedgehogs" of June were.

Are the pictures post-able or are they in a book?

The Weygand Line was organized in depth. It was 'thin' in that it lacked a third to half the combat formations needed to create a complete web mutually supporting positions. Its depth was not relevant as both the forward & rear positions were too few to effectively support each other. Clustering the defending positions around the main routes made it more of a blocking or delaying deployment. The number of combat formations was too few to turn this into a solid defense.
Wait, I'm confused. Are we talking about the French defenses along the Sedan or the Weygand line. Because the Weygand line was the shift to hedgehog tactics in June everyone is talking about.

Actually, looking back at your post, you were talking about the fortifications at Gembloux rather then Sedan, where the Germans broke through. Sedan was actually modestly well fortified, with steep banks and good defensive terrain, although the defensive expansion was as yet unfinished in 1940. But upriver from it was a stretch of low ground where the French had not yet fortified, and where a crossing would be much easier, and which threatened the northern edge of that vast positional defensive, the Maginot Line. The French fixated on this stretch of river, and it was here that 2nd Army put its best forces. At Sedan, where the 2nd and 9th armies linked the French put relatively weak forces. The Germans looked at where the French had put their forces, identified where they had the least troops, saw it was also a gap between two armies (always a great place to attack), gritted their teeth over the bad ground, and attacked Sedan. Bad terrain is all well and good, but terrain ultimately doesn't stop armies. Troops do.

Sedan really highlights the fundamental difference between a maneuver doctrine like Blitzkrieg or Deep Battle as opposed to a positional doctrine like Methodical Battle. Positional warfare looks primarily at the ground. Gain good ground, so as to gain the most tactical advantage. Maneuver warfare instead looks at the enemy. Where is the enemy army most vulnerable to my attack.

We can see this again with Bagration. The Soviets looked at the German forces, realized they were particularly weak in Belorussia, realized that what German forces did exist were largely concentrated around road centers so as to block what dry-and-clear terrain there was, gritted their teeth over the marshes and forests, and attacked straight through them.

The problem with Methodical Battle is that the theory of war it posits is all wrong in the context of 1940. It expects a slow moving fight where mobility and speed wouldn't matter, and believed that any penetration would be shallow and could be countered simply by moving forces laterally to cover any gaps, as had been done successfully in WWI. This doctrine was doomed in the context of WWII. Once the German offensive in May broke, the French had to realize that all their military thought for the past 20 years was wrong, then try and come up with new solutions while everything was collapsing around them. Understandably they failed.

Deep Battle, unlike Methodical Battle, does not posit a slow moving fight at all. It emphasizes mobility and speed, with deep penetrations that can only be countered by equally deep defenses acting as backstop to a mobile counterstrike. In the context of WW2, it is exactly right.
 
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It is well known that Sedan was incredibly badly fortified compared to other areas
1/ it was not in "zone des armées" meaning that the army was not legally allowed to use land
2/ most mines were not deployed. The winter was really cold and the area muddy so all mines were defective or still in boxes
3/ most bunkers were infinished (no steel door, no armored cover for gunsight...)
4/ the first line was lacking barb wire (something easy to notice if you have a look at pictures)
5/ the crossing took place at low speed meander where the Eastern bank dominates the western one.

French indeed understood the problem really fast but were lacking reserves to implement a good "defense in deep".
 
The only English language source on soviet practice in WW2 I have easy to find is the US field manual post war I think it can be found in the one about the Trigons – the Aggressor state. FM30 -102 the 1950 and 47 edition is online there is also a 48 edition I have not found. The 50 edition goes into more detail.

TM30-430 is the 45 version which you may be able to get on CD Rom Its basically describing the US/Wehrmacht view of how the Red army fights in 44/5. It could well be more informed than that depending on German tactical intelligence.

The soviets had a firepower advantage ( in artillery) over the Germans from autumn 41 in certain areas but the issue is always control. And one of the flexibilities the soviets enjoyed was switching control between levels at various times in the battle.

However tube counting is misleading. The issue is not the number of tubes firing it’s the number of shells landing on the target point.

There are fundamentally three types of artillery fire. Direct, predicted and observed. The Soviets are good at direct but have increasing issues with the other two. Its not that they are not effective but rather that compared to Wallied less effective.

One is identifying the target the other is hitting it, which is a matter of knowing the relative range and bearing (which means both maps and communication between the guy giving the orders and the gun positions) meteorology, gun wear data, gun position surveys and recalculating this for every change in target or battery location.

The Soviet problem is they have fewer staffs available to do the calculations and poorer communications between artillery formations and people ordering fires. I’m not sure if they were pre registering, their 41 equipment suggests that they were but that again adds time and gives intelligence to the enemy.

The soviets essentially had to simplify the maths and comms by massing guns ( and thus presenting a counterbattery target).

Predicted fire you have no actual knowledge as to its accuracy or relevance until the troops arrive and by then if it’s failed the infantry are fucked. Massive fires can compensate to some effect but that then gives logistic issues that you have to position the guns and ammo some time in advance which makes the attacks potentially predictable and much slower in sequence because of the need to displace as you advance allowing the defender time to reposition.

Observed fire is much more effective provided there is a short comms lag between the observer and guns and where there is interconnection between the firing batteries and the observers even more so. The question on Soviet observers is where are they, how they are communicating and with who.
To give a western example consider the effectiveness of US naval gunfire support in the Pacific in the preparatory ( essentially all predicted) fire on Japanese positions which is impressive but ineffective vs the observed fire when the observer teams got ashore and comms up.

An observer in a position on a hill with a phone can be very effective, but only on what he can see and he can only call fires from what’s at the end of the comms link and only as fast as the gun positions can get firing data. For the Germans that could be 15-20 minutes, US ( which is based on French practice) 7-9 minutes, UK 3-5 but the RA was obsessed with speed.

So overall very good in a static situation rapidly becoming ineffective as the situation becomes fluid leaving the PBI the same problem as they had in WW1, how do you deal with the unsuppressed machine gun? And the whole attack can become unglued as the predicted fires get disconnected with the rate of advance. For the rifle division that quickly means that the fire support comes from 50mm mortars and whatever armour available or guns can be manhandled forward.

So the Soviet system can walk all over the map from its initial positions provided its not suppressed by CB fire what it can’t do is either react fast or sustain beyond its initial positions. Which is why you get mechanised corps and lots of SU’s committed forward on direct fire missions.

That then gives the problem that if the Mech corps are committed too early they get run into an intact AT defence.
 
It is well known that Sedan was incredibly badly fortified compared to other areas
1/ it was not in "zone des armées" meaning that the army was not legally allowed to use land
2/ most mines were not deployed. The winter was really cold and the area muddy so all mines were defective or still in boxes
3/ most bunkers were infinished (no steel door, no armored cover for gunsight...)
4/ the first line was lacking barb wire (something easy to notice if you have a look at pictures)
5/ the crossing took place at low speed meander where the Eastern bank dominates the western one.

French indeed understood the problem really fast but were lacking reserves to implement a good "defense in deep".

Even with all that, and the massive air strike, the initial German assault had a rough time of it. The lead rifle battalion of the 2d Pz Div never made it to the river bank with its rubber boats. They crossed the next day. The Gross Deutchlands lead battalion took heavy casualties crossing and clearing the positions overlooking the river. The 10 Pz Div crossing south of Sedan had one battalion driven back into a orchard & pinned there, not reaching the river until after nightfall. The other took some serious losses like the GD regiment.

The role of the afternoon air strike is not always clearly understood. After the air attacks ceased the French battalion commander of the sector facing the GD Regiments crossing was able to locate only about sixty men, before the river crossing started. The few solders that stayed with their positions were mostly or all from the static fortress regiment that had occupied the bunkers since mobilization in September 1939, not of the 55th Divisions men who were Series B reservists.

Neither was that battalion commander able to find any artillery support, the communication links to the observation posts and artillery CP were dead. His defense boiled down to a dozen light and medium MG with supporting fires and no rifle companies to counter attack along the river bank.. The same story occured all along the river. In Torcy across from Sedan part of a company of infantry fought for a few hours, further north and south a few MG manned by a few dozen men in the bunkers constituted the defense.

Three hours of sustained air attacks broke the morale of the others & caused the bulk of the 55th Division to panic & retreat, before a single German set foot in the river.
 
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