Ground Combat Doctrine
in WW II
I: Introduction
1.Purpose.— This summary supports an introduction to command and staff functions and combat orders as they were routinely applied in the 1940’s. Careful study of these materials and completion of the study exercises will prepare you to create and operate a simulated battalion or regimental command post, at a large tactical or at a living history demonstration, and will broaden your understanding of the US Army’s practice of operational level warfare in World War II.
2.Scope.—This document examines the ground combat doctrine used in WW II, how it developed out of the experience of 1914-18 and changes in technology, and how it met the challenges of global war. A general familiarity with doctrine and its development will make clear quite a few mysteries that confront living historians without a background in military studies.
The discussion presented here ties together several themes that shaped the way the major powers fought. These include:
- The disastrous experience of WW I. The United States did not enter the conflict until 1917, and was not a decisive player until 1918; Britain, France, Germany, and Russia endured more than four years of stalemate and slaughter, and it affected each nation in different ways and shaped the attitudes and beliefs they brought to the inevitable renewal of war barely two decades after Germany’s surrender in 1918.
- Changes in technology. The critical changes involved three paths of development: motorization, aviation, and communication.
Motor vehicles were used widely but not decisively in WW I. On the Western Front, distances were fairly short during the stalemate and trench warfare. Horse and mule transport works adequately over shorter distances (from railhead to depot to front). The problem is fuel efficiency: horses and mules can live on grass and forage; they work on feed. Feed is heavy and relatively inefficient in terms of hauling power and range. Beyond a certain critical distance, most of the space in a supply wagon would necessarily be carrying feed. Gasoline powered vehicles transform combustible fuel into work much more efficiently, and it is easier to refuel than to wait for animals to feed and rest. WWII involved much more rapid movement, and wagons could not support this kind of movement. War necessarily became mechanized in the ETO.
Aviation developed new capabilities, largely in transport capability. This was especially critical in the Pacific theater, which saw forces scattered across thousands of miles but requiring constant logistical support.
The war also saw the introduction of robust and reliable frequency-modulated (FM) radios that traded limited range for tactical flexibility, plus advanced teletype (twx) equipment for transmission of large volumes of text.
II. HOW THEY THOUGHT: DOCTRINAL REVOLUTIONS AND ORGANIZATIONS
3.Dreams of Peace, thoughts of War.—The headlong nature of the US Army’s abrupt shift from peace to war is generally well known but widely misunderstood. A year before Pearl Harbor, the Army had just begun shifting from the obsolete doctrine of 1917-18 to reflect the changing reality of war. What is not usually mentioned is that our Army was not alone.
Europe’s experience in WW I created a paradox for military thinkers. The huge losses resulting from trench warfare obviously required a change in philosophy, but there was a sustained battle over exactly what that would be. As is usual in more recent times, there was the air war school (championed by Emilio Douhet and Billy Mitchell), which promised to skip the huge bloodletting with bomber strikes directly at the industrial, transportation, and population centers of the enemy. This approach has consistently failed for 75 years, but at the time (and without the bitter experience of failure) it seemed promising. It was the myth of the easy solution, the silver bullet—and it offered the added charm of drawing scarce funds for the development of air power at the expense of other arms.
France, and particularly England, were burdened in the years between the wars with a series of pacifist governments that were loath to allocate scarce resources to build armies during a world wide depression, despite the obvious threat of a rearming Germany. In the United States, by contrast, there was not even the perception of a serious threat, and military development in practical terms was in a two-decade funding coma.
But, however bored the politicians might be with pleas for money, times like this create active thinking.[1] (If your operating funds do not allow for fuel and ammunition to train, at least you can dream.) As the dreams started turning nightmarish in Europe with the Spanish Civil War and other dress rehearsals for the disaster on the horizon, new ideas multiplied; and eve as America as a whole slept, US military thinkers were hard at work planning for the war they could clearly see approaching.
4. Changing Horses.—In the matter of ground warfare, there was a bitter struggle between innovators and traditionalists here and in Europe on the matter of mechanized warfare. The tank had been introduced with some success late in the last war, but the reasons for the success (which was limited by maddeningly conservative doctrine and outright stupidity[2]) were fought over for years.
The dominant side until late in the revolution—particularly in the United States—considered the tank to be an infantry support weapon, a mobile machine gun nest with some large-caliber capability that would allow advancing infantry to meet the deadly hail of defenders’ machinegun fire by bringing protected rapid-fire weapons along (albeit at the slow pace of dismounted infantry)—in essence, mobile pillboxes. The concept of tanks as a separate arm seemed frivolous and dangerous, since tanks left to themselves would simply lumber around and leave the infantry to its fate.
The cavalry was similarly disgusted by the tank—not only because it lacked equine grace, but also because early tanks were subject to breakdowns (okay, so were later tanks), they guzzled precious fuel supplies, and they were noisy and smelled bad. (Yes, mules shared the last two features with tanks, but at least they were lovable.) There was also the never-quite-voiced fear that, should the tank prove successful, horse cavalry would be discarded. The First World War was fought largely without decisive cavalry actions, and cavalrymen were frustrated and fearful of obsolescence.
The tank had to find a home. In the United States, buying large quantities of something so expensive required an official, high-ranking cheering section. Instead, proponents were middle-tier officers (not young, exactly—the postwar promotion rate had slowed as usual to a crawl) like Boudinot and Chaffee. Patton, thoroughly frustrated, returned for a while to the cavalry after making a good combat start with tanks in 1918.
7. Fits and, Finally, Some Starts.—Development of mobile warfare doctrine proceeded overseas, with time-outs for practical exercise. The Germans and Soviets quietly participated in the Spanish Civil War (on opposing sides); later, the German leadership cooperated with the Red Army by a sort of consulting agreement with Marshal Tukachevskii in developing tank doctrine, with favorable results in a subsequent border skirmish with Japanese forces occupying Manchuria in nearly forgotten battles. Both countries combined aggressive design efforts with doctrine development, often trading ideas through the Nazi-Soviet rapprochement that ended in 1941.
The Soviet experiment went briefly aground when Tukachevskii was purged and shot – Stalin used his coziness with the Germans as an excuse. His acolyte Vladimir Pavlov continued the work, however, after his mentor’s disappearance from the scene.
German developments continued, against a conservative[3]tide of traditionally inclined senior officers, largely through the intercession of Chief of the Army General Staff Ludwig Beck[4], the enthusiasm and arguments of Heinz Guderian, and action by Hitler himself.
In France, upstart Colonel Charles de Gaulle pushed for reform, eventually pushing some doctrinal innovations through a hidebound Army leadership. In design of tanks in particular, the French had a decided lead over the Germans (as did the Red Army), but German doctrinal overhauls were more sound.
In England there was more resistance. Despite the writings of B. H. Liddell Hart, British doctrine remained largely stuck with the old dichotomy of heavy tanks for support of infantry and light vehicles for reconnaissance. This would change quickly with the fall of Poland and France.
In the United States, proponents like Chaffee, Boudinot, and Patton could rave and plead until they dropped from exhaustion, but there was no real political will to invest in ground forces until after the fall of France, and then half-heartedly. Doctrine was tested to a limited extent in the field, but generally used surrogate tanks—dressed-up light trucks. Actual equipment was generally surplus WW I gear long victim to mechanical wear-out, and there was insufficient fuel to train or validate ideas.
Nevertheless, despite occasional charges of backwardness in the United States, military thinkers had been paying attention; while they did not have the wherewithal to assemble modern armies, they were watching and waiting.
8. From Theory to practice.—When war broke out for real in September 1939, nothing went as smoothly as propagandists would have it.
Germany pulled of a miracle in the interwar years. The victorious allies abolished the feared General Staff, credited for more evil than the legions of Hell could muster. The resulting, shrunken Truppenamt had to make do as well as it could. Many of the best officers in the next war matured in Truppenamt positions. But by the mid-1930's, the German political leadership gambled (correctly) that the exhausted French and British were unwilling to enforce the terms of the last war; accordingly, the Germans simply ignored the Treaty of Versailles and rearmed.
But the Wehrmacht was in fact not much more advanced in thinking than the French Army (though much more aggressively positioned psychologically) in 1940, and the mechanized coup that broke the Anglo-French armies was a late rebellion by progressive officers like Guderian and Manstein authorized late in the planning process; there was still a strong conservative sentiment in all the armies involved. France had started to organize large mobile formations of tanks and light cavalry, but their employment was halfhearted and part of an overall confusion of leadership. The greatest advantage enjoyed by the Wehrmacht was not in number of quality of armored forces (the French had more tanks and generally of superior design) but rather in French unwillingness to act decisively with the available resources. In particular, communication in the French forces still relied heavily on couriers—radios were not trusted. This created a deadly situation in which the German operational tempo and flexibility were faster than the French – later this would be called the “decision loop”, in which one army reacts slowly to developments, then finds that by the time they have set a move in motion the enemy is already doing something else.
With the confidence gained in Poland and in France—a confidence not entirely justified—the Wehrmacht moved from victory to victory with daring operations against inept and disheartened opponents.
The Red Army had started a broad and ambitious reorganization — the execution of Tukachevskii had not slowed it down. Part of this sea change came from active theoretical preparation by knowledgeable officers like Pavlov, part from the disastrous performance of the Red Army in the 1940-41 Winter War against Finland. The result was that the Soviet forces were in the worst possible state when the Wehrmacht invaded in 1941 — neither the old Red Army nor the new one, but somewhere in between. In particular, the numerous and generally good quality armored force was still unprepared for the German onslaught, and suffered early defeats. The immediate answer was, typically, the execution of Pavlov as a scapegoat for the infallible Party; also typically, his reforms continued at a rapid pace. The Wehrmacht was unable to finish off the Soviet Union before the Red Army recovered and stalled the invasion, and then shifted to the offensive.
9. The Basic Reforms.—What was going on in world armies, and what was the essence of the reforms in land warfare?
At the tactical level, the problem was how to incorporate the expanding capability for mobile warfare. Technological change often presents challenges to armies that have mastered yesterday’s battlefield. The impact of the machine gun in 1914 and the method of assault across beaten zones between entrenchments led in the US Army to the “square” division of four regiments. The reason was the practicality of a two-brigade assault practice. One brigade went over the top under cover of machine gun and artillery fire, advancing until the attack ran out of steam, at which time the second two-regiment brigade moved forward over the exhausted leading units to continue the advance. While this generally didn’t work wonders, there was no ready replacement for the tactic and organization.
The objective of all this effort was to achieve a breakthrough “to the green fields beyond” where mobile warfare (albeit at foot-mobile speeds) could resume. Huge effusion of blood was invested in the idea with limited results. The failure of the Somme offensive, which resulted in 1.5 million casualties with little tactical gain, along with a widespread mutiny in the French Army (news of which was suppressed at the time) caused the Allies to settle into the trenches again to wait out the winter of 1917-1918 and wait for the arrival of the Americans.[5]
The Somme also saw the debut of the tank, but the machines were very slow and primitive, subject to breakdowns, and used in very small numbers over terrain unsuited to their employment.
After the war, armies settled back into complacence and low national priority. Millions of lives and incredible expenditures of treasure had resulted, many governments hoped, in a new era of peace. By the mid 1920’s developments on the international scene undermined that comfortable belief, and with the onset of world economic collapse only those nations with an eye to future mischief had the will to invest in an obsolete concept like war.
When reorganization came, it was almost too late.
The first phase was influenced by a “never again” mentality with respect to the terrible trench warfare of 1914-18. France in particular invested intellectual (if not much material) capital in promoting mobile doctrine. Paradoxically, the horror of trench warfare, with defense predominant, prompted a love affair with the offensive.
By the outbreak of war in 1939, several trends were finally gaining momentum in the US Army.
a.Organization for war on the move. Part of this was the robust concept of “two up and one back”. The square organization based on trench warfare and limited objectives was not suitable for mobile operations because it (1) held back too much combat power and (2) in the advance against an enemy of uncertain strength and dispositions would cause half the force to be engaged before the battle was “developed”. In the attack against known positions, two maneuver units in the lead allowed maximum combat power forward while leaving a third of the force in reserve to guard against surprises or to exploit success. When advancing against uncertain opposition, a one-up, two back deployment allowed the commander to avoid having the majority of his force engaged and immobilized before scoping out the battlefield and the enemy.
Change came slowly in the United States — National Guard divisions, for example, still had a square organization the year before Pearl Harbor. Once the emergency was declared and serious mobilization began, change was headlong and often contradictory. Many doctrinal points were unresolved by the formal entry into the war, and would have to be wrung out, uncomfortably, in North Africa as bad ideas became obvious under fire.
b.Defense in depth. The rapid improvement in firepower brought about by the introduction of efficient machineguns and improved artillery equipment and delivery techniques, along with the advent of armored concentrations, made the traditional “main line of resistance” obsolete. Mobile forces and artillery concentrations could blow a hole in any linear defense if enough could be brought to bear, and once loose in the rear these forces would wreak havoc.
The answer was defense in depth. The idea relied on the sudden turn of technology and tactics that allowed a defender to control a critical point without physically occupying it. By dispersing multiple strong defensive positions in depth, a defender could hope to force the attacker to ricochet off strong points in a deadly pinball game.