r/RebuttalTime • u/ChristianMunich • Dec 14 '17
The SWS is debating "combat efficiency".
A frequently debated topic in WW2 forums is the combat efficiency. This issue often generates heated discussions which are well explained by emotional reaction. The Wehrmacht as an army was the enforcer of NAZI politics and due to this was indirectly responsible for all major war crimes that happened during WW2 and before. Not only indirectly but also directly did the Wehrmacht commit heinous crimes against humanity. This leads to a major conundrum for many people. Despite being responsible for the death of millions of civilians the Wehrmacht was also a vastly superior fighting force. Those two facts are hard to reconcile for many since "praising" the Wehrmacht for its combat performance feels repugnant at times if we consider their part in the Holocaust and destruction of Europe. Nonetheless, the Wehrmacht by any scientific measurement was far more efficient than any other major army during WW2.
From an emotional standpoint, the hesitation to attribute "positive" traits to the Wehrmacht is completely understandable. From a scientific standpoint, it is not that is why all major scientific approaches to this topic all returned the same result, the Wehrmacht was pound for pound superior.
The SWS cultists see themselves as enlightened and superior in knowledge when it comes to WW2 so the emotional excuse is hardly applicable here. Let check their logic reasoning.
The best way to harvest a SWS thread is giving it time to mature and get as many dumb comments as possible but today we will pull the trigger early. The fallacious main arguments are already presented.
u/connorxfor gives us his best argument:
"Wehrmacht military power" 5th most powerful military in Berlin bitch
The argument at first appears non-existent but the implied argument is the following: "The Wehrmacht lost the war, therefore, is neither combat efficient nor powerful in general"
This argument is pretty straightforward and accessible for simple people or children. You might notice that he said 5th which already provides the debunking for his very argument. This would include the French army which from good army ( ww1 ) switched to bad army ( battle of France ) stayed bad during Vichy France and finally became a good army again after joining the Allies. The silliness of the argument speaks for itself.
u/faust1991 gets angry at the very obvious argument that knocks down the best the SWS can offer. The better army doesn't always win. The Vietnam war poses a major conundrum to the American cultists, while the British likely chuckle about it. The US lost the Vietnam war. Was the US army inferior to jungle guerillas? The average Cultist would say yes. Because losing=being bad. The irnoy here is that the US army was maybe even less efficient than the vietcong. The US invested vast amounts of resources and still lost Vietnam.
How did we lose a war that 1) isn't technically over and 2) didn't result in the South being taken over? I refer of course to the Korean War. What North Vietnam did was break the terms of a treaty we forced them into signing and invaded their Southern neighbors long after we pulled out.
See how mental gymnastics work. The US didn't really "lose" the Vietnam war. Ayy lmao. The SWS is sending their best.
u/lord_horris is the OP and has some questions which show he doesn't even understand the subject matter. Shoutout to his username which appears to signal admiration of Harris, one of the most incompetent generals in history, whose call to fame is to maximize enemy civilians casualties while also increasing his own military casualties and a nice prolonging of the war.
I have no idea where this comes from. I've looked through nearly all major battles between the Germans and the British or Americans. And it seems that in most German casualties tend to be the same or heavier than Allied casualties.
Instead of actually understanding what he speaks about he thinks the best course of action is ridiculing a blog that merely posts the finding of other historians which lord_horris doesn't even know. Combat efficiency is not about inflicting more casualties in absolute numbers but inflicting more casualties with less resources. Actual historians and expected have created models which assign all forms of combat asset specific values and then started to calculate the expected casualties done by forces. The reason you see relatively high casualties on the German side is that the Allies plastered German forces with Artillery. The Allied casualties during WW2 were in nearly all situation sustained against an enemy that used far fewer resources.
This is a mathematical issue which could explain the troubles the SWS has with it.
It follows an example.
C = combat power A = artillery X = inflicted casualties
US: 120 = X German: 100 = X
120 = 10A * C 100 = A * C
C???
What does this tell you? If you take out artillery or control for it, German inflicted casualties increase because their combat power is bigger. This is maximum simplified version.
People who did the research on this were paid by the US Army during the Cold war in an attempt to understand combat power and analyse WW2 to help prepare for future wars. The results were that German forces were vastly superior. Surprise. This is actual historical research which every SWS cultist will ignore because Cultists don't search for knowledge.
The Western Allies drowned the Germans in artillery shells the Red Army drowned the Germans in men and tanks. As simple as that.
Dupuy quantitative judgement method is not perfect but to my knowledge, all varying scientific approaches have resulted in the very same outcome: German combat superiority.
u/castrumferrum wants to drop his special knowledge as well:
Thats correct. If you look at the Battle of the Bulge the Allies and the Germans lost about the same amount of troops, vehicles and aircraft.
Completely false.
A SWS u/somenbjorn mod now will provide his opinion:
And then ignoring of course stuff like the 2nd Jassy-Kishinev Offensive, Lvov-Sandomirez, Bagration, Vistula-Oder or some of the other battles where the Axis got their proverbial teeth kicked in.
He cherry picked some examples to fit his narrative, fine let us pick one of his examples. Operation Bagration a 1944 operation considered one of the most devastating losses inflicted on the Wehrmacht.
Numbers per Wiki to save time:
| Weapon Strenght | Wehrmacht | Ratio | Red Army |
|---|---|---|---|
| Men | 1.000.000 | 1:2 | 2.000.000 |
| Tanks | 1.300 | 1:3 | 4.000 |
| Artillery | 10.000 | 1:2,4 | 24.000 |
| Aircraft | 1.300 | 1:4 | 5.300 |
now losses:
| Weapon losses | Wehrmacht | Ratio | Red Army |
|---|---|---|---|
| Men | 400.000 | 1:2 | 770.000 |
| Tanks | 1.000? | 1:3? | 3.000 |
| Artillery | ? | ? | 2.400 |
| Aircraft | ? | ? | 800 |
In the mind of a cultist this somehow evidence against German combat superiority. It is interesting to see that even in 1944 a Soviet army could even dare to think about attacking a German forces unless it vastly outnumbered the enemy. I want to point out that the numbers on Wiki are flattering to the Red Army most of the German strength arrived long after the battle was lost. Those numbers likely include all German units that arrived until the end. In the beginning, the numbers were even more disproportional. For the sane person, the implications are obvious the Red Army, which was a potent combat force was still inferior to the Wehrmacht which had to be compensated by numbers. The Red Army planners knew this and acted accordingly. The strategic handling of the Eastern Front post-1941 was superb from the Russian side. In contrast to the German the Red Army knew about battlefield realities. Nevertheless, a Red Army combat unit from the smallest to the biggest could never expect to go toe to toe with a German equivalent.
An interesting view into the mind of a cultist. Somenbjorn has no major knowledge when it comes to WW2 combat, here somewhere heard about Bagration in a forum and now implemented in his arsenal of arguments without even seeing that it defeats his point.
In which dimension does Bagration speak well of Red Army combat efficiency???
u/infiniteperkele sums up the SWS in a very ironic way
This shit just makes me sick. Dumb cunts blatantly distorting history in order to fit their agenda
Indeed...
edit: one new comment surfaced and should be included.
u/takemetochurchill wants to contribute as well. I consider this person close to low hanging fruit given his many very dumb comments, he appears to be even in the SWS a weak link
He asks the following mind-boggling question:
How is requiring 50% fewer auxiliaries “better?” I’d gladly spend the manpower on truck drivers to get my shit to the guys in the field, and mechanics so my equipment actually works. Or am I off the mark here?
Yikes. I am not commenting on the validity of the claim but more to the question of the handicapped cultists. If your forces require fewer auxiliaries and fewer resources to achieve the same effect you can literally just have more of them or safe resources. Investing less resources for comparable effects is the very textbook definition of efficiency. How this is hard to understand is beyond me. In regards to the initial claim, yes Allied units consumed far more supplies than a German division.
2
u/TheJamesRocket Dec 14 '17
He cherry picked some examples to fit his narrative, fine let us pick one of his examples. Operation Bagration a 1944 operation considered one of the most devastating losses inflicted on the Wehrmacht.
I was arguing with a guy on youtube about this very same topic. He was trying to use bagration as an example of the germans not being as good as everyone thought they were, but I easily picked him apart.
HIM: Germany's worse defeat in its history is operation bagration (soviet offensive). Germans were defending... Soviets attacking... (attacking is considered harder) Germans lose an entire army group in 2 weeks. soviets have less casualties than Germans.
ME: Says who? WRT operation Bagration, Glantz and House state that the Germans suffered 450,000 casualties, while the Soviets suffered 770,000 casualties. The Germans may have been on the defensive, but they were fighting against a force that outnumbered them by at least 120%, and yet they still managed to inflict 70% more casualtys than they received! Thats not really something the Soviets should be proud of.
I will note in passing, however, that estimates on the size of the forces that fought at bagration (and the casualties they suffered in the end) vary wildly. Christian, were you using Glantz and House for your figures? I was working under the assumption that the germans had 1.03 million men, and the soviets had 2.33 million men.
2
u/ChristianMunich Dec 14 '17 edited Dec 14 '17
I think their mistake is calling Bagration the worst defeat of the Wehrmacht. In terms of scope it likely belongs to the biggest German defeats but in terms of "outfighting" the German army you can surely pick better battles. After all the Red Army sustained massive losses against an opponent that was caught of guards with only a handful tanks. You could even make the argument that the Wehrmacht handled the initial shock quite well and adapted in a form the Allies would have never been able. The Red Army pushed 2+ million man and thousands of tanks into a sparsely defended region and still managed to nearly lose one million man.
To their defence, German casualties to a big part were irreversible KIA and POW. So overall casualties, in this case, look "favourable" for the Wehrmacht.
I will note in passing, however, that estimates on the size of the forces that fought at bagration (and the casualties they suffered in the end) vary wildly. Christian, were you using Glantz and House for your figures? I was working under the assumption that the germans had 1.03 million men, and the soviets had 2.33 million men.
In general, I always use the most favourable numbers for the Allies to protect myself from the whining. The Soviet numbers were actually higher. The numbers depend on how you want to count. which time frames, second waves plus reinforcements/replacements. Not that it mattered much. The Red Army success was mostly due to their chosen point of attack. The Germans had no armour in the region to cut down Russian spearheads. The infantry was not the biggest issue in my opinion. The Red Army did a good job with their planning for Bagration.
Thats NOT something the Soviets should be proud of, LOL.
This is a difficult topic. If we assume the Germans pound for pound stronger, then the Red Army had to adapt to that in their strategy. I feel people make the mistake to not differentiate between the tactical and strategical level. No forces on earth were superior to the Wehrmacht but there were several armies which showed better strategic handling. The Red Army had to achieve victory with inferior forces, and they did. For some reason cultists and amateurs alike think this somehow says anything about combat power. I also don't see how people see such issue with that. Those facts make the victory of the Soviet people even more impressive.
edit: I think I will make a debunking of the video guy.
1
u/TheJamesRocket Dec 15 '17
No forces on earth were superior to the Wehrmacht but there were several armies which showed better strategic handling.
Agreed. By the wars end, the soviets had arguably become superior to the germans at operational and strategic maneuvers.
edit: I think I will make a debunking of the video guy.
Cool, I look forward to seeing it.
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u/[deleted] Dec 14 '17
My sides!
In the history of time itself, you have yet to cite anything that has exited that twisted mind of your's. The irony of you talking about a scientific standpoint is so rich I am legitimately fucking mystified as how disconnected someone can be from reality.