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Michael Lofgren's avatar

Tooze properly corrects Hastings, who went a bit over the top in Overlord; and van Crevald, who showed characteristic Israeli contempt of everything American (because they know they are dependent on the US and it irks them).

Tooze very properly alludes to the moral deprecation of Western Allied artillery and air superiority vis-a-vis infantry and tank strength, but does not fully draw the conclusion: why are infantry and tank combat so valorized, while artillery and air are considered "not fair?" (It is interesting that the vital Stuka support for the Wehrmacht's river crossings in 1940 aren't subject to Western authors' moral distaste in the same way as the "cab ranks" of Typhoons and P-47s at Falaise).

One error is this: "In May 1944 the American army disposed of only 89 combat divisions in all theaters, of which only 60 were available for deployment in Europe. Of these 16 were armored. This compared to c. 100 divisions in the Japanese army, c. 240 in the Wehrmacht and over 300 in the Red Army. Conscious of their modest manpower reserves and the need to limit casualties, the Allied armies sought to compensate with material and machinery."

Tooze omits to say that American divisions were generally fully manned and equipped. Wehrmacht divisions by 1944 were generally "hollow," resulting from Hitler's fixation with the number of divisions, and the fact that "burned out" divisions were left in the field even as new divisions, such as the Volksgrenedier divisions, were created. As for the Red Army, its standard divisional TO&E was considerably smaller than in the West, and, even more, they tended to be hollowed out from extended combat.

So neither the Wehrmacht nor the Red Army were as numerous as their total number of divisions would suggest.

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Not Myself's avatar

What a great, great piece! And how cool is it that todays best D Day Day article is from Chartbook? As the saying goes, "The God of war doesn't love cleverness, he loves overwhelming firepower"

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