Patterns of War—World War II

By Larry H. Addington

A brief survey of the evolution of warfare during World War II, by the author of America’s War in Vietnam.

Drawn from the second edition of Larry H. Addington’s The Patterns of War Since the Eighteenth Century, this e-book short discusses the evolution of warfare during World War II. Addington highlights developments in strategies and tactics and logistics and weaponry, providing detailed analyses of important battles and campaigns. It is an excellent introduction for both students and the general reader.

Praise for The Patterns of War Since the Eighteenth Century

“There is nothing else in print that tells so much so concisely about how war has been conducted since the days of Gen. George Washington.” —Russell F. Weigley

“A superior synthesis. Well written, nicely organized, remarkably comprehensive, and laced with facts.” —Military Affairs

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Dec 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9780253010032

Book preview

I. Hitler’s War, 1939–41

A. The German Armed Forces to the Eve of War. From the time Adolf Hitler took power in 1933, he was determined to carry out a German expansion over central and eastern Europe (including western Russia) that would establish the dominion of the Herrenvolk (master race), as Hitler conceived people of Germanic origin to be. The Greater Reich of which he dreamed would be independent of overseas resources and based on the enslavement of the Slavic peoples, the union of all ethnic Germans, and the annihilation of inferior races, especially the Jews. With the resources and Lebensraum (living space) afforded by a centralized eastern European empire, Hitler believed that his Greater Reich could last a thousand years. He recognized, of course, that the realization of his dream of continental expansion would require the ruthless use of force and an especially powerful army designed for offensive operations.

Hitler’s dream also required armed forces responsible to his will. Because they were opposed to Hitler’s policies, Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg, the Minister of War, and General Werner von Fritsch, Commander-in-Chief of the Army, were dismissed in 1938. At that time, Hitler replaced the Ministry of War with the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW or High Command of the Armed Forces), with himself as Oberbefehlshaber (Commander-in-Chief), and made the high commands of the Army (OKH), the Navy (OKM), and the Air Force (OKL) subordinate to the OKW. General Wilhelm Keitel was appointed as Hitler’s deputy in the OKW. Hitler appointed General Walther von Brauchitsch as the new Commander-in-Chief of the Army, a talented soldier but one unlikely to stand up to Hitler in a difference of opinion. In August 1938, General Franz Halder succeeded General Ludwig Beck, another opponent of Hitler, as Chief of the OKH General Staff. At least covertly, Halder was more willing than Brauchitsch to oppose Hitler, and he involved himself in the so-called Green Plot to remove the Führer from power during the height of the Sudetenland Crisis in 1938. But both Halder’s opposition and the plot were quickly abandoned after Hitler’s triumph at the Munich Conference. Willingly or unwillingly, most German soldiers went along with Hitler’s leadership until nearly the end of the war.

Between 1933 and March 1935, the German army expanded by taking volunteers, and by the latter date it had reached a strength of 500,000 men and twenty-one divisions. Then, beginning with Hitler’s proclamation of compulsory military service in March 1935, the German army returned to its traditional form as a Nation-in-Arms. With all able-bodied males of military age being made liable to service in both the active army and its reserve, the army’s further expansion was very rapid. On the eve of war in September 1939, the army had reached a mobilizable strength of 2 million men, and could deploy 58 active divisions and 51 reserve divisions. But the speed of German military expansion under Hitler had been achieved at a price. All of the army’s reserve divisions were traditional infantry with little or no motorization, and only the men in eighteen of those divisions had passed through the required two years’ active training in the army. The men in the rest of the reserve divisions had been trained on weekends and in summer camps, and, until shortly before the war, were classified as Landwehr (militia). Of the 58 divisions in the active army, all were well trained but only 16 were fully motorized (6 panzer, 4 light divisions, and 6 motorized infantry divisions), the rest being traditional infantry divisions. Thus, the panzer and other all-motorized divisions composed a relatively small corps d’élite of an army that otherwise relied for transportation on the railroad, what motorization was left over from the all-motorized divisions, horse-drawn vehicles, and its legs.

Since so much of the German army of 1939 was composed of unmotorized or semimotorized divisions, its successful invasion of enemy territory, like that of the German army of 1914, was contingent on capturing enemy rail facilities and resources as it advanced, and defeating the enemy decisively not far from its bases of supply. What differentiated the army of 1939 from that of 1914 was that the later model had a powerful armored-motorized spearhead with a range of about 250 miles, and a strong supporting tactical air force. With those advantages, the army of 1939 proved capable of reviving the dormant Kesselschlacht doctrine of the nineteenth century, and, in the guise of the Blitzkrieg (Lightning War), and within certain limits, it applied it successfully in the early stages of the Second World War.

Heinrich Himmler’s Schutz Staffel (SS), the Defense Corps of the Nazi Party, was not oriented to a combat role in September 1939, and in the Polish campaign of that month furnished a single motorized regiment. The Waffen SS (Combat SS) was not founded until 1940, and, during the May–June campaign of that year against France and the Low Countries, it provided the army with only three all-motorized infantry divisions. The Waffen SS continued to expand, however, and in 1944 it reached a strength of 500,000 troops. Throughout its career it furnished 38 divisions for ground operations, some of the divisions armored. Though the Waffen SS gave Hitler well-equipped and fanatically loyal troops, they made up only a relatively small part of the German forces upon which Hitler relied in his effort to dominate Europe. By way of comparison, the German army at its peak strength in World War II had 7 million troops and over 300 divisions. The value of the Waffen SS to Hitler’s aims notwithstanding, final German victory hinged primarily on the performance of the German army and its supporting air force.

B. The War from Poland to the Channel, September 1939–June 1940. The bloodless German conquests of Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938–39 gave the OKH (Army High Command) an opportunity to detect weaknesses and to correct deficiencies in the German army. By September 1939 the OKH had confidence in its active divisions and in the best of its reserve divisions, but it had doubts about the readiness of the rest. When it became clear in the summer of 1939 that a two-front war with the Anglo-French powers and Poland was on the horizon, Brauchitsch and Halder decided to deal with this problem by adopting a plan of mobilization that took an unusual form. The Wellen (waves) system called for two separate but simultaneous mobilizations, a faster one for the active divisions and the best of the reserve divisions, and a slower one for the rest, and with a different mission for each wave. The divisions intended for the attack on Poland would be ready for action and concentrated on the Polish frontiers at the end of four days. The rest of the reserve divisions would be mobilized by the end of fourteen days, and, stiffened by twelve active infantry divisions, mostly deployed in the defenses of the Siegfried Line facing the French frontier. If both the Polish and Anglo-French mobilizations took the usual two weeks to complete, the OKH hoped that Poland could be attacked and struck down before it was fully ready to defend itself and before the Anglo-French armies were ready to attack Germany’s western frontiers. Once Poland was conquered, it was possible that London and Paris would accept the fait accompli and make peace with Germany. The only remaining danger would be intervention on behalf of Poland by Soviet Russia.

The danger of Soviet intervention to defend Poland was removed by the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact on August 23, 1939, a measure by which Hitler not only removed a potential enemy, but gained a temporary ally. When Hitler ordered general mobilization on August 26, the OKH put the Wellen system into effect, and the subsequent mobilizations of the best divisions in the army, both active and reserve, went forward smoothly and swiftly. By the night of August 31, a total of 1,512,000 German troops and 62 divisions had concentrated on the Polish frontiers. In contrast, Poland, which did not begin mobilization until August 29, had only about two-thirds of its 600,000 active and reserve troops and thirty-five divisions in position. The Anglo-French mobilizations did not get underway until after the German attack on Poland had commenced, and, as the OKH had anticipated, they were not completed until the campaign in Poland was nearly over.