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Re: The Myth of the Kindly General Lee
It's not really hard to see. Despite facing a far inferior force to what the Soviets faced on the Eastern Front (OB West was composed largely of reserve and second rate Wehrmacht forces, and most of the Waffen SS forces were understrength), the Western Allies frequently found themselves bogged down by ad hoc German formations composed of rag tag collection of German forces. In some cases entire American divisions were held but by mere handfuls of German troops.
After Third Army's long advance (made possible by the German decision to abandon France and withdraw OB West to the Sigfreid Line), the Western Allies spent tge next six months barely making any headway. In some cases in Holland and Belgium it took Allied forces several days just to advance three miles.
American division and regimental commanders especially complained of the tendency for American troops to dig in and call in fire support instead of closing in and destroying the enemy, even when it was just two or three German soldiers. Repeatedly American and British forces proved very slow to seize the initiative.
Amd above all, American forces in particular were incredibly reliant on their overwhelming fire support and plentiful armor to defeat German forces. A perfect example of this is the Metz, where Third Army, lacking the firepower deemed necessary, struggled to seize control of the high ground from the Germans. It wasn't any help that Patton ordered futile frontal assaults, but it goes to show how reliant American forces were on superior firepower, something they were only allowed thanks to their massive war economy.
You just don't see the vast encirlements and major sweeping strategic offensives in the West that by comparison were commonplace on the Eastern Front. The Ruhr and the Falaise Pocket were the only major ones, and even in Falaise significant numbers of German troops managed yo escape to form the skeletons of later kampfegrouppes.
Part of this is no ones fault, most W. Allied commanders didn't have the experience of manuerving large formations of hundreds of thousands of men and material. But a lot of it came down to fundamental flaws in training and doctrine.
It's not really hard to see. Despite facing a far inferior force to what the Soviets faced on the Eastern Front (OB West was composed largely of reserve and second rate Wehrmacht forces, and most of the Waffen SS forces were understrength), the Western Allies frequently found themselves bogged down by ad hoc German formations composed of rag tag collection of German forces. In some cases entire American divisions were held but by mere handfuls of German troops.
After Third Army's long advance (made possible by the German decision to abandon France and withdraw OB West to the Sigfreid Line), the Western Allies spent tge next six months barely making any headway. In some cases in Holland and Belgium it took Allied forces several days just to advance three miles.
American division and regimental commanders especially complained of the tendency for American troops to dig in and call in fire support instead of closing in and destroying the enemy, even when it was just two or three German soldiers. Repeatedly American and British forces proved very slow to seize the initiative.
Amd above all, American forces in particular were incredibly reliant on their overwhelming fire support and plentiful armor to defeat German forces. A perfect example of this is the Metz, where Third Army, lacking the firepower deemed necessary, struggled to seize control of the high ground from the Germans. It wasn't any help that Patton ordered futile frontal assaults, but it goes to show how reliant American forces were on superior firepower, something they were only allowed thanks to their massive war economy.
You just don't see the vast encirlements and major sweeping strategic offensives in the West that by comparison were commonplace on the Eastern Front. The Ruhr and the Falaise Pocket were the only major ones, and even in Falaise significant numbers of German troops managed yo escape to form the skeletons of later kampfegrouppes.
Part of this is no ones fault, most W. Allied commanders didn't have the experience of manuerving large formations of hundreds of thousands of men and material. But a lot of it came down to fundamental flaws in training and doctrine.
