Myths?

[Sebastian Pye]

Ok I just want to clarify 2 things that seem to have almost become truisms that I am very sceptical about.

1.The germans afraid of hand to hand combat and the russians were better at it

2.Russians were better at urban combat. They attacked buildings in small shock groups and received better results with fewer casualties. Whereas the germans attacked the same building over and over again with no finesse and with no regard to casualties.

I would love to hear your opinions about this

[Baltasar]

1. Can't imagine why they should be more afraid of it than any other soldier.

2. It's unlikely that years of combat dont't change the tactics a army uses. Additionaly I recall the "Reds" to be referred as the "mass"army, attacking over and over again, regardless to the casualties.

[sid guttridge]

Hi Sebastian,

I have no definitive answer, just an opinion.

I think urban fighting is a great equaliser. Armies were and still are primarily trained for operations in open country. The Germans were enormously more accomplished than the Russians in the open field in 1941-42 and retained a diminishing advantage at mobile operations to near the very end.

However, the Germans had problems in an urban environment from the first month of the war. For example, all direct German attacks on Warsaw were driven off in the second half of September 1939.

In an urban environment tactics and weaponry developed for the open field lose their potency. With combat at close ranges marksmanship, fitness and fieldcraft are not so vital. Nor can air and artillery support be brought to bear on the front line when both sides are only yards apart. Superiority in radio communications becomes less important when manoevrability is restricted. Tanks are virtually blind and particularly vulnerable to infantry anti-tank weapons. Mechanisation is virtually irrelevant.

As a result, although the Germans probably remained better soldiers on a man-for-man basis, the enormous advantages they enjoyed in field operations were reduced nearer to equality in urban operations and their casualties rose dramatically for ever diminishing returns.

If an illiterate Russian peasant conscript with two months service and a highly qualified and experienced German regular officer were suddenly to find themselves together in a ruined room in Stalingrad armed only with sub machine guns I would not bet too heavily on the German being the survivor. However, in the open field where tactics, training, marksmanship, mechanisation, support and communications could tell, I would not give the raw Russian much chance.

There is also an important psychological point. If they were reduced to hand-to-hand fighting, then German tactics based on superior training, fire and movement had presumably failed, because close combat reduced their advantages enormously. By contrast, if the Russians could get through the German artillery and machine gun fire their survival chances were much improved and their numbers could tell in the close quaters combat. I doubt the Russians actually liked close combat, but I suspect the Germans dreaded it more.

Cheers,

Sid.

[Commissar D, the Evil]

Hi Guys, as for this statement:

2.Russians were better at urban combat. They attacked buildings in small shock groups and received better results with fewer casualties. Whereas the germans attacked the same building over and over again with no finesse and with no regard to casualties.

I think this really became an issue during the Stalingrad fighting, where the Russians were forced to refine their methods due both to good generalship and an awareness of their lack of resources. By contrast, everything I've read seems to indicate that the German Army--not really trained for streetfighting--used unimaginative tactics at Stalingrad.

But I don't believe this statement always held true in the fighting after Stalingrad though. The German recapture of Kharkov in early 1943 would seem to argue against the truth of this statement.

As for the other remark about hand to hand fighting, I would think that anyone who offered this generality as an absolute truth probably has no understanding of war on the Ostfront or military history itself. Cheers, D

[Qvist]

Herr Kommisar, you speak words of wisdom.

cheers

[Deutscher]

The germans afraid of hand to hand combat and the russians were better at it

Say this to my grandpa he has a "Nahkampfspange"!! Argh