Forward into Battle by Paddy Griffin

Author:Paddy Griffin [Griffin, Paddy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307779502
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-03-30T04:00:00+00:00

In many of the Second World War battles the line became immobile for weeks and even months on end. In the Normandy fighting there was a fairly static front for almost two months; at Monte Cassino it lasted for six months; while at the siege of Leningrad it went on for two and a half years. In this war, as in previous conflicts, there were important ‘static’ phases as much as there were ‘mobile’ ones.23

In the First World War the fronts had been immobilised by machine-guns mixed in with the infantry positions. In the Second World War a sprinkling of anti-tank guns was added to the mixture to make it secure from armoured attacks as well as from infantry. The Germans were especially good at this, and led the way in making a flexible combination of all arms. Thus for them a ‘tank battle’ did not mean simply a duel between tanks meeting head-on, as it did for the British and other armies. Instead, it was to be a blend of tank manoeuvres, anti-tank gun fire and action by the other arms as well. It was to include both mobile and static elements as part of the whole. The Germans were particularly adept, for example, at using their tanks as bait to lure pursuing armour onto a screen of waiting anti-tank guns.

In the Western Desert the British took a long time to understand what was happening in actions of this type, since they had at first no such close relationship between their own tanks and guns. Far too often the British would push forward their armour in unsupported masses against anti-tank ambushes. Predictably, they would then find that the limited visibility from each vehicle and the difficulty of firing on the move made it almost impossible to locate and destroy the German guns. The attacker’s losses tended to be high in these battles and sometimes had the effect of convincing British commanders that they were facing especially powerful enemy tanks, and not anti-tank guns at all.24

The Germans, by contrast, had quickly realised that a really heavy anti-tank weapon was essential. The redoubtable 8.8cm Flak gun turned out to be well suited to work of this kind, and was for some time much more powerful than anything the British were using in this role. Its long range meant that each piece could cover a wide area of front with its fire, thus allowing the principle of dispersion to be maintained without sacrificing mutual support. The open desert terrain lent itself to a defence by small, thinly-spread but powerful outposts built around this weapon.

We can here compare Rommel’s ideas of 1941 with his earlier views from 1937. Essentially the general pattern is the same in each case, although the weaponry had certainly improved over the four years between the two. By 1941 he envisaged an increased dispersion of the outposts, an even greater stress on anti-tank defences, and a substitution of mechanised forces for infantry storm troop counter-attack elements:

… The outpost positions,

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