Waffen ss Panzergrenadier and Panzers vs Wermarcht

German SS and Waffen-SS 1923-1945.
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Post by Reb »

Corderex

Perhaps the reason Wittman is so well known is Kursk and Villers Bocage? Both high profile battles well known in the west.

The Russians, unlike the Brits and Americans, never made a big deal about their enemies, either before or after the war. Can you imagine Stalin praising a German general like Churchill did Rommel? 8)

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Post by Jan-Hendrik »

Wittmann ? Never heard of .... :D

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Waffen ss Panzergrenadier and Panzers vs Wermarcht

Post by Rosselsprung »

From 28.June 1942 to 11.March 1943 the division claimed 1000 enemy tanks while losing 50 total writeoffs.
I'm not familiar with the operations of the 11th Panzer Div. during the summer of 1942, but I'm sure it was at Kharkov during the opening months of 1943, supposedly claiming many enemy tanks there. Also, it must have been quite an amazing division if only 50 tanks out of it's entire compliment were lost over a period of 9 months. What were the division's combat losses over that period?
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Post by liuanru »

hmm. about that panzer ace list. the Waffen SS only had 3 of the tiger battalions and 7 panzer divisions.
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Post by Christoph Awender »

liuanru wrote:hmm. about that panzer ace list. the Waffen SS only had 3 of the tiger battalions and 7 panzer divisions.
And the point of your post is???? If you say the W-SS were the best just one unit would be enough to lead the score. The list has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that there were more Heer formations than W-SS.

\Christoph
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Post by Epaminondas »

Interestingly the tiger tank analysis done by Wilbeck [Sledgehammers, and the thesis] does support that the Waffen SS panzer units were slightly better then the Heer units.

http://cgsc.cdm.oclc.org/coll2/image/305.pdf

Looking at the kill/loss ratios; all the SS units are in the top tier of the tiger units. [p.133 actual on the pdf] 502 and 503 (SS) are in the top tier, and 501 is on the high end of average.

you would need to a meta analysis of all the panzer units, for each type of tank to really come up with a combat effectiveness model.

Interesting that GD; which has a great reputation, is on the lower end.

===

Probably has more to do with access to replacement men and material... the waffen SS unit had prioty over the heer units. you would expect that to have a significant effect on combat effectiveness over the course of the war.

Somewhere there is an analysis of combat soliders in WWII; the best of the best were Germans, but the quality was highly variable. Some Russian and Western units were better then the worst German; but an "average" german unit was superior to anyone else... and the elite german unit were fantastic.
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Post by liuanru »

Dupuy did this analysis

Germans VS Allies 26% superiority

German VS Soviets 58%

average over the course of the war.

I thought it would be a bit higher, though
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Post by Reb »

Re German superiority

To get a very balanced view of the American forces I can highly recommend Col. Mansoor's "The GI Offensive in Europe." He deals quite even handedly with these issues I thought.

He reckons American units in '45 are comparable to German units in '40.
I tend to agree - partly for reasons other than his.

He does some excellent analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the US forces and addresses our horrendous (but in his view, ultimately effective) system of replacements.

As always - I suggest that superiority and elite status are a factor of time and situation and not a given.

Caveat:
One mistake I think he made was his statement that it was not fair to compare Pz Grenadier units to American Infantry - I'd say it was quite fair since our infantry divs were so highly mechanized and typically fought with two or more armour battalions under command.

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Post by Epaminondas »

Nod- most american infantry divisions actually had MORE armor then most German Panzer divisions... :shock:
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Post by liuanru »

yeah, thats true. and the germans hardly got reinforced until their division was nothing but a weak regiment or even a battlion.
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Post by corderex »

Oops, Wittman...Michael Wittman. Yes, I saw it...my mistake twice over

Hey, but give me a break, Jan! There's a guy around here who insists on renaming Barbarrosa as operation Barboosa... that's disconcerting! :D

As the saying goes, "to err is human...
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Post by Christoph Awender »

Epaminondas wrote:Interestingly the tiger tank analysis done by Wilbeck [Sledgehammers, and the thesis] does support that the Waffen SS panzer units were slightly better then the Heer units.

http://cgsc.cdm.oclc.org/coll2/image/305.pdf

Looking at the kill/loss ratios; all the SS units are in the top tier of the tiger units. [p.133 actual on the pdf] 502 and 503 (SS) are in the top tier, and 501 is on the high end of average.

you would need to a meta analysis of all the panzer units, for each type of tank to really come up with a combat effectiveness model.

Interesting that GD; which has a great reputation, is on the lower end.

===

Probably has more to do with access to replacement men and material... the waffen SS unit had prioty over the heer units. you would expect that to have a significant effect on combat effectiveness over the course of the war.

Somewhere there is an analysis of combat soliders in WWII; the best of the best were Germans, but the quality was highly variable. Some Russian and Western units were better then the worst German; but an "average" german unit was superior to anyone else... and the elite german unit were fantastic.
Here we go again with the good old myths. :-)
As I said above just the numbers don´t show anything than just that this and that unit claimed this and that number of kills.
Beside that it is historically pretty irrelevant which branch was "better" it would be necessary to study each unit into the very detail. In which situations did they act (supply, terrain, enemy, weather etc..etc...).
A unit in Italy will have a lower kill ratio than a unit mainly fighting on the russian front just because of the differences in terrain, enemy etc...
The units which were in Italy had a high loss rate due to breakdowns because of the terrain not fitable for tank actions etc...
There were so many factors that influence the performance of a unit so that it is impossible to take all into consideration.

Epaminondas could you give me facts with sources that gives evidence that the W-SS was better supplied and how exactly this should have worked considering that it was supplied through Heer channels???
During my researches in the last 10 years I was not able to find any evidence that this was the case and nobody who claimed it was able to provide proofable facts.

\Christoph
Last edited by Christoph Awender on Fri Jul 15, 2005 2:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Jan-Hendrik »

According to the history of the "Wiking" and Tiekes hsitory of the III.SS.PzKps I found no evidence that the W-SS units were prefered at supply . They had to fight about each item as every Heeres-Unit had to do ..

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Post by Reb »

Jan-Hendrik, Christoph

Quite right - if the W-SS was better supplied how do we explain Normandy where no SS Div had more than one armoured Pz Gren Bn yet Pz Lehr had four and 2nd and 21st pz each had two?

Also - 10 SS Pz lacked a pz bn and both it and 9th SS made up their shortage of Pz IV with Stug III.

Perhaps this myth started due to the fact that the original SS units were essential infantry and rapidly upgraded to motorised, then pz gren and then panzer - that I guess could be construed as them being progressively better equipped?

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Post by Christoph Awender »

Reb wrote:Jan-Hendrik, Christoph

Quite right - if the W-SS was better supplied how do we explain Normandy where no SS Div had more than one armoured Pz Gren Bn yet Pz Lehr had four and 2nd and 21st pz each had two?

Also - 10 SS Pz lacked a pz bn and both it and 9th SS made up their shortage of Pz IV with Stug III.

Perhaps this myth started due to the fact that the original SS units were essential infantry and rapidly upgraded to motorised, then pz gren and then panzer - that I guess could be construed as them being progressively better equipped?

cheers
Reb
Well we have to see what exactly we are speaking about. Organisation, Supply (ammo, goods etc..), replacement (men, vehicles, tanks) or weapon systems (newest types of tanks first etc..).

Several W-SS units had without a doubt stronger organisation due to the fact that they didn´want to rely solely on the Heerestruppen for support and additional firepower.
It was not possible to set up a better supply for W-SS units because they were supplied through the Heer system and especially in russia several other factros than branch were more important regarding the supply situation.
Replacements were sent to units that were available and had a need for replacement. Beside the daily replacement stream I never found occasions where a W-SS division was favoured above a Heer division for no reason.
The claim that the W-SS received best equipment first was already debunked in several other discussions before.
I again ask people which claim all these things to bring evidence that the W-SS was better supplied etc... I cannot bring facts for something that was not existing otherwise I would.

\Christoph
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