The panzer grenadier divisions received little more during
1942 than their new titles. The infantry battalions had two 81mm mortars per Rifle
Company, a heavy company with three 75mm antitank guns, and another
with—eventually—four 120mm mortars. Copied from a particularly effective Soviet
weapon, these were intended to provide organic close-support for panzer
grenadier battalions that had done far more fighting in isolation than the
original doctrine for motorized infantry had expected. The reconnaissance
battalion was upgraded to panzer division standards, though with lower priority
for the light half-tracks. The antitank battalion usually had two self-propelled
batteries. All of the remaining artillery and heavy weapons were moved by
truck, just as on September 1, 1939. Their independent offensive power, even
with the tank battalion authorized the previous year, was not much greater—a
fact highlighted by the introduction of the MG 42.
German rifle squads were, unlike their US counterparts,
built around a light machine gun. The MG 42 was the best of its kind in World
War II and set design standards for another half century. The MG 42 resembled
in appearance its predecessor, the MG 34: shoulder-stocked, bipod-mounted, and
belt-fed in its usual configuration. What distinguished it was a uniquely high
cyclic rate of fire—up to 1,500 rounds a minute. Even with a quick-change
barrel (five or six seconds was the usual time frame), that was hardly normal
usage. But in emergencies the “Hitler saw,” as the gun was known, could lay
down a near-impenetrable cone of fire.
Standard issue around the turn of the year was one MG 42 per
squad; enterprising panzer grenadiers doubled it. The extra weight was not
important in a truck or half-track, which could also readily carry enough spare
barrels and extra ammunition belts to keep the guns in action. On every front
after 1942 the characteristic tearing-silk brrrrip of an MG 42 drove the
boldest infantryman down until he could make sure of the gun’s position, and
the likely locations of any other MG 42s waiting for a would-be hero. Panzer
grenadiers, finding more and more of their employment on the defensive,
increasingly depended on their MG 42s as they waited for the panzer
counterattack that would restore the situation—if it materialized.
The status quo ante Stalingrad was not completely restored.
Tenth Panzer Division was never reformed, while 15th Panzer was converted to
panzer grenadiers. Grossdeutschland, though retaining the panzer grenadier
title, was upgraded to de facto panzer status with two tank battalions and a
half-track battalion in each panzer grenadier regiment. Sixtieth Motorized
emerged from the post-Stalingrad reconstruction of 6th Army as the
Feldherrnhalle Panzergrenadier Division, to commemorate Hitler’s first strike
for power in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch.
The 14th and 36th Motorized, on the other hand, became
standard infantry divisions—reflecting a growing shortage of vehicles,
equipment, and cadres that stabilized the ceiling of the army’s effective
panzer forces for the rest of the war. The infusion of strength that carried
the panzers through 1945 and sustained them as the army’s backbone came from an
external source: one the soldiers had long viewed askance but would come to
welcome—at a price.
Replacing the panzers’ material losses was not a simple
one-for-one process. The workhorse Panzer III was increasingly outclassed by
its Soviet opponents—less from any qualitative improvement than because the
Russians were beginning to learn how best to take tactical advantage in
particular of the T-34’s powerful gun and high maneuverability. The Panzer
III’s chassis was too light, its turret ring too small, to be a useful
transition to the next panzer generation. They were issued as stopgaps, and by
mid-1943 appeared in no more than company strength.
The Panzer IV, in contrast, had a future. Improved muzzle
braking enabled it to carry the 43-caliber Tank Gun M 40, and a more powerful
48-caliber version introduced in late 1942. More than 1,700 of these F and G
models were produced or upgraded before they gave way in March 1943 to the
definitive late-war Panzer IVH. Its armor was significantly increased: 80mm on
the front and 50mm on the turret, 30mm on the sides and 20mm in the rear—the
latter reflecting Red Army infantrymen and antitank crews’ willingness to come
to close quarters for a kill. The additional protection increased weight to 25
tons and reduced speed to 21 miles per hour, but the Model H could still move
and maneuver well enough. Its 75mm, 48-caliber gun was roughly equivalent to
the T-34’s main armament, and effective against almost anything it could reach.
The Panzer IVH integrated a useful set of upgrades into a
state-of-the-art light medium tank, intended to equip one battalion in each
panzer division. More than 3,000 would be built in 1943, and more than 3,100 in
the war’s final 18 months. They were nevertheless regarded as stopgaps, holding
the line for a new generation of exponentially more powerful armored fighting
vehicles.
Meanwhile, tank production was in the doldrums. The Panzer
III was so clearly obsolete as a battle tank that its assembly lines had been
converted to providing chassis for assault guns. By October 1942, production of
the Panzer IV was down to 100 a month. The General Staff recommended a leap in
the dark: canceling Panzer IVs and concentrating exclusively on Panthers and
Tigers. Previous outsiders like Porsche, and a new generation of subcontractors
turning out assault guns, were jostling and challenging established firms. But
the German automotive industry, managers and engineers alike, had from its
inception been labor-intensive and conservative in its approaches to
production. As late as 1925 the US Ford Motor Company needed the equivalent of
five and three-quarters days’ labor by a single worker to produce a car.
Daimler needed 1,750 worker days to construct one of its top-line models. When
it came to design, focus was on the top end of the market and emphasis was on
customizing as far as possible by multiplying variants. It was a far cry from
Henry Ford’s philosophy that customers could have any color they wanted as long
as it was black.
For their part, the civilian tank designers were
disproportionately intrigued by the technical challenges Panthers and Tigers
offered. They took apparent delight in solving engineering problems in ways
that in turn stretched unit mechanics to limits often developed originally in
village blacksmith shops.
One might suggest that by 1942 a negative synergy was
developing between an armored force and an automobile industry, each in its own
way dedicated to an elite ethos and incorporating an elite self image. The
designers were correspondingly susceptible to the dabblings of Adolf Hitler.
Previously, his direct involvement in the issue had been limited, his demands
negotiable, his recommendations and suggestions reasonable. The Hornet, for
example, combined the Hummel’s armored open-topped superstructure with the 88mm
L/71 gun Hitler had wanted for the Tiger. The vehicle’s bulky chassis made it
too much of a target to render feasible stalking tanks in the fashion of the
Marder and the assault guns. But its long-range, high-velocity gun was welcome
to the half dozen independent heavy antitank battalions that absorbed most of
the 500 Hornets first introduced in 1943.
The Ferdinand, later called the Elephant, was a
waste-not/want-not response to the Porsche drives and hulls prepared in
anticipation of the Tiger contract that went to Henschel. Hitler saw them as
ideal mounts for a heavily armored tank destroyer mounting the same 88mm gun as
the Hornet. Ninety were rushed into production in spring 1943 and organized
into an independent panzer regiment. Without rotating turrets, at best they
were Tigers manqué, with all the teething troubles and maintenance problems
accompanying the type and no significant advantages. At 65 tons, any
differences in height were immaterial. And the omission of close-defense machine
guns as unnecessary would too often prove fatal for vehicles whose sheer size
made them targets for every antitank weapon in the Red Army’s substantial
inventory when they were sent into action at Kursk.
The Hornet and the Elephant were mere preliminaries. Since
adolescence the Führer had liked his architecture grandiose, his music molto
pomposo, and his cars high-powered. In June 1942, he authorized Ferdinand
Porsche to develop a super-heavy tank: the Maus (“Mouse”—and yes, the name was
ironic). The vehicle carried almost ten inches of frontal armor, mounted a
six-inch gun whose rounds weighed more than 150 pounds each, and weighed 188
tons. Its road speed was given as 12.5 miles per hour—presumably downhill with
a tail wind. It took more than a year to complete two prototypes. To apply a
famous line from the classic board game PanzerBlitz, “The only natural enemies
of the Maus were small mammals that ate the eggs.”
The complete worthlessness of the Maus as a fighting vehicle
in the context of World War II needs no elaboration. Neither does the total
waste of material resources and engineering skill devoted to the project. The
Maus was nevertheless a signifier for Germany’s panzer force during the rest of
the war. Apart from its direct support by Hitler, the Maus opened the door to a
comprehensive emphasis on technical virtuosity for its own sake, in
near-abstraction from field requirements. The resulting increases in size at
the expense of mobility and reliability were secondary consequences, reflecting
the contemporary state of automotive, armor, and gun design. After 1943, German
technicians turned from engineering to alchemy, searching for a philosopher’s
stone that would bring a technical solution to the armored force’s operational
problems. Hubris, idealism—or another example of the mixture of both that
characterized so many aspects of the Third Reich’s final years?
The Maus thread, however, takes the story a few months ahead
of itself. Its antecedent combination of institutional infighting, production
imbroglios, and declining combat power led an increasing number of Hitler’s
military entourage to urge the appointment of a plenipotentiary
troubleshooter—specifically Heinz Guderian. Guderian describes meeting
privately on February 20, 1943, with a chastened Führer who regretted their
“numerous misunderstandings.” Guderian set his terms. Hitler temporized. He was
given the appointment of Inspector-General of Panzer Troops, reporting directly
to Hitler; with inspection rights over armored units in the Luftwaffe and the
Waffen SS, and control of organization, doctrine, training, and replacement.
That was a lot of power in the hands of one officer.
There was also a back story. Guderian had spent most of 1942
restoring his stress-shaken health, which centered on heart problems, and
looking for an estate suitable to his status, to be purchased with the cash
grant of a million and a quarter marks Hitler awarded him in the spring of
1942. Norman Goda establishes in scathing detail that once Guderian became a
landed gentleman on an estate stolen from its Polish owners, his reservations
about Hitler as supreme warlord significantly diminished. Cash payments, often
many times a salary and pension, were made to a broad spectrum of officers and
civilians in the Third Reich—birthdays were a typical justification. Since
August 1940, Guderian had been receiving, tax-free, 2,000 Reichsmarks a
month—as much as his regular salary. Similar lavish gifts were so widely made
to senior officers that Gerhard Weinberg cites simple bribery as a possible
factor in sustaining the army’s cohesion in the war’s final stages.
The image of an evil regime’s uniformed servants proclaiming
their “soldierly honor” while simultaneously being bought and paid for is so
compelling that attempting its nuancing invites charges of revisionism.
Nevertheless there were contexts. A kept woman is not compensated in the same
fashion as a streetwalker. Dotation, douceur, “golden parachute,” hush money,
conscience money, or bribe—direct financial rec ognitions of services rendered
the Reich were too common to be exactly a state secret. Guderian and his
military colleagues were more than sufficiently egoistic to rationalize the
cash as earned income, as recognition of achievement and sacrifice in the way
that milk and apples are necessary to the health of the pigs in George Orwell’s
Animal Farm.
The appointment Hitler signed on February 28, 1943,
ostensibly gave Guderian what he requested. But lest any doubt might remain as
to who was in charge, only the heavy assault guns, still in development stages,
came under Guderian’s command. The rest, whose importance was increasing by the
week, remained with the artillery. It was a relatively small thing. But
Guderian’s complaint that “somebody” played a “trick” on him belies his own
shrewd intelligence and low cunning. The desirability of trust between the head
of state and the general in such a central position was overshadowed in
Hitler’s mind by Lenin’s question: “Kto, kogo?” (Who, whom?): the question of
who was to be master. Guderian had spent a year in the wilderness. Now he was
back on top.
Omitting the assault guns was a reminder that what had been given
could be withdrawn at a chieftain’s whim. It might well make even a principled
man think twice before deciding and thrice before speaking. And Hitler’s army
was increasingly commanded by pragmatists.
From the Führer’s perspective, Guderian’s appointment was
one of the heaviest blows he had struck against the High Command. The ground
forces’ key element, the panzers, were now under his personal authority—at one
remove, to be sure, but Guderian was the kind of person whose ego and energy
would focus him on the job at hand, and whose temperament was certain to lead
to the same kinds of personal and jurisdictional clashes that had characterized
his early career. Hitler would have all the opportunities he needed either to
muddy the waters or to resolve controversies, as circumstances indicated.
No comments:
Post a Comment