Part 1

Although the concept that the Germans lost because they were overwhelmed by Anglo-American manpower and equipment is false, it is true that by 1944 Germany was scraping the bottom of their manpower barrel. They weren’t the only ones doing it- the British had already reached their limit and the United States had long since lowered its standards as to who was inducted into the service- but that didn’t really matter for Germany, whose manpower crunch had forced them to start pressing the old and young into service. It forced them to send men unfit for combat due to medical reasons to combat outfits. It forced them to reduce their infantry divisions from nine maneuver battalions to six, and to make extensive use of Soviet prisoners as combat troops. On the eve of invasion OB-West had 58 divisions assigned to it throughout western Europe; only 24 were deemed capable of being deployed to fight on the Eastern Front. Half of those in France were so-called static divisions, lacking motor transport, reconnaissance elements, and provided with a reduced allotment of artillery. The purpose of these formations was to essentially act as a speed bump, or a roadblock at best- Rob Citino points out that, lacking the capability to maneuver, they were designed to hold up the advance as long as possible and then die. Additionally, many of the divisions in the West had been shattered in the East and were in the process of being reconstituted, having been exchanged for fresh formations that were sent to fight the Soviets. When the Allies came ashore on 6 June a major portion of the enemy that they faced was a rag-tag assortment of under- and over-age troops, men physically unfit for combat, recuperating wounded, Soviet prisoners, and rear-echelon soldiers, commanded by amputee officers. There were standard formations as well, but again, most of these were infantry divisions of the 1944 model. The most potent barb that OB-West possessed were its armored and mechanized formations, and that brings us to our next topic- German industry.

To put it lightly, Germany’s materiel effort was a mess. They were tinkerers, and this caused a considerable amount of trouble when it came to mass production. You can’t win a war if you don’t have enough equipment, and this was something that the Soviets and the United States understood very well. Both pursued a system of long production runs with few changes- when a change to the model was made it was done so in conjunction with several other changes, resulting in a variant that became the new standard and was sent off on a long production run of its own. Germany never did that- it was constantly making minute changes to everything from motorcycles to tanks to airplanes. Richard Overy reports that at one point during the war German industry was producing at least 425 different aircraft models and variants, and that by mid-war the Army was motoring along on 150 different makes of motorcycles and 151 different makes of trucks. The effect that this has on an industry is to slow its production rate to a crawl, as the runs are incredibly short- in the case of the Mark VI Tiger tank, reduced to somewhere around 6 units on average. The takeover of German industry by Speer improved the situation as he cut the number of models in production by a drastic amount, but it took three years for him to start to achieve bonafide results- by then the damage was done. The Luftwaffe had been gutted by the strategic bombing offensive and the army had been chewed up over and over again in the East. By this point the manpower crisis was affecting the home front as well, with 25% of the workforce comprised of forced labor. This only got worse as time went on, leading to the use of concentration camp prisoners on a large scale. While Germany expended more equipment than it produced, meanwhile, the United States alone churned out approximately 2/3 of Allied military equipment produced during the war. What this meant on the battlefield was that when an American armored division sallied forth and lost thirty tanks in a day it could expect its losses to be made good in full in a short period of time, while the German division opposing it didn’t know when it would see reinforcements or how many it would receive. It also meant that the US Army could issue trucks to its formations almost as if they were free, giving infantry divisions a level of mobility that their opposite numbers could only dream of.

Air power, or the lack thereof as it pertains to the Germans, proved to be a very significant factor in the course of the war in the West. From the beginning to the end of the campaign the Allies enjoyed all but absolute air superiority. Heavy bombers went after rail yards, marshaling depots, and other infrastructure related to the operational level of war, while fighter-bombers went after trains, supply and troop columns, and hardened positions. Bridges were knocked out to prevent the advance or retreat of enemy formations, and aircraft provided invaluable reconnaissance in assessing enemy positions and strength and directing artillery fire. Close air support became increasingly common as well, but airpower’s major contribution to the war effort in the West came in interdicting supply lines and march routes. German outfits consistently arrived at their destinations at less than full strength and were occasionally all but destroyed, and this attrition made it easier for Allied ground formations to overcome them, which they did with firepower and persistence.