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Marshal Enterprises Releases Another Free Game

Posted by Mitch Williamson in on Monday, April 30, 2012

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La Bataille de Raszyn Explores Major Battle of Polish-Austrian War of 1809

Marshal Enterprises has now released its second free game in less than 90 days. La Bataille de Raszyn, which pits the Poles of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw against the Austrians on April 19, 1809, in a tight, tense battle for the survival of the Polish nation in Napoleonic Europe, is the second release in Marshal Enterprise’s Recession Series Games---a series which is free to the wargaming public because “everyone needs to save a buck”.

Released on Martin Luther King Day, January 16, 2012 as a follow-up to La Bataille d’Halle, released on Veterans Day in 2011, La Bataille de Raszyn can be accessed and downloaded by anyone by going to the Marshal Enterprises webpage, Labataille.me.

The webpage has easy to access instructions for all the color counters, color maps and charts and rules for this corps on korps battle between Polish Prince Josef Poniatowski and his Saxon allies and the Austrian Ferdinand d”Este ,with his multi-national Hapsburg army.

While most wargamers are familiar with Napoleon’s 1809 campaign in the Danube Valley against the Austrians led by Archduke Charles which culminated in La Bataille de Wagram. La Bataille de Raszyn is the key battle in one of the other major fronts in 1809---the Austrian invasion of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw in April 1809. Marshall Enterprises, with its tradition of exploring previously untouched battles, believes that the Polish- Austrian contest provides a unique experience for its wargaming public for a campaign unfortunately forgotten by both gamers and history.

Approximately 40,000 Austrians, including some of Austria’s best cavalry, face off against less than 20,000 Poles and Saxons, which despite their smaller numbers, are greatly supported by favorable terrain. La Bataille de Raszyn can easily be played in an afternoon between two players. Playtests proved the contest to be most competitive.

The Austrians had hoped to inspire the Poles to rise up against the less than two-year old Duchy of Warsaw, but instead, the Poles, with their usual ferocious devotion to Napoleon, fought the Austrians to a standstill, and not only defended the Duchy, but also invaded Austrian Galicia, a Polish speaking area that eventually became part of the Grand Duchy from 1809 to 1813.

In addition to several new terrain types, including waterway causeways and dykes, La Bataille de Raszyn, also features special rules which cover the language difficulties of Austria’s multi-national force and the problems Napoleon would have with the loyalties of his Saxon allies.

Marshal Enterprises is a creative consortium of game designers and cultural commentators who remain the surviving designers of the original La Bataille system. La Bataille d’Halle is also a free game and is available on the Labaille.me website.

For further information about this release, contact jgsoto@labataille.me .

Land Battle for Guadalcanal, (August 1942–February 1943) Part I

Posted by Mitch Williamson in on Saturday, January 28, 2012




Bitter contest between the Japanese and the Americans that marked a turning point in the Pacific war. The struggle on Guadalcanal was protracted, and the period from August 1942 to February 1943 saw some of the most bitter fighting of the war. In all, there were some 50 actions involving warships or aircraft, 7 major naval battles, and 10 land engagements.

Guadalcanal is an island in the Solomon chain northeast of Australia. It lies on a northwest-southeast axis and is 90 miles long and averages 25 miles wide. Guadalcanal’s southern shore is protected by coral reefs, and the only suitable landing beaches are on the north-central shore. Once inland, invading troops faced dense jungle and mountainous terrain, crisscrossed by numerous streams. The Guadalcanal Campaign encompassed not only Guadalcanal, but Savo and Florida Islands as well as the small islands between Florida and Guadalcanal: Tulagi, Tanambogo, and Gavutu.

In January 1942, Japanese amphibious forces had landed in the Bismarck Archipelago between New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. They quickly wrested Kavieng on New Ireland Island and Rabaul on New Britain from the Australians. The Japanese consolidated their hold and turned Rabaul into their principal southwest Pacific base. By early March, the Japanese landed at Salamaua and Lae in Papua and on Bougainville. Their advance having gone so well, the Japanese decided to expand their defensive ring to the southeast to cut off the supply route from the United States to New Zealand and Australia. On 3 May, the Japanese landed on Tulagi and began building a seaplane base there. Between May and July, the Japanese expanded their ring farther in the central and lower Solomons. These operations were carried out by Lieutenant General Imamura Hitoshi’s Eighth Army from Rabaul. The first Japanese landed on Guadalcanal on 8 June. On 6 July, their engineers began construction of an airfield near the mouth of the Lunga River.

The discovery of the Japanese effort on Guadalcanal led to the implementation of Operation WATCHTOWER. Conceived and pushed by U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Ernest J. King, it called for securing Tulagi as an additional base to protect the United States–Australia lifeline and as a starting point for a drive up the Solomons to Rabaul. On 1 April 1942, the Pacific was divided into two commands: U.S. Vice Admiral Robert L. Ghormley, commanding in the South Pacific, was to take the southern Solomons including Guadalcanal, and General Douglas MacArthur’s forces were to secure the remainder of the Solomons and the northwest coast of New Guinea, the final objective being Rabaul.

If the Japanese were allowed to complete their airfield on Guadalcanal, they would be able to bomb the advanced Allied base at Espiritu Santo. U.S. plans to take the offensive were now stepped up, and a task force was hurriedly assembled. From Nouméa, Ghormley dispatched an amphibious force under Rear Admiral Richmond K. Turner, lifting Major General Alexander A. Vandegrift’s 19,000-man reinforced 1st Marine Division. A three-carrier task force under Vice Admiral Frank J. Fletcher provided air support. This operation involved some 70 ships.

On 7 August 1942, the Marines went ashore at Tulagi, Florida, Tanambogo, Gavutu, and Guadalcanal, surprising the small Japanese garrisons (2,200 on Guadalcanal and 1,500 on Tulagi). On the same day, the Marines seized the harbor at Tulagi, and by the next afternoon they had also secured the airfield under construction on Guadalcanal, along with stocks of Japanese weapons, food, and equipment. Supplies for the Marines were soon coming ashore from transports in the sound between Guadalcanal and Florida Islands, but this activity came under attack by Japanese aircraft based at Rabaul. Vandegrift told Fletcher he would need four days to unload the transports, but Fletcher replied that he was short on fuel and in any case could not risk keeping his carriers in position off Guadalcanal for more than 48 hours.

Stakes were high for both sides. The fiercest fighting occurred for the airfield, renamed Henderson Field for a Marine aviator killed in the Battle of Midway. Vandegrift recognized its importance and immediately established a perimeter defense around it. Eating captured rations and using Japanese heavy-construction equipment, the U.S. 1st Engineer Battalion completed the airfield on 17 August. As early as 21 August, the day the Japanese mounted a major attack on the field, the first U.S. aircraft landed there. The Japanese now found it impossible to keep their ships in waters covered by the land-based American aircraft during the day, and they found it difficult to conduct an air campaign over the lower Solomons from as far away as Rabaul.

Luftwaffe in Barbarossa Part VI

Posted by Mitch Williamson in on Friday, January 27, 2012




Seen in retrospect, the German campaign in Russia in 1941 was the greatest display of maneuver warfare in history, and it will likely remain so in the future. In point of preparedness, doctrine, numbers available for the offensive, and leadership, the German armed forces had peaked during the summer. These qualities enabled them to storm forward, advancing over 600 miles in less than six months while fighting against an opponent who was numerically at least equal, and to conquer territory about twice as large as Germany itself. The key to this unparalleled achievement was operativ warfare, now waged with the aid of armored and mechanized units and honed into the blitzkrieg. Its essence consisted of never taking on the enemy in a frontal attack if it could be helped; instead, massive forces were concentrated on very narrow fronts in order to achieve a breakthrough, after which they would move forward to drive deep wedges into the enemy, pulverize (zerstuekeln), outflank, encircle, and annihilate him in a Kesselschlacht with inverted fronts whenever possible. Coordinated mobility, even more than firepower, formed the key to this method of warfare, and indeed the entire German system of organization and C3 were specifically designed to assist large separated forces in coordinating their movements against a single enemy. As a glance at the map shows, the campaign consisted of first breaking up the enemy front into separate sectors and then building a series of huge cauldrons, each of which contained several hundred thousand Red Army troops. In point of sheer operational brilliance, it has no parallel.

This above does not mean that the German conduct of the war, even if narrowed down to the 1941 campaign alone and even if regarded from a purely operativ standpoint, was perfect. Having underestimated both the power of their opponents and the difficulties posed by distance, terrain, and climate, the Germans did not have sufficient troops for the campaign and logistically their preparations for it were rather sketchy.  Once the invasion got under way, the funnel shape of the theater of war meant that the number of objectives was forever increasing. This should have acted as a spur to the German High Command (Hitler in particular) to decide priorities and to create Schwerpunkte. Instead, they often chose to scatter their forces and "send them off along a growing number of diverging axes in order to, from left to right (or north to south), link up with the Finns, capture Leningrad," keep in touch with Army Group Center, capture Moscow, keep in touch with Army Group South, overrun the Ukraine, and invade the Crimea . Whether the Germans could have won the war by imitating Napoleon and marching straight for Moscow is doubtful, given that the fall of the city would not necessarily have caused the Soviet Union to break up. Also, it is not clear whether such a thrust could have been logistically supported using the road system in Belorussia. As it was, this strategy was never put to the test.

The contribution that the Luftwaffe made to the campaign was enormous. It was able to secure air superiority and protect friendly forces against attack, although its ability to carry out the latter mission diminished as time passed. Next, its forces used every means at its disposal to help the army move forward. Luftwaffe units reconnoitered the enemy ahead of the army and often helped the latter's commanders decide on the best direction in which to mount their operativ thrusts. They flew supplies to army units that could not be reached in any other way. They protected the long, exposed flanks that naturally resulted from the blitzkrieg style of war, forming Schwerpunkte wherever and whenever the enemy showed signs of preparing a counterattack. They helped prevent the withdrawal of trapped Soviet forces and launched punishing attacks on those that had been cut off inside the pockets created by the army's operativ thrusts. Whenever a river was to be crossed or an important city to be captured, the Luftwaffe was certain to be found flying close-support missions even to the point where it literally dropped its bombs at the German infantryman's feet.

Though the achievements of the Luftwaffe were thus considerable, it became increasingly clear that the available forces were not really sufficient to master the enormous spaces involved. This was particularly true in view of the equally enormous difficulties involved in having to operate from bases that were primitive, far from home, and often connected to each other, the rear, and the ground forces only by the most tenuous of communications. The farther east the Germans went, the more difficult it became to keep the Luftwaffe units supplied and their aircraft operational. The more intensive the fighting, the greater the army's tendency to call in the air force wherever an advance was to be made or whenever a local crisis took place. This combination of circumstances had the effect of gradually bringing operativ warfare to an end. The Luftwaffe was forced more and more to act as flying artillery, a role for which the majority of its aircraft were not well suited and in which they took correspondingly heavy losses.

In Russia, as in Poland and France, the Luftwaffe was originally forbidden from attacking strategic targets, it being assumed that such attacks would be a waste of effort and that the campaign hopefully would be over before the effects of such attacks could be felt. However, just as the army tended to divide its efforts between many objectives, so the Luftwaffe had to go beyond this strict line of reasoning. Beginning in the second half of July, some of its forces were diverted from interdiction in order to attack industrial targets in Moscow, Rharkov, Rostov, Orel, Tula, Voronezh, Bryansk, and a number of other places. In the absence of a heavy four-engined bomber fleet (which, given their overall economic situation, the Germans probably could not have created even if the necessary prototypes had been available), strategic warfare had to be carried out by two-engined medium and light bombers. However, even these were only capable of hitting individual targets more or less by accident.

It is therefore not surprising that such warfare remained without any noticeable effect, of nuisance value at best and a waste of resources at worst. The only thing that can be said in its favor is that it probably did not seriously impact on whatever chances the Germans stood to gain a victory, given that during the would-be decisive advance on Moscow the effort that went to operations other than mittelbare (indirect) and unmittelbare Unterstuetzung (direct support) was not very great.

All in all, the strengths and weaknesses of the Luftwaffe in this period reflected those of the German armed forces as a whole. Unequalled determination and sheer Schwung (elan) was based on the unlimited Einsatzbereitschaft (initiative) of air crews and ground personnel. The Germans were unmatched in their grasp of operativ warfare, but only at the expense of weaknesses in logistics (sustainability in particular) and a somewhat uncertain overall strategy that caused them to go after too many different objectives at once. There is still much to learn from the Luftwaffe's methods of waging war. There is also much to avoid.

Luftwaffe in Barbarossa Part V

Posted by Mitch Williamson in




Up to this point, the Luftwaffe's task in the east had consisted almost exclusively of operativ warfare in indirect or increasingly direct support of the army. Indeed, Hitler's Directive No. 21 had explicitly ordered attacks on Soviet "strategic" targets such as arms manufacturers to be postponed until after the Archangelsk-Volga-Astrakhan line would be reached. However, the need to consolidate the Smolensk pocket, as well as the inability of the German High Command to make up its mind concerning the next objective, created some breathing space. Working day and night, the Luftwaffe brought its ground organization forward, a task that was already being made difficult by the operations of scattered Red Army units as well as the first partisan forces . It was only about 250 miles from the Dnieper to Moscow, making it possible to mount a series of raids against the Soviet capital. The first and largest attack was launched on the night of 21-22 July and was carried out by 195 bombers; of these, 127 reached their targets and dropped 104 tons of high explosives as well as 46,000 small incendiary bombs. From then until 5 December-the day the final German attack on Moscow opened-75 more raids were mounted, all by night and the great majority by forces numbering fewer than 50 aircraft each. The 1,000 Soviet antiaircraft guns concentrated in the city, as well as opposition from Red Air Force fighters, forced the Luftwaffe to operate mainly by night. Even if their bombers had been capable of accurately hitting their targets, which they were not, this was not nearly enough to make an impression. The Soviets later put the total number of dead at 1,088, comparable to the figure killed at Rotterdam in the previous year but a small fraction of those destroyed by the vast Allied raids on German cities later in the war.

As for maneuver warfare, the raids on Moscow undoubtedly constituted a wasteful diversion of effort away from the main task, which was and remained the destruction of the Soviet armed forces. However, it should be remembered that, owing partly to logistic reasons and partly to the need to clear up the still-seething Smolensk pocket, ground operations on the central front were almost at a standstill at this time. While Luftflotte 2's attack aircraft took part in preventing the Soviets from breaking out of the pocket, its bombers were not very suitable for this task. They were therefore used on other missions even if the value of those missions proved disappointing in the end. When large-scale operativ warfare was resumed late in August, the raids on Moscow continued but were greatly reduced until they only represented a small fraction of the German effort. To the Soviets, they were never more than a nuisance, but they probably did tie down greater forces committed to defending the city than were ever committed to attacking it.

By the end of August, after almost a month of stationary fighting, Army Group Center had its supply situation improved to the extent that the railway supporting its southern flank now reached the city of Gomel.  This enabled Guderian's Panzer Group 2, supported by the newly created Second Army, to start its drive southward into the Ukraine, where it acted in conjunction with Gen Ewald von Kleist's Panzer Group 1 coming up from Kiev. The Germans thought they were operating against only the Soviet Fifth Army; however, the entire enemy force consisted of parts of several other armies as well, so that the operation took longer and yielded far more prisoners and booty than originally expected. As usual, the missions of Fliegerkorps II and Fliegerkorps V, supporting the two panzer groups, were to gain and maintain air superiority, isolate the pocket against counterattacks from the outside, and attack the encircled Soviet forces until they laid down their arms.

Beginning on 28 August, Fliegerkorps II supported Guderian's crossing of the river Desna by blasting away at the Soviet artillery positions on the other side.  It next flew missions against the Soviet railways on Guderian's exposed left flank while using its dive bombers to blast a way for the panzers on their way south, helping them to advance rapidly and preventing the bulk of the Soviet forces from withdrawing.  Simultaneously, Fliegerkorps V launched attacks on roads and railroads in the Romodan-Poltava area, prevented a counterattack by Soviet forces coming from the Lubny-Lokhvitsa-Priluki-Yagotin area, helped the army capture Kiev ("to be reduced to rubble and ashes," according to Hitler's order), and in general bombed the encircled Soviet forces, making them ready for surrender. The war diary of this corps for the period is one of the few documents to survive the war, making a quantitative analysis of these operations possible.  It shows that the forces of Fliegerkorps V flew 1,422 sorties between 12 and 21 September alone, losing 17 aircraft destroyed, 14 damaged, nine soldiers dead, 18 missing, and five wounded. In return, they dropped 577 tons of bombs and 96 cases of incendiaries (presumably over Kiev) and destroyed 65 enemy aircraft in the air and 42 on the ground. They also destroyed 23 tanks; 2,171 motor vehicles; six antiaircraft batteries; 52 trains; 28 locomotives (this apart from 335 motor vehicles and 36 trains damaged) ; demolished one bridge ; and interrupted 18 railway lines. To the extent that these figures mean anything at all, it seems that the Schwerpunkt during this, as during all German mobile operations, was on interdiction; this is indicated by the small number of tanks destroyed as well as the absence from the list of major weapons such as ground artillery.

Meanwhile, along the Dnieper on both sides of Smolensk, the rebuilding of the railways and their conversion to standard gauge was proceeding apace. Fliegerkorps VIII, its mission in the north only half accomplished, was brought back under the command of Luftflotte 2. Panzer Group 3 was taken from Army Group North and returned to its original position on the left of Army Group Center, where it was subordinated to the Ninth Army; these were thus the same forces that had formed the northern arm in the battles of Minsk and Smolensk. To compensate for the loss of Guderian, Hitler ordered Gen Erich Hoepner's Panzer Group 4 to be used as well. In this way, it operated under the command of Fourth Army at Roslavl on the south flank of Army Group Center, where Guderian had previously been. Meanwhile, Guderian himself was to create a third prong by driving due north-northwest through Bryansk towards Tula. The German forces now totaled 70 divisions, including four armored and eight motorized; average actual strength was probably around 70 percent, up from 50 percent five weeks earlier. Opposing them were 83 Soviet divisions of the western theater, commanded by Gen Georgi Zhukov. Its principal parts, from north to south, were the West Front, the Reserve Front and, facing Guderian, the Bryansk Front.

Guderian's offensive opened on 30 September, and the remaining German armies following two days later. At first, the new offensive promised to become as successful as anything in the past; on 10 October, forward units of Panzer Group 3 and Panzer Group 4 met at Vyazma, trapping some 300,000 Soviet troops. Meanwhile, Panzer Group 2 (now redesignated Second Panzer Army), operating in conjunction with Second Army on its left, came up from the south and succeeded in working its way behind Gen A. I. Eremenko's Bryansk Front. At this time, the weather broke and the autumn rains began. The entire countryside turned into a vast sea of mud that prevented wheeled vehicles from moving at all and caused tracked ones to move forward only slowly and at an enormous cost in fuel.

As the offensive began, the Luftwaffe's raids on Moscow were reduced in scale until they became of nuisance value only. Luftflotte 2 went back to its usual role of interdiction behind the front; on 4 and 5 October, it was able to achieve very good results against Soviet rail transport, including the destruction of no fewer than 10 trains loaded with tanks. However, when the weather broke, it too found itself reduced to flying isolated sorties against such targets as could still be identified. There were even days when the entire air fleet, its ground organization suffering grievously under the impossible conditions, was only able to get one or two reconnaissance aircraft into the air. Red Air Force resistance, favored by prepared airfields and short lines of communications, was stiffening and had to be held down. Under such circumstances, Fliegerkorps II was only able to achieve isolated successes, such as preventing a bridge over the river Snopot from being blown up until German armored units could arrive on the scene. Farther to the south, it was all it could do to keep the supply routes of Second Panzer Army open against the usual remnants of Soviet forces that, though outflanked on the map and supposedly defeated, had not been destroyed. In doing so, it suffered many losses due to the bad weather.

The tremendous German success in the autumn battles had left Hitler and the OKH in an optimistic mood. The double encirclement at Vyazma and Bryansk had yielded as many as 350,000 prisoners, though even this huge figure did not account for many Soviet forces that had made good their escape on the southern part of the front. The continuation of the offensive had originally been ordered for 17 November. However, a few days after this date, the weather brought snow and fog with temperatures sinking to below zero centigrade. Fliegerkorps II was taken out of the line and sent to the Mediterranean, where the British had driven Rommel back from Tobruk and were threatening Tripolitania. With them went the commander of Luftflotte 2, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, who was destined to spend the rest of his career commanding the German forces in the Mediterranean theater. All that was left in front of Moscow was Fliegerkorps VIII, whose commander, Gen Wolfram von Richthofen, took over from Kesselring on 30 November. By this time, the airfields used by the Germans were scarcely serviceable, and the few units that were still able to advance at all were being overwhelmed by the cold. On 8 December, faced by a massive Soviet counterattack that threatened the flanks of Army Group Center on both sides of Moscow, Hitler reluctantly ordered the offensive to be abandoned.

Luftwaffe in Barbarossa Part IV

Posted by Mitch Williamson in on Thursday, January 26, 2012




Even as these operations were going on, the most important part of the drama was taking place neither in the Baltic nor in the Ukraine but with Army Group Center north of the Pripet Marshes in Belorussia. The armored forces, forming the spearheads of the army group, were put on its wings: 3d Panzer Group (Gen Hermann Hoth) on the left and 2d Panzer Group (Gen Heinz Guderian) on the right. Setting out from Suwalki and Brest Litovsk, respectively-the distance separating them was about 200 miles-these spearheads were to converge on Minsk, some 250 miles inside Soviet territory, in order to form a gigantic pocket. Between the two armored spearheads marched the infantry armies-Ninth Army to the north and Fourth Army to the south. This well-thought-out plan, which gave the German forces shorter distances to cover and enabled them to participate in the campaign by sealing off the pocket formed by the armored spearheads, was designed to allow them to form a second and smaller pocket inside the larger one by meeting at a point on the Bialystok-Minsk road some 100 miles to the east of their starting positions. As usual in maneuver warfare, everything depended on speed and boldness in finding the weak spot and then, having burst through it, striking deep into the enemy's rear. As usual, this could only be achieved by presenting to the enemy long, open flanks that the Luftwaffe had the task of holding and protecting.

The starting positions of Guderian's tanks were on the river Bug. As usual, when there was a river to be crossed, the effect was to divert the Luftwaffe units on the spot (Fliegerkorps II) from deep strikes to close support, especially since the crossing sites could be dominated by the guns in the ancient fortress of Brest Litovsk. Fliegerkorps II was accordingly directed to this task even before it could achieve full air superiority; its "rolling attacks" (rollende Einsatz), a kind of operation already familiar from the Battle of the Meuse in 1940, afforded Guderian's rear echelons a safe passage until the fortress finally surrendered. Next, on 23 June units of Luftflotte 2 were instrumental in beating back a furious Soviet counteroffensive at Grodno. It was only after these operations were over that the weight of the attack could be shifted farther to the east. It now fell on the railroads leading into the area of the prospective pocket (interdiction) and also on the roads leading out of them through the Belorussian forest.

Even at this early point in the campaign, growing distances were already creating a situation where the long-range reconnaissance and bomber units could not be brought up fast enough for the latter to attack targets identified by the former. With the results of photoreconnaissance often many hours out of date, it became necessary to resort to armed reconnaissance by having the bombers act in both roles at once and attack targets of opportunity, a method that proved wasteful in terms of the time that the units could spend on mission. Acting in this way, Fliegerkorps II was able to obstruct but not entirely prevent the attempts by forces of the Soviet West Front (Gen D. G. Pavlov) to retreat and break out of the pocket; also, since it could not be everywhere at once, it was unable to intervene against the sorties flown by the Red Air Force against the German cavalry division forming the extreme right flank of Army Group Center. Further north, Fliegerkorps VIII was instrumental in beating off a Soviet counterattack launched against Hoth's flank on 24-25 June in the Kuznica-Odel'sk- Grodno-Dembrovo area. Since roads in this area were few and far between, it also airlifted supplies to the rapidly advanced 3d Panzer Group. By means of all these operations, the Luftwaffe contributed substantially to the closing of the pocket at Minsk, the first great German victory in this new campaign.

The Battle of Minsk was concluded on 3 July, when the Soviet forces inside the pocket formally surrendered, although it was another five days before resistance came to an end and 290,000 Russian prisoners had fallen into German hands. Meanwhile, the arrival of the infantry had enabled the armor to be disengaged and resupplied. On 9 July, Guderian and Hoth were off again. This time the goal was to close the jaws at Smolensk, 400 miles from the starting positions, thus building another one of those gigantic pockets that were the specialty of the blitzkrieg. The Luftwaffe's principal task was to prevent the Red Air Force from disrupting German preparations for the crossing of the Dnieper, which it did most effectively but not without causing some friendly casualties. On 23 July the pincers met and trapped a mass of Russians. As one might expect from the vast distances, however, the pincers were at first rather thin. The German infantry divisions, though marching hard, had been left far behind by the panzers. Consequently, it again fell to Luftflotte 2 to do its best to hold the pocket until they could arrive. It did so with only partial success; unlike the French in the previous year, the Russians for the most part did not surrender simply because the map showed that their units had been cut off. Using the wooded terrain to hide during the day, many of them were able to break out at night. Field Marshal Albert Kesselring of Luftflotte 2 later estimated that 100,000 Soviet troops had made good their escape in this way, albeit at the cost of leaving their heavy equipment behind and watching their large units disintegrate.

Although it was not until 5 August that the pocket west of Smolensk could be regarded as properly closed-and even then gaps remained Fliegerkorps VIII had already been taken away from Luftlotte 2. By Hitler's orders, it joined Fliegerkorps I in its attack towards Leningrad. The remaining formation, Fliegerkorps II, now found its forces strung out thinly across the hundreds of miles forming the front of Army Group Center and attempting to protect its flanks. It had to assist in sealing off the pocket, but at the same time it had to beat off a series of determined Soviet counterattacks against the exposed Yelnya salient across the Dnieper (occupied by Guderian's troops). To add to its trouble, it was called upon to operate far in the south, using Stukas to strike at Soviet armored boats that appeared unexpectedly on the northern edges of the Pripet Marshes and inflicted stinging losses on the German cavalry division there. By this time, the Red Air Force had found its bearings to the extent that it was able to join in the army's attacks on the Yelnya salient. Unable to be everywhere at once, the fighters of Fliegerkorps II were often too late to interfere. Attempting to pursue the low-flying, heavily armored Soviet attack aircraft, they were fired at from the ground by every possible weapon. As a result, an order went out to the German ground troops to imitate the Soviets and defend themselves against air attack with machine guns. This was OKH's first admission that, in these enormous spaces, the army no longer had nor could hope to have all the friendly command of the air it desired.

As the German forces consolidated their hold at Smolensk on the Dnieper, Hitler and the Army High Command engaged in the famous debate as to which objective, Moscow or the Ukraine, should be given priority. On Hitler's orders, Hoth's 3d Panzer Group now followed Fliegerkorps VIII in turning to the assistance of Army Group North, though without much success since the country between Smolensk and Leningrad contains some of the largest and densest forests in the whole of Russia. We cannot debate here whether or not it was feasible, let alone desirable, to pursue the offensive against Moscow at this time. Suffice it to say that this author's research indicates that the logistic basis for this action was not available since the railways supplying the German infantry forces in particular (unlike the armored groups, they did not have their own motorized transport capable of bringing up supplies from the rear) had been left hundreds of miles behind.  

Battle of Sedan, (1870)

Posted by Mitch Williamson in





The most decisive German victory of the Franco-Prussian War. With the French Army of the Rhine under Marshal Bazaine besieged in Metz, the last hope for France rested with the Army of Châlons, commanded by Marshal Patrice MacMahon. MacMahon’s options were to either race east to Bazaine’s aid or to retire to the west and use the strong fortifications around Paris to support his defense. The stronger course of action would be to retreat west, but MacMahon was under great pressure from the Empress Eugénie and her advisors. Furthermore, the Emperor Napoleon III himself was with MacMahon’s army, and retreat would have dealt a grave blow to the political stability of the Empire. The Army of Châlons marched east.

To counter this threat, the German commander, General Helmuth von Moltke, split his forces into four armies. Leaving two to keep Bazaine contained at Metz, he ordered the other two to head west and find MacMahon. German cavalry probing ahead found indications that the Army of Châlons was heading northeast, perhaps to reach Metz via Sedan and Thionville, hugging the Belgian border. It would have been a grave risk for the Germans if they had turned north to pursue, only to find the French were not there. If the French move was a feint, Moltke would be presenting his left flank to MacMahon. On the other hand, if MacMahon was retiring to safety around Paris, the Germans would lose as much as a week reforming and chasing after the French, giving them ample time to bolster the defenses of Paris. Moltke was prepared to gamble and accordingly ordered the two armies to turn north and cut off MacMahon’s line of advance. Through forced marches, the Germans caught up with the French and stopped the Army of Châlons at the town of Sedan, a few miles from the Belgian border, on August 31.

The Army of Châlons was now caught in a triangle-shaped position, surrounded by German forces on all sides. On September 1, the Germans commenced their final assault. Early in the action MacMahon was severely wounded, but there was confusion as to who would take his place. MacMahon appointed General Auguste Ducrot as acting commander; however, a more senior general and recent arrival, Emmanuel Wimpffen, refused to take orders from Ducrot and insisted he was now in charge. The two commanders disagreed over which direction the army should attempt a breakout. Ducrot advocated a breakout to the west and a return to Paris; Wimpffen ordered an attack to the east and a continuation of the drive to relieve Metz. Either option was doomed to failure. The German artillery controlled the heights above Sedan on all sides and was able to rain down artillery fi re from different directions on the French troops below. There was no cover, and thousands of French soldiers and horses were cut to pieces. A few units were able to sneak to the north and into neutral Belgium, where they were interned, but the rest either died or were captured. By the end of the day, the French had suffered 3,000 men killed, 14,000 wounded, and 21,000 more taken prisoner, including the Napoleon III and MacMahon; over the next few days, the total French prisoner count reached nearly 100,000. The Germans’ total losses—killed, wounded, and missing—were only 9,000, the vast majority of which had been incurred by a few ill-advised infantry assaults by commanders too impatient to let the artillery do their work for them. The defeat at Sedan was the last gasp of the French Second Empire and opened the road to Paris for the victorious German armies.

FURTHER READING: Howard, Michael. The Franco-Prussian War. New York: Collier, 1969; Wawro, Geoffrey. The Franco-Prussian War: The German Conquest of France, 1870–1871. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003; Wetzel, David. A Duel of Giants: Bismarck, Napoleon II and the Origins of the Franco-Prussian War. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001.