Read Charles MacDonald's Company Commander and George Wilson's If You Survive and then Michael Doubler's Closing With the Enemy.   The first two books are by infantry company commanders and the latter by a post war Army officer who did extensive research into the war.  Afterward get back to us.

It says they were some ballsy motherfuckers.


I forgot where I got the numbers, hell I don't even remember the numbers, but the numbers from WWII infantry units who actually pulled the trigger and engaged the enemy vs. those who simply couldn't always amazed me.

By what, in sufficient numbers to matter?

The 44 was a much better weapon at that point, and they did make a lot them.  and the MG 34/42 outclassed the 1919 at every level.  155WP renders taht problem insignificant, however.

Oh the 1919 was outclassed well before 1944.

I talked to quite a few WWII Vets. Most of them said that man for man: the Germans and the Japanese were better soldiers.
However we completely overwhelmed them with firepower.
In terms of Generals: the Germans had better Generals. On the other hand (sorry Yamamoto) our Admirals were better at warfare
than the Japanese.
One thing for sure: our Code Breakers combined with the Brits had both the Germans and the Japanese completely whipped.

frankly, the m1 carbine was probably the better weapon.

My Grandfather served in the 4th Infantry division, if he were still alive he would disagree.


He might have had a leg up over some though, he had enlisted 2 years before the war started.

The Srmy in WW11 was a good, hard fighting group. As were the Marines, Nay and USAF.

The Army fought well.  

SLA Marshall

and it  has been considered BS for a while now.

the US army was poor when it landed in Africa.   the kasserine pass is a good example.  it would have been worse had a division artillery commander not masses artillery to stop the germans

they of course learned an impoved over time.
because of the replacement system a lot of un trained troops got sent to europe. some didnt live 3 days

the 29th was called the 3 division devision  1 on the field, one in the hospital and one in the grave

the policy of quickly  throwing troops into europe with no training got worse  during the bulge and after.  few vets from june 44 saw the end of the war or made  it into germany in 45.

the US army adn air corps developing  combined arms and working with  each other  to support  infantry was a huge factor. no one else had the ability for ground troops to talk direct to air support and to tank crews at the time. and of course the armys rquipment just got better and more plentiful  but still a little too late for winter operations

when givin a chance to stay alive and get experience the US army was the best in europe.

I believe you are thinking of the 106th, and you might appreciate some background of what actually happened.

The106th HELD IN PLACE so long they got surrounded, then the 423rd Regiment, out of mortar ammo, no machineguns, little bazooka ammo, and no artillery support attacked Schonberg. The 422nd, like wise out of heavy weapons and artillery support also attacked Schonberg but ran into armor and got pasted.

From the US Army's Green Book series volume on Ardennes:

By this time the 423d was going it alone, for all attempts to reach the sister regiment had failed. During the night the regiment pulled itself together in some semblance of order along Ridge 536, just southeast of Schonberg. Losses had been high- some 300 casualties (including 16 officers). No more rounds were left for the 81-mm. mortars, most of the machine guns were gone, there was little bazooka ammunition, and rifle clips were low.
T h e423dstillwasattempting to form for the attack, when, an hour or so after dawn on 19 December, German field pieces along the Bleialf-Schönberg road opened fire, sweeping the southeastern slope of Ridge 536. Soon the shelling ceased and the enemy infantry closed in, overrunning the 590th Field Artillery Battalion and other heterogeneous units which had been moving in the rear of the rifle battalions. Despite this blow Lt. Col. Earl F. Klinck’s 3d Battalion jumped off in good order at 1000. One company was cut off and captured, but two rifle companies reached the environs of Schonberg, then had to retire in a storm of antiaircraft fire. The 1st Battal- ion was able to put one company in the advance, but by midafternoon it was eliminated. When brought forward on the right the 2d Battalion became sepa- rated and was subjected to fire from the 422d Infantry, then about 400 yards to the north. At last, with tactical control gone, only five to ten rifle rounds per man, no supporting weapons, and an in- creasing number of wounded untended (despite yeoman effort by the regimental surgeon, Maj. Gaylord D. Fridline, and his staff), the commander of the 423d Infantry surrendered his regiment. The time was about 1630.

the 422d acted as promptly as possible when the division order was received on the following morning. Colonel Desche- neaux, acting in concert with the 423d, ordered an advance in column of battal- ions, the axis to the northwest in the direction of Schonberg. Excess equip- ment was destroyed, the wounded were left with an aid man, the regimental can- non company fired its last smoke rounds into Auw (as a slight deterrent to enemy observers),then spiked the pieces. In two columns–onemadeu poffoottroops lugging all portable weapons, the other made up of regimental vehicles–the movement encountered nothing but small groups of the enemy. Reconnais- sance had been confined to the map, al-though the I and K Platoon was used as point during the march, and when the two columns reassembled at dusk the 422d was lost. A wood had been selected on the map as a suitable assembly area from which to launch a co-ordinated attack against Schonberg, this about one and a half miles from the village. In fact, however, the regiment had bivouacked northeast of Oberlascheid in a wood about three miles from its objective- nor apparently was anyone the wiser.
During the early evening the I and R Platoon reported that contact had been madewiththeneighboringregiment, which intended to attack Schonberg. No further liaison was made. While gunfire sounded off to the west and northwest the rifle battalions marched through the darkness to three smaller woods, prepara- tory for an attack at daylight on the 19th. T h e dispositionsnowtakenwerefarther to the north, facing the Bleialf-Auw road, with the battalions deployed so that the 1st Battalion was farthest north, the 2d Battalion in the center, and the 3d Battalion on the south. At daybreak the three battalions moved out abreast, ad- vancing in approach march formation towardtheobjective–Schönberg–be– lieved to be little more than a mile distant.T h eleadingtroopswerejust crossing the Bleialf-Auwroad when they were hit by machine gun and tank fire coming from the north. At this point the road curved to the east, and the enemy apparently had taken a position in woods north of the bend which allowed him to enfiladethestraightway. T h e 1stBattal- ion commander ordered his men to turn back from the road and move southward. In the meantime the 2d and 3d Battal- ions had jumped off, but at the road their lead companies also came under severe frontal and flanking fire. But finally it was fire superiority in the hands of the enemy which checked further movement. About 1400, tanks were heard approaching from the north. In a last desperate flare of optimism the Americans thought that these were friendly tanks–but they were not. By a stroke of ill fortune the Fuehrer Begleit Brigade had been ordered forward to supporttheL X V ICorpsattackonSt. Vith. En route from Auw to Schonberg, the panzers arrived at the fork where the road split toward Schonberg and Bleialf just in time to give the coup-de- grâce. The tanks rolled through the bat- talions on the right while the German infantry poured in from the woods. At 1430 the regimental commander decided to surrender that part of his regiment which was disorganized and entrapped.
After negotiations to determine that the Germans would feed the Americans and provide care for the wounded, the sur- render was completed about 1600.

A group of about 400, however, were reorganized by the 2d Battalion execu- tive officer (Maj. Albert A. Ouellette) in the woods which had been the 2d Battalion assembly area. This group at- tempted to move southwest the follow- ing day, but it too was surrounded. After destroying weapons and equipment Oue- llette’s people surrendered on the morn- ing of 2 1 December. Another band, representing most of the vehicular col- umn, had attempted to break out through Bleialf on the late afternoon of
19 December but was halted by a mine field at the edge of the village, sur- rounded, and forced to capitulate. Not more than 150 men of the 422d Infantry succeeded in escaping to the American lines.

I think very true.  Look at the difference in equipment too.  The Germans were big into the GPMG concept, look at the MG-34 or MG-42.  You can put it on a nice, stable ground mount, pop optics on it, and use it like a heavy MG.  You can feed it from a belt in a box and move it around with the other troops like a medium MG, or you can stick a drum on it and use it in an assault.  Hell you can fire the damn thing standing.

Then compare that to US machine guns of the era.  The German infantryman was there to support the machine gun, while the US machine gun was there to support the infantry.

As for the actual quality of the troops, if you had said "So in general, Soviet Infantry Sucked Balls in WWII And Failed At Life?" I would have agreed with you.  After all, the Soviet tactic was basically to throw corpses into the German meat grinder until it reached it's pre-set kill limit.  It's too bad the Wehrmacht couldn't slaughter them all, that would have saved us some trouble later on.  Patton was right, but I digress...

I think I would agree that early on, our guys were not as good.  But the thing is that we did something that the Japanese and the Russians apparently didn't.  We LEARNED god damn it!  We had a fucking score to settle and we weren't going to consider it even until we were tired of kicking their asses, no matter how many times we got our nose bloodied we were going to do it, and it seems to me like we did it god damn it!  Were the Germans better at first?  Oh yhea.  Were they a very tough opponent until the bitter end?  Yes.  Did they have better gear?  Sometimes.  But we still beat them.

And where the hell did you come up with this bullshit?  You know this kind of bullshit is why people think we lost the war in Vietnam, you know, that one where we showed up and kicked the shit out of the enemy while our news media became a communist propaganda machine?  The one where we killed so many of our enemy that they had to wait two freaking years after we left before they could do anything and then people started running around declaring defeat?

Oh and you bring this up NOW?  TODAY?

I try to look at threads like this as being a glass half full.  The facts always get chased out eventually, and I always learn something, even if the topic may be a bit of a cage rattler.    There are many ways to start a debate for the sake of hashing out a subject, in this case he took the Negative instead of the Affirmative.  

EDIT:  On behalf of my relative that was a glider pilot in WWII and fought from Normandy to Germany, I would say the American Infantry kicked German ass!!    All bravado aside, this thread caught my interest for the more cognitive and well explained counter responses from the crew here.  

As individual weapons, the Garand was outclassed by 1943.  The G43 would have certainly been a competitor, and the MP-43 (later MP-44, and later still StG-44) would definitely outclass the Garand.

But like you said, none were made in sufficient enough matters to number.  Even though they did make a bunch of the StG-44s, they still had plenty of troops running around with K-98s.  We could at least afford to give everybody some kind of self-loading primary weapon.


...Even if our grenadiers would probably have been better off carrying a 1903.

True.  The average age of the WWII soldier was 26.  Vietnam was like 19 or 20.  Google it.

LC

Nice song; Propaganda though.
Average was more like 23.
Oh and go listen to the song backwards. "Oh I wish it was over"

Nininininininininin Nineteen, 19, Ni-nineteen 19

Or at least that is how I remember the lyrics......

This qoute was found in the Diary of one of those superior German Officers killed in action......


"American parachutists...devils in baggy pants...are less than 100 meters from my outpost line. I can't sleep at night; they pop up from nowhere and we never know when or how they will strike next. Seems like the black-hearted devils are everywhere..."

My GrandDad said it was Crap

First of all, one thing should be made clear:  US Army (and, I would argue Marine as well, though it was not tested) infantry doctrine was flawed at almost every levl, except operationally.  

At the tactical level, US troops had too few MGs and mortars, unweildly squads (though here I understand that many units re-organized informally) and training that while technically sound, neglected initiative.  
There was no serious effort to instill unit cohesion (and in fact decisions made higher up made this pointless anyway), nor any attempt to integrate the infantry with the other branches.  

Strategically, the biggest issue was the "90 Division Gamble" which essentially meant that infantry divisions in the ETO were rarely pulled out of the line, and new units (like the 106th, for example) were needed to man 'quiet' sectors of the front instead of 'shaking out'.  The replacement system, which really was the only option given the Gamble and horrible allocation of divisions (far too many sat in the Pacific) was also not terribly well thought-out, and even today the US Army has a basically dysfunctional replacement system.  To put the cherry on top, until late 44 the infantry had literally the last pick of draftees, and even most of the brighter officers were sent to support and aviation slots.  Finally, divisions in the US were continually stripped of cadre to form the newer divisions and make up for the shortfall in infantry replacements that the Army hadn't anticipated, further reducing cohesion and meaning that all the well-trained soldiers were thrown into brand new units already in combat, while the newer divisions were usually only filled up right as they shipped and given no change to gel.  

Luckily for the Allies, the US Army went to war in 1941 with the concious decision to sacrifice some things for others:  we would have LOTS of tanks, artillery and trucks, and a logistical system that would stand the strain of trans-oceanic fighting.  The US Army also determined that no effort would be spared to ensure that at the very least, no enemy would have air superiority over US troops, and this at least worked out pretty good for us.

Basically, considering the instituional handicaps they dealt with, the US infantry fought quite a bit better than we have any right to expect, and I for one am still amazed at how well the Category IV 'dropouts' thrown into the infantry managed to fight (and win) some extremely tough battles (see Mortain, for example, or the Vosges campaign).

Average age of 58,148 killed in Vietnam was 23.11 years

Much of traditional WWII history is mediocre at best; quite often it's just badly thought out, badly researched, and badly written.
Max Hastings is a cut above the rest. Instead of servicing comfortable myths and politically correct Hollywood narratives he makes probing questions that make many feel uncomfortable.
Hastings is what a true revisionist historian should be like. He leaves the traditional comfort zone and tries to deepen our understanding of that complicated and disjointed conflict that WWII essentially was.

It is the Generals and the Admirals who left America bent over with our black cherry exposed to the Japanese on December 7, 1941.    

He is quoting a song from the 80s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byCCmBwRjGw





 

I know the 32nd NG Div had a hard time at Buna-Gona. But you cant judge troops only after one barney. They were rushed to the Pacific very unprepared. Their story is a sad frustrating one, and when one considers all the adversity piled against them..well they did pretty well in the end. I recommend reading up on the poor bloody 32nd. The wiki is a good start. The Kapa Kapa Trail - wow. To go through that, then have to fight 6 thousand entrenched Japs, with only 1 artillery piece in support. Amazing really.
Most people think of the bigger, later battles when thinking ww2. Not many think of the troops thrown into the fray at the start, unprepared, with no intel, and megalomaniacs like MacArthur throwing them into battle with little regard for casualties.




But we Aussies sure appreciate the efforts of the 32nd.





 

They were not a bunch of 18 year olds. The avg age was much higher.

They gave bubbly?

"I do not have to tell you who won the war. You know, the artillery did" and "the poorer the quality of the troops, the more artillery they need. American troops need a lot of artillery." General George S. Patton,

"The speed, accuracy and devastating power of American artillery won confidence and admiration from the troops it supported and inspired fear and respect in their enemy" -Gen Dwight D. Eisenhower


"In many situations that seemed desperate, the artillery has been a most vital factor" Gen Douglas Macarthur

The first year of the war that would have been correct, but by 1942 the Soviet infantry was very good, The Germans rated them much better than the US.  They particularly impressed by what Von Mellenthin as the Russian Ant Tactic, in which over days of individual infiltration who regiments would appear within the German defensive lines.

That, and if you watch the evolution of Soviet casualties during the war, you see significant evolution in the Soviets favor.





Second Battle of Kharkov (1942): 13:1 in favor of the Germans

Battle of Kursk (1943): 4:1 in favor of the Germans

Operation Bagration (1944): 2:1 in favor of the Germans

Battle of Koingsberg (1945): 1:1.2 in favor of the Soviets

Battle of Berlin: 1:1



Comparatively, throughout the American involvement, troop losses greatly varied, depending on who we fought. Was 3:1 in our favor against the Italians in Torch and Tunisia, and about 1:1 against the Germans in France.



 

This would probably explain it. Infantry has always been viewed by some  as the group that you simply threw  rifles into the hands of cannon fodder who couldn't do anything else and sent them out into the meat grinder.

Way over-simplified view that ignores the reality that you can't seize and hold ground without Infantry boots being there, but that is what it is

This.  Certainly there were still some duds both in leadership and units overall...but for the most part, by 1945 our Army was the best in the field anywhere.



Consider this...our combined arms defeated the best the Nazis had and the tough little Japs too.



By 1945, our forces were really measuring up to the 1942 Navy-Marine Corps team at Guadalcanal...and that is saying something.  



 

My dad was 28, in 1944,  when he rolled into Europe in a tank destroyer.

At the Second battle of Kharkov (1942), the Germans appear to have suffered some 20,000 'total casualties', while the Soviets suffered some 170,000 killed/missing/captured and another 105,000 wounded.  Now, thats a ratio of 8.5:1, not counting the Soviet wounded...I'll admit that I can't help but wonder if the 20,000 "total" figure is actually 20,000 DEAD in addition to missing/captured/wounded, or if perhaps it doesn't include losses amongst German allies, but still, the Soviets had far heavier losses.

Third Kharkov (1943) is on record as producing some 11,500 dead/wounded/missing Germans, compared to some 45,000 Soviet dead and another 41,000 missing.

OK, but those were German victories.  So let's look at some Russian victories...
At Kursk, 1943, Soviet losses were about three times those of German losses during the German attack ('Zitadelle').  Soviet losses during their own offensive were again greater, about four times as heavy as German losses.  Soviet losses of aircraft, artillery, and armor were also MUCH greater during both engagements.

Soviet forces took twice as many casualties as German forces at the Battle of Smolensk in 1943, and during Operation Bagaration in 1944.
Oh, yhea, and the Soviets lost more troops at Stalingrad, too.  It's like they couldn't die for the motherland fast enough.

When you look at losses in the west front engagements, the casualty figures are pretty close for most of the fights.  And the US Infantryman was certainly better equipped and better fed than his Soviet counterpart.
If the Germans actually DID rate the Russian infantry as being much better than the US infantry...I'm just not seeing how they came to that conclusion...

I've read that Operation Bagration was one of the most brilliant and best executed ground operations in modern military history.  

OK, they "evolved" to suck less.  I'll give them that.  But remember that by the time they improved to the 1:1 type numbers you see at the Battle of Konigsburg or Berlin, they'd already thrown away millions of troops to slowly whittle away the Wehrmacht.  You could attribute their improvement as much to the Germans having to throw greener and greener troops on the line as you could to the Russians getting better.

I mean, hey, with the 13:1 ratio at Second Kharkov, and the 7.5:1 ratio at Third Kharkov, and the 4:1 kill ratio at Kursk...Did the Russians have that many survivors to send to Bagaration?

I think you misinterpreted the information presented. We were desperately short of replacements at the conclusion of the Normandy campaign. People often forget that the invasion happened on 6 June 1944 the breakout did not happen until August. The run across France, Market-Garden, we were exhausted when arriving at the German border in Nov.

Torch was poor leadership.

During the Battle of the Bulge our crappy infantry 99th,106th, 28th, 1st, stands were epic. The 99th and 106th were brand new but held the crack German spearhead units up for a couple of days totally upsetting their timetable. Hollywood would have you believe that the Germans just rolled through while we ran away. They were contained within the bulge while the shoulders were strengthened when their momentum stopped the shoulders were contracted. "A Time for Trumpets", MacDonald dispels much of the crappy infantry talk. During the "Bulge" the rear panicked, the line did not.

We did not mobilize enough manpower at the outset

Think about this.  For nearly two decades, two countries prepared for war, while the rest of the world went on about it's way.   During the 30's, you saw young Americans who were poorly fed and a military that was substantially drawn down since WWI.  It isn't all that conceivable to understand that when war finally broke out that those who joined and those who were drafted weren't in the best war fighting shape compared to Japan and Germany which had been at war with the world long before we realized it.  

The entire 5th Chapter to English's first version of "On Infantry" covers the reasons why.  

It can best be summed up by a instruction give to German's on the way to the Oost front.

I caught a ride over there with your guys last June from Gulfport.  I sort of stood out waiting there in the hangar, as I was the only guy there wearing a flight suit.  Had a bunch of guys that thought I would be part of the crew flying them over.

Mike

This.



Because of early war planning, the Army Ground Forces HQ only built a 100 division army. Reality was that they under-planned the need for infantry. We should have had more infantry units so that intact, cohesive units could be employed, but we didn't.



So, in late 1944, the US Army literally ran out of Infantry.



In Italy, in-theater units (like the 435th, 434th, 532nd and 900th AAA Battalions who were reformed into Task Force 45 and then the 473rd Regimental Combat Team) were repurposed as Infantry. Clark also accepted units nobody wanted, like the 10th Mountain Division and the all-black 92nd Infantry Division (Buffaloes).



In "Europe", the majority of replacements were individuals (1) swept out of the Army Science Training Program that had been set up in 1942 to ensure continuity of scientific research





and Army Air Corps training programs (in 1941-2, the Air Corps [perhaps deliberately] significantly overestimated its need for pilots and aircrew and had tens of thousands of men in Aviation Cadet and air crew training over and above its needs).



These personnel were sent overseas as individual replacements and then handled like spare parts through the Replacement Depots (Reeple Deeples) in the ETO Zone of Communication until they were dumped into cohesive combat units where they were the "new guys".



My father was a Infantry company commander in France. His rule of thumb was that any of the "new guys" that made it through their first action would probably survive (ever wonder why the replacements always got killed on Combat?). Veteran Joes tried not to get to know any "new guys" because of that. That further isolated the replacements and probably contributed to many of them doing dumb shit and getting killed.



Units that got replacements out of the line were able to integrate them better.

Please don't repeat S.L.A. Marshall's discredited lies from Men Against Fire.









Note that Marshall NEVER repeated this "assertion" in any of the volumes of The Official History.  Not once.



It is really too bad that S.L.A. Marshall, like Ambrose, ruined his good work with his false work.  A Soldier's Load and the Mobility of a Nation is excellent.

Constantly repeated but false statements from S.L.A. Marshall's now-discredited 1947 booklet Men Against Fire.  Wasn't true.  See my post above.



These falsehoods got legs because no one challenged his false claims of "research" then.

Same here! That song...

In keeping with the holiday theme- America, fuck yeah!

We started off world war 2 with next to NOTHING in terms of infantry or modern warfare.

The USSR had had some practice during the Spanish civil war, in 1941 they started against the Germans.
The Germans had had practice in the Spanish civil war, then had been in a constant state of war starting in 1939
The Italians had been at war in Ethiopia since 1935.

We started off ww2 with a smaller army than Romania , a country of 13 million people.

We started off with this as our main battle tank :


We started off the greatest war in modern history with NOTHING.

We had a EXTREMELY steep learning curve, however unlike the Italians, French and other world armies, we quickly learned and rose to end the war as a military powerhouse like the world had never seen before. Unlike the UK, Russia and other nations we were fighting a TWO FRONT WAR which split manpower. Did our infantry suck? Heck no , but there were many times they took a beating due to incompetent leaders, just like every other nation during ww2 at some point. The biggest benefit to ours was the fact we had one of the best logistical programs ever created. Germany was fighting in their back yard for a great part of the war and had major logistic problems, we were fighting on two fronts half way around the world and were able to keep things supplied and running.

I think that people like to look at the war period and use either rose colored glasses or view everything thought some sort of mystic lens. They either overestimate our abilities or underestimate them. The United States did a heck of a job and fought like champions.

Whatever the case may be, i give everyone during this time major props for charging into battle with nothing more than a cotton shirt to protect them.

Trevor Dupuy?

Another Arfcomer on drugs waaaaaaaay to early in the morning.

Hastings loves to bash the American GI. That being said the cream of the intellectual crop  went into aviation