German Defensive Tactics - Eastern Front

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Please please please do more tactic video regarding specific battles. I can't be the only one who loves this style of commentary.

As an American infantry vet (NCO 82nd ABN) the set up of the depleted unit's defense looks like the units were NOT all emplaced as part of a "master" defensive plan. Rather they appear to have been slotted in as they arrived. So it's almost impossible to make a judgement about why the 50mm AT was emplaced where it was as opposed to the 88mm AT. I'm not criticizing, merely pointing out the various components were slotted in as they became available. Without knowing the sequence of their arrival it's hard/impossible to make a definitive judgement as to the tactical efficacy of "the plan". What the dispositions reflect is the German commanders assessment of where to place the different assets as availability allowed. If the line was static and free from attack it's quite possible the deployments would be changed or adjusted over time. What you're presenting is a snapshot in time; rather than a series showing the growth of the defense. Great video. Keep it up.
PS. It does appear that the only tactical "flaw" per se.. Is the absence of a MG co-positioned with the 50mm AT to protect the crew from Soviet infantry. An MG in that position would also provide defilade/flanking fire into a North to South assault on the actual village.

I see a lot of people asserting that the heavy machine guns were put further back in the manual example in order to provide indirect fires; while this is a possibility, I have another thought to consider. Generally speaking, heavy machine guns are placed further behind the line of fighting holes/rifle pits/whatever your preferred nomenclature is because they have longer range than the rifles, are less vulnerable when they're a bit further back, and can help cover gaps in the line. Given the Red Army's ostensible, stated lack in exploiting breakthroughs, the Germans may well have decided that the relative lack of riflemen made putting the heavy machine guns further forward worthwhile. Building up snow walls as concealment (and possibly cover; depending on the thickness and hardness of the snow and ice, they may have been able to stop some shell fragments) would seem to support this idea; without hills or other elevated positions, the snow walls would block a rear-emplaced HMG's field of fire as much as the enemy's, making putting them further forward a more attractive option. Thanks again for another excellent video! These defensive position videos are my absolute favorites!

I feel safer from my mother-in-law after watching this.

As an infantry platoon leader in 1989, we fought a German Panzergrenadier battalion in the Franken countryside northeast of Bamberg. I had counter-reconnaissance mission. I actually used variation of the silent machine gun TTP. I hadn't realized this was a German TTP until now. The Germans called it out in our after action review.

Because of this video, I have decided to become a Patreon supporter.

Everything is placed close to shelter due to the extreme cold. The 88mm is setup forward to fire on the best line of advance for the enemy armour in order to achieve kills at maximum range and the 50mm is placed to the rear in order to hit in the side and rear of flanking armour as you suggest. If you did not have shelter you died. The map shows a fortified village defended by troops unused to surviving in extreme conditions. The soviets are much more adept giving them the option to roam and probe defenses. It is impossible to create the defense in depth with heavy guns to the rear as it would be impossible to keep personnel on hand to man them during an attack. I would not like to be forced to shelter from the cold in a village knowing that if I leave I die and if I stay I am the perfect target for artillery and rocket attack.

It would be really cool if you would visualise after action reports in this style, showing where everything was set up and where the lines of attack were. Very cool video!

Amazing video, Keep up the great work, your ability to make videos on all levels of warfare form the platoon to the grand strategic situation of nations is outstanding, love from Poland

My guess as to the forward positioning of the heavy MG34s would be that the commanders didn't expect to use them in an indirect fire role. With this thin of a line, harassing fire behind the lines was probably not on the short list of their concerns - defending the front would be more important. Thus, keep them more capable of engaging immediately.

Great visuals!

This is one of your best videos to date (atleast by me). Keep up the good work!

Another great video and thank you. 28 years as an Armor Officer in the US. It's standard combined arms tactics. What I would find interesting is how these tactics changed when in unique terrain. For example; the Russian Steppes or the Normandy Hedgerows.

Love this detailed tactical stuff. More please!

one of the best history channels out there. Keep it going! Grüs aus Bosnien

High quality video right here! I love the detailed tactical examples. please do more of those!

Have you considered the possibility that in the textbook example, the HMG's may have been intended as indirect fire weapons while in the depleted example their firepower was required up front?

I really liked the "after action report" in the first part of the video where you on a map see the defensive postions, where the attacker moved and attacked and so on. I would love to see more of that.

Absolutely fantastic detail. Well done sir.

Dude i just love your videos! You use so much time and research to makr these high quality historical videos, there should be definietely more people like you! Keep up the good work kamerad!

200 men covering a front of approximately 400 yards is quite formidable, and you could stretch a platoon to that if you were so inclined, albeit without the depth. A modern company has less than 200 men in most armies, and can cover twice the frontage. Granted that the depth of the formation obviously will vary the frontage, but having good secondary, unmanned, prepared positions and retrograde routes, the frontage can be maintained in my opinion. I also wanted to say that I really enjoy your videos, mainly because with most videos of a similar nature I feel that I know more than the person narrating, yet it is obvious that you have put in countless hours understanding the minutiae of both military history and modern military studies. I actually learn things from your channel, without the oft-repeated cliches of military history.

really enjoyed this type of video, please keep it up

This is the kind of content I subscribe for. Tactical deployments are always interesting for replicating it in various forms, be it models or in games.

This is a excellent channel,please keep pushing content.

Great video. The manual gives an commander the best theoretical approach to solve a battle situation. In reality there are always different conditions (weather, time, not enough ammo, wounds...) and you have to adjust the approach. Often you do not need a perfect 100% solution, you need a quick and courageous solution, otherwise your enemy overrun you. In this case everthing depended on the weather that was extremly cold and the Germans were not prepared with winter equipment. Therefore they needed the shelter of the village to survive the cold winter weather...It is no secret that the early winter was the reason, why Moscow was not conquered by the German Wehrmacht.

Yay, I turned on notifications last week :) Great as always!

Thank you for this interesting analysis. It really helps explain how the Germans were able to hold the line during the Soviet counterattack before Moscow. What I took away was although German infantry were very depleted, they still had a lot of heavy weapons to deploy if this battalion position is typical. That explains a lot and makes sense because when withdrawing highest priority will always be placed on keeping key weapon systems. For example infantry units will always strive to keep their machine guns and these require only small teams to operate.

Your channel is intriguing. Im a long time fan of warfare and you get to the points without a bunch of nonsense. Well done.

i really liked this video it would be cool to see a videos like this on all the major armies of ww2 and maybe compare this to defensive tactics of ww1

That AT gun back in the treeline looks like it provides a rear security or defense in depth feature as well. In the event of envelopment of the village, it's in a position to hit tanks from the rear or flanks where the 50mm is more effective and could theoretically be used for suppressive fire if troops were displacing and falling back from the village.

this is one of your best videos

Another fantastic and informative video as always.

fantastic video, I feel more confident to start a game of graviteam tactics already. More of these please!

Love these types of vids man keep em up

I love your vids bud , me and my squad mates legit use some of the info you give for games like HLL and war thunder , keep it up gent.

One of your best videos! I love it

The placement on the village of the flack and the antitank cannon was clearly made to prevent to be outflanked by tanks . Beacause that move was able to obliterate the anti infantry defenses , if tanks get toward the village directly they would not suffer much cause the line of fire is blocked and you are hidden by buildings so you can let the infantry take care of tanks alone efficently . So it seems to me a very well thought defense .

I've been a casual observer of your vids for quite a while. This one got me subscribed. :-) Next step Patroen? Very possible. This tactical analysis is REALLY interesting.

Love watching your vids and learning from them. Thank U for your hard work . :)

10:54 2 panzer 3s gets interpreted by the subtitles as 2 pounds of fries lol

Great video, this is amazing, I hope there would be a video on an actual medieval defensive fortification.

Nice rundown, thanks.

Fantastic and informative video.

Really nice video! If possible, please make more of these, but showing the whole fight. For someone like me, who doesn't know much about real life military tactics, its pretty interesting.

Excellent video. This is what I'm here for. :D

Recent subscriber here. Good content and well put together videos. Thanks.

I came from bo times channel list, after 5 minutes of this video the notifications have been turned on :)

Great material btw and thankyou. If I could have had you as my history teacher in school I would have paid more attention.

Gerade den Kanal entdeckt. Sehr interessant mach weiter so!

Your accent is just so so good. It flows so smoothly between the words and languages.

Great Video👍

Ah good - no ending music. Great job on a vid with outstanding detail. I wonder how long that German position held out? 90% understrength German company! Wow.

Awesome research and presentation thanks :)

Thank you!

That's VERY WELL DONE! EXTREMELY INTERESTING! Thank You for uploading!
PS.
Regards from Poland.

After you showed me Steel Devition and I got edicted, I need to rewatch your tactics videos. 😁
Vielen Dank!

Gutes Video

Great video thanks

Very good work.

Great Video, Cant afford to donate atm, but love your videos and watch adds to help out what I can.

Another masterpiece!!

I love it the best channel. As a suggestion maybe someday you will add more visual images (perhaps some gamesRTS or grand strategy ) most of them respect the army doctrines , strategy tactics and employment of weapons. I would love too see such videos made by you and showing the employment of different tactics.I know a couple of games worth mention in order to achieve a more detailed historical accuracy and also enjoyable experience. Thank you soo much for all your effort and for your patreons.

just amazing , i am out of words

"because i kann" herrlich... super gemachtes Video

I'm not an infantryman but I have trained as one and I am an artillery assistant section chief. It makes sense to have the AT gun where it is. Not only does that give it a better field of fire, but it covers the most likely avenue of approach which is the main road going into town. Additionally, having the 88s placed forward in the town gives them some concealment from observation and allows them to support the infantry with direct fire.
The more I look at these defensive plans, the more I like them. I'm seeing plenty of overlapping fields of fire, fields of crossfires, and heavy weapons ideally placed to support the infantry. Attacking the town from the tree line gives the shortest route into the town and the most concealment from enemy fire. Whoever the German commander was, he obviously knew this which is why he placed so many LMGs to protect that flank.

Good tactical analysis

If you do more of this kind of videos with detailed tactics/fighting between company/batallion-sized units on eastern and western front I will be a patreon. More of this please.

Please more of these vids!

This video was excellent...

I love your videos.

Your work is very professional. The pop ups were a distracting. I will keep watching Thank you

amazing video

Thank You .

Thax great video.

Great video. Makes me want to setup a tactical wargame on my table

More tactics videos like thissssss pleaseeee

DiplexHeated should make a Men of War Robz Realism scenario based on these maps.

How did the Germans modify their defensive tactics when facing Americans and British armies on the western front?

I love your videos...

6:27 When I saw AP, I thought armor-piercing but then I realized anti-personnel.

You could review "The Defense of Duffer's Drift" and other military classics. The USMC Commandant's Reading List alone could provide months of material.

This video drove home the importance of experienced and competent commanding officers to me. having your heavier weapons in the right place would be the difference between winning and losing, and that's what a commander is there to do. decided where resources should be placed.

Ausgezeichnetes video!

Thank you. . . .

I'm here so early this time we might take Moscow before the russian winter hits!

OH MAN! I really liked this video! PLEASE make more like this! I'd love to see Russian, British, French, American, etc. equivalents!

I like your videos alot. It would be excellent to get some videos about soviet tactics by you. It will be helpful to understand the dynamics.

The AT gun at the back is perfectly positioned to attack the underbelly of tanks mounting the snow berm or breaking through around the south of the village to attempt an encirclement. I think this fits in perfectly with it being a position in depth countering the Soviet doctrine to by-pass positions they couldn’t take, as you mentioned at the beginning of the video. It seems like it might be able to fire down the Main Street of the village too if tanks had got in there and been cut off from infantry support similar to the first day.
Equally on the berm you don’t mention the machine guns. It all seems to be set up to isolate infantry from tanks - allow the soviet tanks to bypass or go through and be removed by the AT gun once over extended. German tanks placed close to enable a counter attack on infantry if the infantry do break in to the village.

For more about this I'd recommend Panzer Operations: The Eastern Front by General Raus

Wow Verry Nice Video.

I would thoroughly enjoy to see a video about the main weakness in this kind of defensive strategy for as is obvious by the Germans defeat during the war no line is unbreakable.

very interesting

It reminds me of _sudden strike._
In that game it was super stressful to relocate artillery to defend yourself, when you had not enough tanks to quickly fill the gap. Also counter artillery fire and bombers could bring you close to a heart attack if you had to rely on truck drawn arty...

The placement of the 88mm seems a little strange to me. Being in the middle of the village seems like it would limit the ability to utilize the long effective range of the weapon as well as it's field of fire, and leave it vulnerable to close infantry assaults if the enemy did break through the main defense. At the same time maybe the sector it was covering was considered to be the main focus of the enemy advance or armor. I am sure the ground force commander had his reason for deploying in that manner. Additionally, was there a Light machine gun with the pak 38? I know that it was normal doctrine in the Wehrmacht to have 1 x MG34 per PAK for local defense, but according to the diagram there was not one, maybe they were short on guns and had to use it in a different location of the defense. I also assume that the "heavy mortars" are actually medium 8.0cm organic to the battalion?

I love your videos mate, I get german language lesson as well as learning other gems. I wish I could speak german aswell as you speak English. You have also nearly mastered English humour although you still show your German humour side, zis is unacceptable!

I feel like these are the types of tactics missing in current RTS and turn based games. Great stuff.

Everything you said I'll forgot them tomorrow but I will remember the look of the machine gun and anti-tanks guns

Against Russian armor the German infantry formations also had a hard time of it. In exceptional cases they could prepare gun lines with enough heavy ATGs well enough protected and sited to give an armor attack a bloody nose, but normally they were not rich or prepared enough for that. Keep in mind that the Russians were quite good at tank infantry cooperation in their mech arm - by midwar that is, early they hadn't been - but lagged in the development of tank artillery cooperation. Which is what tanks need to deal with gun based defenses efficiently. The German infantry formations themselves tried to just strip tanks of their infantry escorts and let the tanks continue. The Russians would sometimes make that mistake, and send the tanks deeper on their own. That put them in the middle of a deep German defense that would know more about where they were and what they were doing than vice versa. But that is really an "own goal" thing - if the Russian tanks just stayed with their riders and shot the crap out of the German infantry defenses, the Russian doctrine worked fine.
The leading infantry companies are presenting the enemy a fire discipline dilemma - how close to let the advancing Russian infantry get before revealing their own positions by cutting loose. The longer they take to do so, the close the Russian infantry gets before being driven to the ground. Enemy fire is fully expected to drive the leading infantry waves to the ground, or even to break them or destroy them outright - at first. But every revealed firing point in that cutting loose is then subjected to another round of prep fire by all of the organic and added fire support elements supporting the attack. The battalion 82mm mortars, any attached tanks, and the muckety-mucks special falling skies firepower, smashes up whatever showed itself crucifying the leading wave.
Then the next wave goes in, just like the first, on the same frontage. No great finesse about it, but some of the defenders already dead in the meantime. Same dilemma for his survivors. When they decide to hold their fire to avoid giving the mortars and Russian artillery and such, juicy new things to shoot at, the advancing infantry wave gets in among them instead. And goes to work with grenade and tommy gun, flushing out every hole. The grenadier is the beater and the tommy gun is the shotgun, and Germans are the quail. Notice, the firepower of the infantry that matters in this is the short range stuff, because at longer range the killing is done by supporting artillery arms. The rifles of the most of the infantry supplement of course, but really the LMGs and rifles are primarily there as the defensive firepower of the rifle formation, at range.
It is slow and it is bloody and it is inefficient - but it is relentless. The thing being maximized is fight and predictability - that the higher muckety mucks can count on an outcome on this part of the frontage proportional to what they put into it. Where they need to win, they put in enough and they do win - hang the cost. It isn't pure suicide up front - the infantry go to ground when fired at and they fire back,and their supporting fires try to save them, and the next wave storms forward to help and pick up the survivors and carry them forward (and carry the wounded back). In the meantime the men that went to ground are defending themselves as best they can and sniping what they can see; they are not expected to stand up again and go get killed. That is the next wave's job. The first did its part when it presented its breast to the enemy's bullets for that first advance. The whole rolls forward like a ratchet, the waves driven to ground holding tenaciously whatever they reached.
That is the rifle, combined arms army, way of fighting.

The forces are close to facilitate transition ,and the at50 mm is there to cover retreating forces
This plan for height maneuverability and endurance