General Discussions  
This is the place to discuss general issues related to the U-boat war or the war at sea in WWII. 
Doenitz again
Posted by: SuperKraut ()
Date: August 14, 2001 08:50AM

<HTML>You are quite right that it is difficult to compare commanders from various military services, generals and admirals are not quite the same. Doenitz was arguably the best German naval commander, but when you consider the competition, that does not mean all that much. He did quite well with the resources he had, but he failed miserably to bring those resources up to date in a timely manner.

The most successful commanders were in the Heer, with von Manstein probably the best one, although there was plenty of good competition. Rommel was probably the best known, but he had some major faults as well, especially his disdain for the intricacies of logistics, which made him unusable for running anything bigger than a corps. He and Patton had a lot in common. Guderian was a brilliant, forward looking technical innovator who developed much of Blitzkrieg, but he too had some weaknesses as a field commander of anything bigger than a corps. I suspect being a brilliant field commander and a technical innovator is mutually exclusive.

Paulus, not von Paulus, was a staff officer who had no business commanding a large formation, let alone something the size of 6th Army. The Stalingrad disaster was really caused by the death of von Reichenau who was supposed to be Paulus\' boss. With von Reichenau gone, Paulus reported direct to Hitler and the rest is history.

Regards,
SuperKraut
</HTML>

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Subject Written By Posted
ABOUT DOENITZ serdar 08/12/2001 01:07PM
RE: ABOUT DOENITZ MPC 08/12/2001 06:21PM
RE: ABOUT DOENITZ George Roumbos 08/12/2001 08:25PM
RE: ABOUT DOENITZ Terry Andrews 08/13/2001 04:12AM
RE Bound to happen again! Joe Brennan 08/13/2001 05:03AM
RE: RE Bound to happen again! Torlef 08/13/2001 06:16AM
Doenitz\' succes Dietzsch 08/13/2001 07:46AM
Doenitz again SuperKraut 08/14/2001 08:50AM
German leaders in WWII Craig McLean 08/15/2001 02:37AM
Paulus SuperKraut 08/15/2001 07:55AM
RE: Paulus walter M 08/15/2001 06:16PM
RE: Doenitz again Kris 08/16/2001 01:04PM


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