Is this true??

Bootie

Bootie

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Came across this... can anyone validate it?

Capture-5.png
 
I don't know about those nations, but i do know at the start of WW2 the British army generally was not trained in retreat, in fact it was monty's unit (division i think) which was said to be the only one able to retreat effectively in the battle of france.
 
Believe that's true based on what I've read over the years about the axis and russia, but don't have on hand data to confirm.
 
Definetly not true on Germany's part. They had some masterful retreats. The entire Italian Campaign was a series of text book operations in the art of a fighting withdrawal. Their retreat from Alamein was a success and a descent part of the Africa Korps was saved to fight again in Tunisia and Western Libya. There are probably many other good examples on other fronts too.

As for Russia, maybe its true. I have an extremely low opinion of their tactics and fighting abilities in general.

It is hard to say with Japan. In the pacific they fought a seires of Island Campaigns where they really didn't have retreat as an option. I don't know enough about their land campaign in Asia to give an informed opinion.

Lord Bane
 
That was right at the beginning of the war Monty's division was one of the only well trained groups the british had. Just reading a book called the Masters of Battle about Monty, Patton & Rommel.
 
Yes Numberz, ive recently read that book hence where i got my comment from lol.

And LB the article quote says began the war the Russians and Germans certainly learn't how to retreat over the course of the war.
 
That is true Jonny, but the article doesn't make much sense to me any way. Armies are not taught how to retreat that I am aware of. They are taught how to make a series of fighting withdrawls. It is a rare case when an army completely breaks contact and runs for their lives. That is not something that you "train' to do. I have been in the US military for 23 years and we have never practiced "retreating"?? Perhaps the article should have said that none of the participants practiced defensive tactics.
 
Absolutely. But when we "Break Contact" we only break direct fire contact. We still attempt to keep the enemy under observation and then we develope the situation from there. We don't just run away until we can't see the enemy any more. If it happens, it wasn't something that we train to do. We don't spend a lot of time training to fight defensively as a rule of thumb. Even when I was stationed in Korea we didn't spend a lot of time training in defensive tactics and when we did it was training in a very mobile defense.
 
I guess it also has to do with the institutional "Ego" of an army for want of a better word... no army ever intends to lose any wars and so never intend to have any retreats.

German army struggled with it too -- accounts from Barbarossa when Guderian's Panzer Group was holding the line after the Smolensk encirclement and before the Kiev operation, the Panzer Divisions struggled to hold off Russian counter-attacks as they were then not equipped nor trained for defensive positional fighting and suffered quite some wastage in manpower and equipment.
The Germans were however very fast learners on the operational/tactical level... not so much on the startegic level, which I guess is fortunate for us living today :)
 
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