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correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
0
| 23 |
https://discovery-patsnap-com.libproxy.mit.edu/company/cerego/patent/
|
en
|
Cerego LLC:Patent,Patent Application,Portfolio Analysis - Discovery
|
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[] |
[] |
[
"Cerego LLC",
"patent",
"Technical research",
"Competitor monitor",
"Market trends",
"Company profile",
"discovery",
"PatSnap"
] | null |
[] | null |
Discovery Company profile page for Cerego LLC including technical research,competitor monitor,market trends,company profile& stock symbol
|
en
|
/company/favicon.png
|
https://discovery-patsnap-com.libproxy.mit.edu/company/cerego/patent/
| ||||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
3
| 21 |
https://www.academia.edu/34673374/Hari_Om_Tat_Sat
|
en
|
Hari Om Tat Sat
|
http://a.academia-assets.com/images/open-graph-icons/fb-paper.gif
|
http://a.academia-assets.com/images/open-graph-icons/fb-paper.gif
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"A R",
"independent.academia.edu"
] |
2017-09-25T00:00:00
|
Hari Om Tat Sat
|
https://www.academia.edu/34673374/Hari_Om_Tat_Sat
|
In this paper I do not want to examine what Nietzsche thought about India but to take the other point of view and ask what and how Indians think or thought of Nietzsche, taking as examples Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938), Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho) (1931-1990).
Osho’s interpretation of Sufism is one of the most attractive interpretations currently available. He argued that exoteric dimension is dispensable for the practice of Sufism and this makes him unique amongst modern interpreters and “masters” of Sufism. He claimed to be a Sufi master. His more or less Nietzschean interpretation of mysticism and Sufism is intriguing, provocative and at times inconsistent and problematic. While highly insightful occasionally he takes too many liberties with the classical canons of scholarship. His lucid and easily accessible style is his strength.
|
|||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 1 |
https://www.eweek.com/database/oracle-acquires-hotsip-ab/
|
en
|
Oracle Acquires HotSip AB
|
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[
""
] | null |
[
"Renee Boucher Ferguson"
] |
2006-02-16T23:09:00+00:00
|
Oracle would add another component to its burgeoning middleware stack with its plans to acquire JBoss.
|
en
|
eWEEK
|
https://www.eweek.com/database/oracle-acquires-hotsip-ab/
|
eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison wasnt kidding when he said earlier in February that the company is looking to fill holes in its middleware stack.
On the heels of its SleepyCat embedded open-source database acquisition Feb. 14, Oracle announced the following day its purchase of HotSip AB.
HotSip, a Sweden-based company, provides telecommunications infrastructure software through a J2EE/SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) application server, as well as applications that enable messaging, telephony and conferencing capabilities.
The terms of the deal, subject to regulatory conditions, were undisclosed.
HotSip also brings a number of high-profile customers to the table, including Ericsson, Hewlett-Packard and Nokia.
Thomas Kurian, senior vice president of Oracle Server Technologies, said in a statement that the addition of HotSips technology “will allow Oracle to build on its leadership in middleware and in carrier-grade communications infrastructures.”
HotSip is Oracles 16th acquisition in just under 14 months.
The company has spent an estimated $19 billion acquiring everything from business applications software vendors—Oracle bought PeopleSoft in January 2005 for about $10.3 billion and Siebel Systems for $5.85 billion—to security software developers.
In the middleware sector—an area Oracle has claimed its dominance in for the past couple years—Oracle acquired ContextMedia last July, which develops content integration software.
Oracle is also rumored to be considering the acquisition of open-source application server provider JBoss.
The cost of that deal could reach $400 million, though some estimates go as low as $200 million.
There are a number of theories circulating, particularly among the analyst community, as to what Oracles acquisition of JBoss would mean—for its middleware stack, and for disparate application stacks.
/zimages/1/28571.gifRead more here about Oracles plans to acquire JBoss.
Judith Hurwitz, president of The Hurwitz Group, believes that the acquisition would be used to bolster a fledgling Fusion Middleware stack, and to provide a common set of services across the many, many applications Oracle has amassed in its 14-month tech shopping extravaganza.
“The Fusion [Middleware] spec is not codified software—that means they need middleware now. They cant wait,” said Hurwitz, in Waltham, Mass.
“Theyll use JBoss as integrating middleware…. [to develop] a consistent set of services across all their suites. Just to maintain each separate [infrastructure] is very expensive.”
Fusion, according to Hurwitz, is “just not done,” she said. “Its not consistent across the entire stack.”
Gartners Yvonne Genovese believes Oracle would use the open-source JBoss application server as an underlying component to services derived from Oracles applications—and open-source those services.
“What they could do is take some of those services that theyre building for their [on premises] repository and underpin them with an open-source app server, then drive people into their applications,” said Genovese.
“They dont really in the end have an open-source applications product—the holy grail that everyones been looking for—but some semblance of pieces of open source that are available. Thats the next step we expect a lot of application vendors to take, and then to make them more available to an ecosystem like SAP is doing.”
In fact, much of Oracles acquisition strategy centers on besting the No. 1 software developer in the world, Germany-based SAP.
Oracle, after the acquisition of PeopleSoft (and by default JD Edwards & Co) took a trailing second place to Oracle and has vowed to overtake its rival ever since.
Historically an ERP (enterprise resource planning) software developer, SAP entered the integration market in 2003 with the development of its ESA (Enterprise System Architecture) strategy and underlying NetWeaver process integration stack.
Oracle is moving on a similar platform strategy—as is Microsoft—with the development of its Fusion Architecture and underlying Fusion Middleware stack that will eventually feed into its next-generation Fusion Applications suite, expected in 2008.
SAP is expected to complete its ESA work by 2007.
|
|||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 55 |
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/abhinandan-shah_the-coffee-house-i-spent-my-last-sunday-activity-7130209803464785920-QsBh
|
en
|
Abhinandan Shah on LinkedIn: The coffee house 🧋 I spent my last Sunday afternoon at a Starbucks in…
|
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|
https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/D4D22AQHY4FMg_AxNlg/feedshare-shrink_2048_1536/0/1699974488381?e=2147483647&v=beta&t=8mobYyNg9HUOrj7HfmczOZmyW4GjYVupjzrbnoHEBUI
|
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[
""
] | null |
[
"Abhinandan Shah"
] |
2023-11-14T15:08:10.021000+00:00
|
The coffee house 🧋
I spent my last Sunday afternoon at a Starbucks in suburban Dubai. I'm not that fond of Starbucks, but it felt, um... familiar.
I took a… | 10 comments on LinkedIn
|
en
|
https://static.licdn.com/aero-v1/sc/h/al2o9zrvru7aqj8e1x2rzsrca
|
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/abhinandan-shah_the-coffee-house-i-spent-my-last-sunday-activity-7130209803464785920-QsBh
|
The chaos rides 🤳 “100 Rupees? I am not an out-of-towner, I demand a better rate!”. “That’s the usual rate sir”, “I will give you 70 Rupees, not a paisa more”. Back in the 90s, when we arrived in town on-board a train, my family and I would lug our boxy suitcases down several flights of stairs from a foot-over-bridge. We would then walk towards a familiar auto-rickshaw rank. No drama, just a “right-of-passage” haggle and we'd swiftly be on our way. Fast forward to 2024, most travel is now by air, and boxy cases have long been replaced by their soft, wheeled counterparts. What’s more, there are escalators, travelators and elevators everywhere with no footbridges in sight. So last Saturday, when we touched down in Pune for a wedding, we swiftly made our way through the airport and headed to the “aeromall”. After a short walk, we reached the ride hailing area. Imagine a parking lot with haphazard signages and lots of people. Most of them, frustrated, trying to locate their rides with a phone in their hand. There was honking, hollering and a lot of unsafe maneuvering. Finally, after 4 calls, 40 minutes of waiting, and 400 breaths of assorted exhaust gasses we met our rescuer in chief. Why do Uber and its brethren descend into chaos at airports? I mean, these platforms are A+ at digitally serving the demand curve. In a large city for example, when demand spikes, they are lightening fast with scale and surge pricing. Their thrifty "just-in-time" supply chains are highly popular, not only among other platforms but also among traditional industries such as automobiles and semiconductors. Efficiency comes at a cost though. The “on-demand bliss” is highly vulnerable to disruptions and bottlenecks. COVID-19 exposed these flaws ruthlessly, most notably in the semiconductor industry, impacting car manufacturing. Factories shut down, and demand for consumer electronics soared, creating a chip shortage that led to production delays in the automotive sector. Could my airport-mare be linked to this vulnerability? Let's see. At an airport, digitally finding a ride is not the challenge, but drivers and passengers still need to find each other and load at unfamiliar places. When hundreds of rides & passengers do this “together”, the system breaks 🤷♂️. Think about it, both parties are already there, any matching, communication and random loading movement are just overheads. What if Uber could intelligently throttle the flow of drivers to a “pick up gateway” instead? The passengers could join their own queue after they “summon” and when it's time, they could board the first available ride! A QR scan can enable a retrospective digital match. A digital taxi rank! Now, I am sure that folks at these amazing companies have figured it all out, and I realize that I probably sound like a couch-key-warrior, but I am a responsible customer, and I care deeply. So the least I can do is haggle 🤓! #ondemand
"My LinkedIn AI twin 👨💻" Despite its annoyances, I like LinkedIn. I've met plenty of amazing people over here and a lot of you know me from here as well. My network has grown massively over the years. I also really like LinkedIn learning. Oh and boy I'm glad that the platform’s discourse has not descended to the level of YouTube thumbnails. Yes, there's still a lot of cringe, there's a lack of depth but overall I think it's a positive network, with a massive potential. As a LinkedIn Premium member, I get data-driven insights, the ability to message anybody via InMails, and the badge has a bit of an appeal, but it doesn't feel like value for money. I get a lot of noise, and while there are many exclusive AI features, I am left wanting more. My hypothesis is that a LinkedIn digital twin would be a great feature to contain all that noise and drive meaningful engagement. I mean, DMs just don't feel right anymore 🤷♂️. So, this is my first attempt at building something from scratch and presenting it as a fully scalable solution to an open audience. It's only because of AI that I have been able to build this, and I've learnt so much. https://ai-bhinandan.com/ As adopting AI is beginning to feel like "trying to hit a moving target, blindfolded while riding a horse," I think the only thing that can differentiate hype from reality is how much effort we put into building. Have a cracking weekend! #generativeai
Be quiet, and listen to the silence 🤫 “May I have some water”? My delivery had just shown up at the door. “Sure! can I also bring you a can of coke?”. That look in his eyes negated any need for an answer. It took me a second to realize it. “Hang on”, I said, and rushed inside. What followed was hardly an original gesture but it certainly made the moment feel special. Somewhere though, there was an uncomfortable silence. About 25 minutes ago, I had pressed a button on my phone and a fellow human had to brave the elements, and put his life at risk on a high speed road. All for bringing me an “Iced Latte”. It's getting hotter and hotter in Dubai. Today, the city recorded a maximum of 42 degrees Celsius, and it's “only June”! To be fair, Dubai handles the rising mercury like a pro. All transportation and dwellings are air-conditioned, with basements and porches built specifically to avoid unnecessary sun exposure. My daily commute, for instance, starts in the basement of my building and ends in the basement of my office. Heat & humidity exposure is less than two minutes. Indeed, I know that I am lucky, and I am also acutely aware that in Dubai or Delhi, not everyone has the same privilege. My family and I often talk about this. Behind every cheap convenience, there is a silent reality. Perhaps, they're saving for a sister's wedding, or they simply have mouths to feed. They are hustling, always trying to make ends meet, with hope in their hearts and strife in their stride. I'm also aware that people living this reality have no use for my discomfort. One small gesture is hardly going to make a difference, but I've experienced that most people are kind and as long as they are able to listen to that uncomfortable silence, they will help. Listening to silence? I owe you an explanation. I have been devouring this book called “Stillness is the key”, by Ryan Holiday this weekend. Ryan reminds us that, in our frictionless, noisy, and digital world, “we are constantly training our mind to stick to the first thought that gets thrown at it”. He says, “If we want to think better, we need to seize these moments of quiet. If we want more revelations-more insights or breakthroughs or new, big ideas-we have to create more room for them. We have to step away from the comfort of noisy distractions and simulations. We have to start listening”. I interpret all of this as a “skill” we need to hone. One that gives us an ability to listen to those big and small moments of silence in our lives. A breathtaking sunset, or the birth of a child, our first time on stage in front of hundreds of people, or a difficult summer delivery of an “iced latte” at our doorstep. We must pause and listen to the moments of silence. Ryan's book has a quote by Herman Melville, the 18th century creator of “Moby Dick” that sums it all up beautifully. “All profound things and emotions of things are preceded and amended by silence, and silence is the consecration of the universe”. #culture
The Road Test “Abind, is there an Abind here?” I heard a deep voice through the corridor. “Excuse me, are you looking for me?” I approached this smartly dressed Emirati man. “Of course brother, I have been calling your name”, he quipped as we entered this large square room called "The final road test". After driving in over a dozen countries, my hubris took a beating when I moved to Dubai last year. I remember yelling, "Man! They drive fast around here" to my cab driver. I also never seem to get used to those high speed merges. Imagine a giant trailer thundering along at 120 kph, when you're accelerating towards it, it's often too close - not for the faint hearted. I have driven on the vast interstate network in the US, the Autobahns in Germany, and the motorways in the UK and on various expressways in India, but nothing compares with driving in Dubai. Habibi, you need to "come to Dubai'' to experience it 😃. Along with 2 others, I was now seated in the waiting area. There were RTA signages everywhere and functional furniture dotted almost every wall and corner. In a few minutes, a door “clicked” open. A young kandora-clad officer emerged from the “examiner's room” with a tablet. He verified our IDs and then announced the sequence of testing. “Abind, you go 2nd”, he said. We now got into the car. At first, there was pin drop silence in the cabin. The first driver looked at all the mirrors so much that I thought he deserved an Oscar 😂. After adjusting everything for a good 45 seconds, the examiner calmly asked, “ready?” and we started. The examiner kept his cool and gave clear driving instructions. At one point the driver slowed too much, when the examiner said, “let's go brother, why slow down?”. I thought his sparse comments were epic. Soon, he said “park when safe”. As the candidate got out of the seat, the examiner asked him, “is the car parked correctly?”, it wasn't. “Should I correct it?”, said the candidate. The examiner retorted, “is it parked correctly?” the candidate gave in, “no” he said, “Khallas, then” declared the officer. Now it was my turn and yes, it wasn’t my first time. I had failed my previous attempt. “I oversped because my instructor had told me”, I had justified back then. This time, I simply drove like “me”. I went across a roundabout and merged onto a motorway. I switched lanes, and headed back towards the exit as instructed. Zero mistakes. The third candidate was ok, too. We arrived back at the testing area, and the examiner gave feedback to everyone. When it was my turn, he simply looked at me, paused for a second and said only one word, “pass”. Think about it, unfamiliarity affects our strongest craft in unexpected ways. In a difficult road test, for instance, you must remain calm, and make good decisions at the wheel. You might fail regardless of your experience but you must trust your craft and try. Unfamiliarity also has a different thrill to it, but Habibi, you must embrace it to experience it 😃. #culture
"Inner place & outer space" I am all but convinced that there are only two kinds of people out there. Those on the “inside” and those “outside”. The thought has played on my mind like rats in a basement for several months, but last week, a train ride from Pune put everything into perspective. I was running late and before I could even enter the station, I heard the engine roar from a distance. Fearing a slippery disaster, I planted myself firmly into a position and then started “speed-walking”. The train had just moved so I picked up the pace, too. As soon as I spotted an opening, I hurled myself in. I tried to open the heavy door of a crowded compartment, when someone on the inside yelled, “Oh mister, this is second class! Keep walking!”. It's amusing how the “insiders” assume that all “outsiders” are from third class. I held steady by the grips as another one bawed, “there's so much space in the compartment ahead!”. Except there wasn't. I was pushing in, and people inside were resisting. The door didn't give an inch. Especially with a giant, self-appointed doorman protecting its side. Within seconds, I had to retreat, but I wasn't going to give in. I went straight for the window. I shoved my rucksack and dove in, head first. My hands spread out, legs up in the air, I was a human trident 🔱. Now I'm not sure whether Lord Shiva had mercy on me, but people inside certainly did. The train had picked up speed by now. I was dragged inside, and now stood shoulder to shoulder with the giant doorman. Within minutes, I had completely changed. The anger I had about the doorman was long gone. At first, there was some pretty boring small-talk, and then he offered me a fruit and in turn I offered him a cigarette. We joined our rucksacks together and settled on our makeshift seats. It was incredible, my thoughts for the doorman went from borderline homicidal to benevolent in a matter of minutes. The “insiders” too, gave up their animosity. I was now part of the very force I had been fighting. My beliefs were transformed, my perspective altered, and my struggle turned into cooperation. So, at the next station, when a group of unruly passengers tried to wade into our compartment, we put up a united front and I protected my “insider” brethren. I was never going to look at the world the same. Think about it, this phenomenon is the very basis of our ambition, happiness, and adversity. Whether in our careers, politics, or our lives. The insiders are riding the present while the outsiders wait to ride the future; insiders stretch their limbs and worship slumber, while outsiders worry about finding 12 inches of space to stand. All this while the almighty nature plays an endless game of swap among the ”insiders” and “outsiders”. This game is all about “finding space”. Whether that space is 6 ft from Tolstoy's tale of “how much land does a man need” or 6000 miles from Churchill's dream of the Empire. #culture (Based on G.V. Karandikar's - आतले आणि बाहेरचे)
“Chatmail” E-mails have been around for over 50 years, yet they refuse to become obsolete. Despite best efforts. It's probably because they do the job though, right? why fix something that ain't broken 😃. Firstly, Cal Newport wouldn't agree with you. Second, I simply wondered, if we could make email better with a "generative" take. I highlight the technical approach in the video and also how it could get a lot better, especially with multi-agent approaches such as Microsoft's Autogen. Autogen is truly incredible, and shows outstanding potential. However in my experience it currently costs a lot and it's stubbornly difficult to get reliable results. Meanwhile, tried and tested tool calling using “commodity” closed source models seems to be the way to achieve agentic “actions” with LLMs, much beyond this use case. I am also confident that these are very feasible in a production setup. Yes, I tried open source models too. There is too much effort needed to “make them work”. It feels like trying to dig tunnels with a stick. I'd rather build on OpenAI's TBMs, and switch to open source later. How would you use agentic tool calling? #generativeai
3 stories on defying odds In 1940s Hollywood, Heidi Lamarr was known as the most beautiful woman in the world. Born in 1914 Vienna, Heidi was a curious child. Her father would take her for long walks and they would both discuss workings of machines such as the printing press or automobiles. Heidi’s life took her from an acting career in German films to being married to a scandalous Austrian munitions dealer. Somehow, in a dramatic set of events, Lamarr escaped in 1937 to London and ended up at the famous MGM studios, and the next thing? Lamarr was a Hollywood star! Lamarr always carried her curious DNA from the “long walks". She tinkered & created an upgraded “spotlight”, designed a fast plane wing using bio-mimicry and developed a “soda-pill”. In the year 1940, Lamarr met George Antheil, a composer and a fellow inventor. They discussed the looming war. Lamarr expressed how she wasn't comfortable in Hollywood while her country needed her. Together they invented a brilliant method to ensure an allied torpedo hit its target without the fear of being radio jammed. While not fully original, their “frequency hopping” technique is widely considered to be the foundation of many technologies such as Wi-Fi and GPS! That's right, reality is often stranger than fiction. It stands on the shoulders of giants and is often enabled by unsung heroes. American scientist James Watson and English physicist Francis Crick for instance, are often credited with the discovery of the DNA. Truth however, is complicated. DNA was first identified by Swiss Chemist Friedrich Meischer in the late 1860s. Decades later, in the twentieth century, Russian biochemist Levene first identified the way RNA & DNA are put together and Erwin Chargaff, in 1950, carried their work forward. He noted that DNA “varies” among species. Years later, Rosalind Franklin, an X-ray crystallographer based at King's College London, took the famous “photo 51” of the X-shaped structure of the DNA molecule. This evidence was crucial for Watson & Crick to put everything “together”. Sadly, Rosalind was recognised only posthumously. Now, “invention” may take decades, but sometimes, “moonshots” accelerate it. On July 16th 1969, Apollo 11 carried the first humans on a historic mission to the moon. Powering the flight was a state-of-the-art “AGC” or Apollo guidance computer. This was a moment in computing history as it was not only one of the first computers to use the “integrated circuitry” but also to have a prominent “display keyboard” layout. The AGC had a sophisticated compiler and a software system that was able to prioritize in real-time, critical tasks such as navigation. The entire effort was led by the amazing Margaret Hamilton, coining the term "software engineering". This March, as we mark International Women's Day, let's also draw inspiration from Heidi, Rosalind and Margaret, and dream a brighter future, where every woman's achievements shine brightly, free from the shadows of bias. #IWD
The office. We don't do much “hybrid” around here. Not because we cannot “work from home”, but because working in the office is, simply put, helpful. Most departments are located in the same building and you can just walk up to anyone and express yourself. Oh yes and there is always one too many things to do. Sometimes, it just feels too intense, “I've to deal with all this?” and I take a deep breath of trepidation but then the next hour, I realize the duality of that emotion, and I switch to “I can't believe I am doing all this” 😃! The trips to the office start on an 8 lane expressway in Dubai. The neighborhood I live in is lined up with sun-kissed residential properties, beautifully landscaped gardens and painstakingly curated flower beds. As the car makes its way out of the community, the desert makes its presence felt. It's rarely left to its wits though, as an army of construction vehicles and heavy machinery can be seen terraforming this unforgiving landscape. Dubai doesn't give in easily, it rises from the sand, defying odds in the duel between man and nature. As the car speeds up to over 120 kph, I try to discern the unspoken rules of the road but I quickly realize it's going to take me some time and there are no shortcuts. As we progress, on my left, I notice the Burj Khalifa, and how it effortlessly dwarfs the rest of the skyline. 12,000 people, 22 million hours and such an impressive feat of engineering but what's more impressive is how every single day it can have the same inspiring impact on you. I suppose, such is the nature of boundless ambition. As the car pulls over, I get to our reception. The lifts are busy, but we are duly assisted by our building staff that make sure we get on a lift as quickly as possible. The floor that me and my team sit on is brand new and a day here is easily spent fulfilling the needs of an analytics hungry business. To top that, all around me are new people, new platforms, new tools, new processes, new products, new models and often new escalations. I won't lie, in an established setup you can't even dream of doing these things. It can be exhilarating and exhausting at the same time! As I wrap up my work, it's already dusk time. Trips back from the office are super special for me because of the spectacular sunsets in Dubai. Clear, unobstructed views of the horizon, unique atmospheric conditions and high altitude clouds scatter the light into magnificent hues. As the car and I glide across E611 at 120kph, the sound of rubber hitting the road and the serene colours in the sky have an uncanny relaxing effect on me. I reach back home, and I am greeted with a loud “Daddy is back!” and a leap hug, that somehow feels a little tighter and a little longer than usual. I too hold on, just a little bit longer. #worklife
|
|||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 22 |
https://www.cio.com/article/257065/it-organization-oracle-lays-out-telecom-service-delivery-platform.html
|
en
|
Oracle Lays Out Telecom Service Delivery Platform
|
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[
"CIO Staff"
] |
2006-04-18T08:00:00-07:00
|
Oracle made another move to target telecommunications providers Tuesday, unveiling plans for a telecom service delivery platform (SDP).The move comes ...
|
en
|
https://www.cio.com/wp-content/themes/cio-b2b-child-theme/src/static/img/favicon.ico
|
CIO
|
https://www.cio.com/article/257065/it-organization-oracle-lays-out-telecom-service-delivery-platform.html
|
Oracle made another move to target telecommunications providers Tuesday, unveiling plans for a telecom service delivery platform (SDP).
The move comes less than a week after the database and applications vendor announced its intention to buy Portal Software, a maker of billing and revenue management software for the communications and media industries, for US$220 million.
Oracle is designing the SDP for use by carriers, network operators and systems integrators to help them move to service-oriented architecture (SOA), according to a release.
SOA describes the creation and management of IT systems through reusable software and services. The SOA approach is proving particularly popular in the telecom industry as providers are trying to rapidly morph their businesses to reflect the growing convergence of data, voice and video services.
Pieces of the SDP are already available, and Oracle plans to bring out more functionality later this year. The aim is to provide a single programming environment based on J2EE to make it easier for developers to deploy new services quickly and integrate and manage those offerings with existing services.
Oracle plans to expand its Fusion middleware so that users can access newer mobile, voice services and enterprise applications through traditional communication networks and networks based on IP multimedia subsystems also known as IMS and voice over IP.
So far, Oracle’s SDP includes its Oracle 10g relational database and its real application clusters, as well as the TimesTen in-memory database the company acquired in June through the purchase of TimesTen. Other Oracle acquisitions have helped fill out the SDP, including HotSip, which enables IMS support, and Net4Call, which facilitates support for legacy networks. The SDP also includes a set of adapters to connect the platform to network elements and telecom equipment along with messaging capabilities to access content from mobile devices.
Still in the planning stage for the SDP are call control across IMS and legacy networks, the integration of the SDP with billing systems, support for device management and a device repository, and a suite of services including mobile content delivery, VoIP and virtual public branch exchange.
The SDP will support not only Oracle Application Server, but rival offerings from BEA Systems and JBoss, Oracle said. Oracle had been rumored to be in talks to acquire JBoss in February, but last week Linux distribution vendor Red Hat announced its intention to buy the open-source middleware player.
|
||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 63 |
https://matttopper.com/category/data-integrator/
|
en
|
» Data Integrator .:MattTopper.com:.
|
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en
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I’ve always been intrigued by all the Oracle BI user groups out there, IOUG vs ODTUG vs OAUG. All of them have great leadership but none of them have great participation from the members. Over the years in working with all of them I’ve noticed that there aren’t many differentiators between them. An interesting questions popped up on Mix the other day wanting to merge all the BI related SIGs. Personally, I think its a great idea, but I know there are a lot of opinions out there on it. So lets hear it, make your voice heard in the mix discussion.
https://mix.oracle.com/ideas/13754-merge-all-bi-related-sigs
We’re all here for the same reason, trying to bring great BI to the world (sounds like a great campaign slogan).
Well, as many of you know, Dan Norris and I used to work together at ITC. He decided to go join some company known for handing out mints that tend to appear in peculiar places. In his post today he linked to the new site I’ve been working on. It’s obviously not live, but I linked in the blog section tonight. I still have some work to do on the templates in both the blog and wiki sections, some organization of the wiki, a couple entries in the FAQ, and a digg style rating system for users. I’ve worked out all my kinks with Amazon’s S3 service for the torrent downloads, now I’m in the process of uploading the initial VMs.
The first ones to be released will be a generic Oracle Enterprise Linux Update 5 VM with all the pre-configuration completed for database and application server installs. Next up will be a Portal 10.1.4 / BI 10.1.2.2.0 vm, an 11g database vm, and then hopefully Dan’s RAC vms. The IdM VMs will come after that. I’ve also had offers from Mark and John @ Rittmanmead.com for some of their BI and Data Warehousing VMs, hopefully I can catch up with them for dinner before the BIWA summit.
I’ve been busy with a whole bunch of client stuff lately, when Dan left ITC he also left me with a pretty healthy pipeline to deliver to, and I had already been booked for a client through the end of the year. (BTW, any Fusion Middleware guys need a job?) Needless to say, I’ve been a little busy lately and the horrible hotel upload speeds haven’t helped the situation in pushing things to Amazon.
So for now, go ahead, start using it. Tell me whats good, whats bad, what works, what doesn’t work, and I’ll do my best to keep on top of things. The OracleVMs.com project forum (http://www.oraclevms.com/forums/project.php?projectid=8) is the best place to log bugs, issues and feature requests. Feel free to start putting them there and I’ll slot them into the release cycle.
In the IOUG Fusion Task Force meeting this week, we were discussing what could be provided to build a better community around the Fusion Middleware world and it’s ever growing list of products and acquisitions. A lot of us are classic Oracle guys that have been doing Java, ADF, App Server, Portal, Discoverer, etc. since its first release. We’ve always known the standard Oracle Metalink, Forums, and ListServs for Oracle help when we need it. Now with so many acquisitions it’s getting incredibly hard to catch up and the communities for many of the new products don’t exist.
One of the big questions that came up was where have all the developers gone. For some reason the term “The Lost Developers” popped into my head, which of course popped the bad 80’s movie “The Lost Boys,” and in turn this bad graphic. (Trust me you don’t want to try and understand whats in my head)
But in all seriousness, where did everyone go. I know a lot of the people went to start their own independent consulting shops, some stayed with Oracle, but what about the rest of the world? What about all the customers and other implementation partners? I went through, looked at the acquisition list, and couldn’t find user groups or message boards for many of them. Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places or haven’t been taught the secret handshake yet, but here is the list I came up with:
Agile: Nothing
AppForge: Palm and Windows Media Local User Groups, nothing centralized
Bharosa: Nothing
Tangosol: LCUG (http://wiki.tangosol.com/display/LCUG/Home)
HotSip: Nothing
Siebel (Analytics): ITtoolbox Group (http://siebel.ittoolbox.com/groups/technical-functional/siebel-analytics-l)
SigmaDynamics: Nothing
Sleepycat: Nabble Forums (http://www.nabble.com/Berkeley-DB-f2899.html)
Stellent: Stellentforums.com and regional user groups
Context Media: Nothing
Oblix: Nothing
Octet String: Nothing
Thor Technologies: Nothing
TimesTen: Nothing
TripleHop: Nothing
Yes there are the Oracle boards, but many of them aren’t trolled by the experts of the acquired companies yet. So what happened? Where did everyone go? Right now I’m working on building a lot of pre-built virtual machines for my side project (thanks again for the people volunteering to help), but on the newer components I’m having to learn a ton as I go and it would be helpful to bounce ideas / questions off of people who have already been there and done that. I’m sure a lot of them are having the same problems now trying to deploy on to the Fusion Middleware stack.
So here it is, an open invite to come out of the corners and reveal yourselves. Where is everyone hiding? How can we build a better collaborative Oracle development world? I would love to hear people’s feedback. Maybe we need a myspace or facebook for Oracle people? I’m only half joking here, there sure are enough of us to keep it busy. What features would make it a kick ass collaboration environment? Forums? Wiki? Torrents? Instant Messaging? Desktop Sharing? Blogs Provider? Maybe just an Aggregator? Rent a VM development environments? Calendaring? Mapping? Presence? Ok, enough web 2.0 buzz words (crap, there was another one).
Call me, email me, IM me, post comments here, I just want to figure out how to make it easier on all of us.
|
|||||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 34 |
https://jcp.org/en/jsr/nominations%3Fid%3D359
|
en
|
The Java Community Process(SM) Program
|
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Nomination Type Full Name Biography Spec Lead Comments Submission date Spec Lead Vote PMO Vote Expert Group Wei Chen I am already on EG on JSR 359. But I am associated with Tropo, Inc. now, a spin-off from Voxeo Corp. Jul 30, 2014 Y Y Expert Group Rajnish Jain I've been working on VoIP for 15 years and the SIP protocol for 12 years now. I've been working on a JSR 289 application for 4 years now. I've written 2 separate SIP stacks and many applications in my career. I've 3 publications in Bell Labs Technical Journal on SIP. I'm co-author of RFC 6341 (SIP Recording) and a few other IETF Internet-Drafts. I'm invited as a guest editor for IEEE communications publications. I've 4 granted and 5 published patent applications in the field of SIP. My current interests include WebRTC and a flexible multi-layer SIP stack API in a JEE environment. Dec 27, 2012 Y Y Expert Group George Vagenas Software engineer at Telestax Inc., leading the Mobicents CDI integration and Mobicents Testing framework projects. Dec 11, 2012 Y Y Expert Group Tom Strickland Member of the JSR-309 group (Media Server Control API) - invited to join the group on the basis of submissions to the group. I have designed & developed SipServlet and other telephony applications and container code for more than 10 years. Developed applications on IBM WebSphere and Thrupoint SipServlet container (aka Ubiquity SipServlet container). Within the company, I tend to get asked questions about low-level SIP, threading issues and distributed system design. Oct 30, 2012 Y Y Expert Group Tomas Ericson -Expert Group member of JSR 289 Sip Servlet API 1.1. Spec-lead of JSR 309 Media Server Control API, which is related to the Sip Servlet programming model. -10+ years of experience of Java server programming in the telecommunications domain. -Has worked on the BEA/Oracle engineering team implementing the BEA/Oracle Sip Servlet container. Oct 24, 2012 Y Y Expert Group Keith Lewis 30 years in software development for telecomms. Served on standardisation committee for DPNSS in UK. 4 years experience as a developer of the Thrupoint JSR289 container. Oct 17, 2012 Y Y Expert Group David Ferry Co-Founder of OpenCloud (www.opencloud.com). Spec lead for JSRs 22 and 240. Member of some other JSRs. OpenCloud provide a Telecom AS and related products. A recent release is now compliant with JSR 289, so we are also a SIP Servlet vendor. Sep 26, 2012 Y Y Expert Group Jonas Borjesson I (Jonas Borjesson) started to work with SIP back in 2002 when I joined Hotsip - a company that had one of the first live SIP VoIP deployments in the world. Hotsip was acquired by Oracle in 2006 and during my time at these two companies I participated in the following projects related to SIP: * Part of the team that implemented JSR116 * Part of the team that built a new type of event driven container that handled both SIP and SS7 where I spent most of my time integrating the Oracle SIP container into this new container. * Part of the team that built a Presence Enabler as specified by OMA Presence Enabler 1.0.1. ** Personally responsible for the design and implementation of the generic subscribe/notify framework as defined by RFC3265, 3903 (we built this on top of jain sip though, 116 was early draft at the time and not clear how to act as a client in an efficient manner). ** Once Hotsip was acquired by Oracle, I was the lead in maintaining and further develop Oracles presence enabler sold under the name OCP. In January 2011 I joined Twilio as the SIP expert and am responsible for everything related to SIP and signaling. As such, I am responsible for choosing the appropriate SIP technologies, designs the overall architecture as well as being the main developer for these SIP related services. Many of these services are built on top of JSR289 so I have a lot of direct experience dealing with SIP containers, both implementing them as well as using them. Also, I do contribute to Mobicent's open source SIP container as much as I can, mainly because I think it is fun but also because sometimes we need to fix things for our own use case here at Twilio. Sep 12, 2012 Y Y Expert Group Daniel Timoney I am lead developer on several Voice over IP Application Servers used to support AT&T Business VoIP services. I have over 10 years experience developing Voice over IP applications, most of that using the SIP Servlet API. Sep 11, 2012 Y Y Expert Group Thomas Leseney We have been involved in SIP Servlets technology since the very beginning (as member of JSR116 and JSR289) and would like to contribute to SIP Servlets 2.0. Sep 7, 2012 Y Y Expert Group Kristoffer Gronowski JSR 289 EG member, Initiator and architect of project Sailfin. Sep 5, 2012 Y Y Expert Group Subramanian Thamaraisamy * 3 years of experience with SIP Protocol stack in Cisco Voice Gateways(written in C) * 3 years of experience with developing converged applications based on SIP Servlets API * Experience with application chaining based on SIP Servlets * Contributed to Opensource implementation of SIP Servlet stack Aug 31, 2012 Y Y Expert Group Nitzan Nissim I was the dev team lead and today the software architect for the WebSphere SIP container team. The container currently comply with JSR 289 and compatible with JSR 116 as well as with many other SIP related RFCs Aug 29, 2012 Y Y Expert Group Eric Cheung I have been involved with the SIP Servlet API since the formation of JSR289 EG, and is an active user of the API as a developer of the ECharts for SIP Servlet (E4SS) and other open source frameworks (see echarts.org) Aug 27, 2012 Y Y Expert Group Wei Chen I have been working on SIP Servlet container since 2004 Jul 16, 2012 Y Y Expert Group Brian Pulito I am the lead SIP architect for IBM's WebSphere product. I have done extensive work with both JSR 116 and JSR 289. JSR 359 has direct impact on a product I am responsible for and affects many IBM customers. Jul 13, 2012 Y Y
|
||||||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 18 |
https://www.crn.com/news/networking/185303569/oracle-buys-net4call-for-telecom-services-needs
|
en
|
Oracle Buys Net4Call For Telecom Services Needs
|
[] |
[] |
[] |
[
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"Oracle Service Delivery Platform",
"The Parlay Group",
"Red Hat",
"Shawn Willett",
"Current Analysis",
"Oracle",
"Hotsip",
"Novell",
"telecommunications",
"Parlay",
"Net4Call",
"telecom",
"10g",
"BEA",
"Networking",
"Telecom",
"Applications and OSes",
"Database and System Software"
] | null |
[
"Barbara Darrow"
] | null |
Oracle is acquiring Net4Call, an Oslo, Norway-based supplier of carrier-grade infrastructure Parlay software.
|
/icons/apple-touch-icon.png
|
https://www.crn.com/news/networking/185303569/oracle-buys-net4call-for-telecom-services-needs
|
Red Hat or Novell
The Redwood Shores, Calif., software giant bought Net4Call, an Oslo, Norway-based supplier of carrier-grade infrastructure Parlay software. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
The Parlay Group is an industry consortium that aims to develop standard APIs for developing new services that integrate telecommunications and IT.
Net4Call's wares, along with the Hotsip session initiation protocol (SIP) technology Oracle has already acquired, will be part and parcel of Oracle's Service Delivery Platform, or Oracle SDP, according to a statement released Tuesday. SIP support brings instant messaging into the fold. The infrastructure also supports the SMS and MMS protocols.
Oracle SDP comprises a wide range of Oracle middleware and facilitates VoIP, mobile and realtime applications, the company said.
Shawn Willett, principal analyst with Current Analysis, said this offering would compete with similar wares from BEA Systems and IBM.
This news shows that telecommunications companies are clearly in Oracle's crosshairs. These telcos, along with large enterpirses, are working to integrate telephony with the data processing world and to be able to build and provision new hybrid applications quickly.
Oracle's carrier-grade communications infrastructure builds on the Oracle 10g database and RAC, its TimesTen In-memory Database and other parts of its software stack.
Over time, Oracle plans to add call control and charging facilities and device management, as well as mobile content delivery, VoIP and virtual PBX capabilities.
Oracle President Charles Phillips is slated to discuss Oracle SDP later on Tuesday.
|
||||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 59 |
https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E12529_01/doc.1013/e10292/logging.htm
|
en
|
Configuring the Logging System
|
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"https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E12529_01/doc.1013/e10292/img/app_logs.gif",
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"https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E12529_01/dcommon/gifs/oracle.gif",
"https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E12529_01/dcommon/gifs/doclib.gif",
"https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E12529_01/dcommon/gifs/booklist.gif",
"https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E12529_01/dcommon/gifs/toc.gif",
"https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E12529_01/dcommon/gifs/index.gif",
"https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E12529_01/dcommon/gifs/feedbck2.gif"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] |
2005-07-10T12:57:20+08:00
|
en
| null |
Example 10-1 The Default Rolling File Appenders in log4j.xml
<!-- A size based rolling appender --> <appender name="CUSTOMER_FILE_LOG" class="org.apache.log4j.RollingFileAppender"> <param name="File" value="${oracle.j2ee.home}/log/sdp/system/system.log" /> <param name="Append" value="true" /> <param name="Encoding" value="UTF-8" /> <param name="MaxFileSize" value="100000KB" /> <param name="MaxBackupIndex" value="10" /> <layout class="org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout"> <!-- The default pattern: Date Priority [Category] Message\n --> <param name="ConversionPattern" value="%d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss,SSSZ} %-5r %-5p [%c{1}] (%t:%x) %m%n" /> </layout> </appender> <!-- A size based rolling appender --> <appender name="TRAFFIC_FILE_LOG" class="org.apache.log4j.RollingFileAppender"> <param name="File" value="${oracle.j2ee.home}/log/sdp/traffic/traffic.log" /> <param name="Append" value="true" /> <param name="Encoding" value="UTF-8" /> <param name="MaxFileSize" value="100000KB" /> <param name="MaxBackupIndex" value="10" /> <layout class="org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout"> <!-- The default pattern: Date Priority [Category] Message\n --> <param name="ConversionPattern" value="%d{ISO8601} %-5p [%c{1}] (%t:%x) %m%n" /> </layout> </appender> <!-- A size based rolling appender --> <appender name="BADMSG_FILE_LOG" class="org.apache.log4j.RollingFileAppender"> <param name="File" value="${oracle.j2ee.home}/log/sdp/badmsg/badmsg.log" /> <param name="Append" value="true" /> <param name="Encoding" value="UTF-8" /> <param name="MaxFileSize" value="100000KB" /> <param name="MaxBackupIndex" value="10" /> <layout class="org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout"> <!-- The default pattern: Date Priority [Category] Message\n --> <param name="ConversionPattern" value="%d{ISO8601} %-5p [%c{1}] (%t:%x) %m%n" /> </layout> </appender> <!-- A size based rolling appender --> <appender name="CONFIG_FILE_LOG" class="org.apache.log4j.RollingFileAppender"> <param name="File" value="${oracle.j2ee.home}/log/sdp/config/config.log" /> <param name="Append" value="true"/> <param name="Encoding" value="UTF-8" /> <param name="MaxFileSize" value="500KB"/> <param name="MaxBackupIndex" value="2"/> <layout class="org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout"> <!-- The default pattern: Date [Category] Message\n --> <param name="ConversionPattern" value="%d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss,SSSZ} [%c{1}] %m%n" /> </layout> </appender> <!-- A size based rolling appender --> <appender name="STATISTICS_FILE_LOG" class="org.apache.log4j.RollingFileAppender"> <param name="File" value="${oracle.j2ee.home}/log/sdp/statistics/statistics.log" /> <param name="Append" value="true" /> <param name="Encoding" value="UTF-8" /> <param name="MaxFileSize" value="100000KB" /> <param name="MaxBackupIndex" value="10" /> <layout class="org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout"> <param name="ConversionPattern" value="%d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss,SSSZ} %m%n" /> </layout> </appender> <appender name="STATISTICS_FORMAT_FILE_LOG" class="org.apache.log4j.RollingFileAppender"> <param name="File" value="${oracle.j2ee.home}/log/sdp/statistics/statistics.log" /> <param name="Append" value="true" /> <param name="Encoding" value="UTF-8" /> <param name="MaxFileSize" value="100000KB" /> <param name="MaxBackupIndex" value="10" /> <layout class="org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout"> <param name="ConversionPattern" value="%m%n" /> </layout> </appender> <!-- A size based rolling appender --> <appender name="EVENTLOGGER_FILE_SIZE" class="org.apache.log4j.RollingFileAppender"> <param name="File" value="${oracle.j2ee.home}/log/sdp/events.log" /> <param name="Append" value="true" /> <param name="Encoding" value="UTF-8" /> <param name="MaxFileSize" value="100000KB" /> <param name="MaxBackupIndex" value="10" /> <layout class="oracle.sdp.eventlogger.BasicLayout"></layout> </appender> <!-- ============================== --> <!-- Append messages to the console --> <!-- ============================== --> <appender name="CONSOLE" class="org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender"> <param name="Threshold" value="ERROR" /> <param name="Encoding" value="UTF-8" /> <layout class="org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout"> <!-- The default pattern: Date Priority [Category] Message\n --> <param name="ConversionPattern" value="%d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss,SSSZ} %-5p [%c{1}] %m%n" /> </layout> </appender> <appender name="SYSTEM_SOCKET" class="org.apache.log4j.net.SocketAppender"> <param name="RemoteHost" value="127.0.0.1" /> <param name="Port" value="4477" /> <param name="Threshold" value="DEBUG" /> </appender> <!-- Syslog events --> <appender name="TRAFFIC_SYSLOG" class="org.apache.log4j.net.SyslogAppender"> <param name="Threshold" value="INFO" /> <param name="Facility" value="LOCAL1" /> <!-- param name="FacilityPrinting" value="false"/ --> <param name="SyslogHost" value="127.0.0.1" /> <layout class="org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout"> <!-- The default pattern: Date Priority [Category] Message\n --> <param name="ConversionPattern" value="%d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss,SSSZ} %-5r %-5p [%c] (%t:%x) %m%n" /> </layout> </appender> <appender name="SYSTEM_SYSLOG" class="org.apache.log4j.net.SyslogAppender"> <param name="Threshold" value="ERROR" /> <param name="Facility" value="LOCAL0" /> <!-- param name="FacilityPrinting" value="false"/ --> <param name="SyslogHost" value="127.0.0.1" /> <layout class="org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout"> <!-- The default pattern: Date Priority [Category] Message\n --> <param name="ConversionPattern" value="%d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss,SSSZ} %-5r %-5p [%c] (%t:%x) %m%n" /> </layout> </appender> <appender name="EVENTLOGGER_SYSLOG" class="org.apache.log4j.net.SyslogAppender"> <param name="Threshold" value="ALL" /> <param name="Facility" value="LOCAL2" /> <!-- param name="FacilityPrinting" value="false"/ --> <param name="SyslogHost" value="127.0.0.1" /> <layout class="oracle.sdp.eventlogger.BasicLayout"></layout> </appender>
Logging Output
The output of the components is written to the log files located within the log/sdp directory of the OCMS OC4J instance's J2EE home (or through the $JBOSS_HOME/server/$jboss_server_name/log/sdp directory of the JBoss Application Server). In standalone OC4J, the log files are located within ORACLE_HOME/j2ee/home; in Oracle Application Server, the log files are located at ORACLE_HOME/j2ee/OCMS. These components write output using the pattern of
Date MS Priority Category (Thread:NDC) Message
For more information, see "Viewing Log Files".
The log files are automatically backed up by log4j's Rolling File Appender implementation. A minimum number of backups is maintained (up to the MaxBackupIndex), each backup having a maximum file size as specified in the MaxFileSize log4j configuration parameter.
Setting the Default Log Levels by Updating the log4j Configuration
You can also set the default log level for the core components by modifying the global log4j.xml file for the corresponding categories. OCMS 10.1.3.3 defines the following logger categories for its traffic, system, config, badmsg and statstics components:
oracle.sdp.ocms.traffic.
oracle.sdp.ocms.system
Note:
The following categories in the global log4j.xml file control the log level for the system log:
<category name="oracle.sdp" additivity="false"> <priority value="INFO"/> <appender-ref ref="CUSTOMER_FILE_LOG" /> </category> <category name="com.hotsip" additivity="false"> <priority value="INFO"/> <appender-ref ref="CUSTOMER_FILE_LOG" />
oracle.sdp.ocms.config
oracle.sdp.ocms.badmsg
oracle.sdp.ocms.statistics
As illustrated in Example 10-2, you can change the default log level for the traffic component by setting the <priority value> for the traffic category (oracle.sdp.ocms.traffic).
Example 10-2 Changing the Default Log Level
<category name="oracle.sdp.ocms.traffic" additivity="false"> <!-- change to INFO for logging of traffic --> <priority value="INFO"/> <appender-ref ref="TRAFFIC_FILE_LOG" /> </category>
Note:
By default, the traffic and badmsg logs are set to OFF. As a consequence, a system using these default settings will not write any messages to the traffic or badsmg logs.
The mapping of the core components to log4j categories is located in the sdp-log-components.xml file. In a standalone instance of OC4J, this file is located within ORACLE_HOME/j2ee/home/config directory; in the JBoss Application Server, the file is located within the JBOSS_HOME/Server/<$jboss_server_name>/conf directory. In Oracle Application Server, this file is located at ORACLE_HOME/J2EE/ocms/config.
Note:
All instances of OC4J with a given Oracle home share the same log4j logging system configuration since the log4j logging system is deployed and configured as a global library. Applications employing log4j for logging must add the appropriate configuration to the global log4j.xml properties file.
|
|||||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 44 |
https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/networking/oracle-gears-up-for-telecoms-biz/
|
en
|
Oracle gears up for telecoms biz
|
[
"https://www.zdnet.com/a/img/resize/bd2db96fa7f192064535eae879fe5d657ace052e/2014/12/04/e2ae89fc-7b68-11e4-9a74-d4ae52e95e57/zd-defaultauthor-jeanne-lim.jpg?auto=webp&fit=crop&frame=1&height=192&width=192"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Jeanne Lim"
] |
2006-06-01T10:00:06+00:00
|
Software giant broadens its portfolio with software aimed at helping operators reduce their IT expenditure.
|
en
|
ZDNET
|
https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/networking/oracle-gears-up-for-telecoms-biz/
|
SINGAPORE--With a string of recently-concluded acquisitions under its belt, Oracle is ready to conquer the telecoms applications and infrastructure software space, said the company's top communications executive.
At a press briefing here Wednesday, Lars Wahlström, Oracle's vice president of telecom, media and utilities division, said the company will be offering telecoms service providers a carrier-grade framework, an updated service delivery platform, as well as a BSS/OSS (business support system/operational support system) software suite.
The product portfolio is a culmination of acquisitions Oracle made in the past year, which included the purchase of real-time data management software provider TimesTen last June, CRM (customer relationship management) vendor Siebel, and IP telephony infrastructure software vendor HotSip. Oracle's latest buys are billing products developer Portal, and telecoms application development vendor Net4Call.
Wahlström said: "[The acquisitions] help us drive next-generation data center-centric architecture [in the telecoms space]. We're looking at helping telecoms operators cut [their] IT spend in half."
Specifically, he said, Oracle hopes to help these service providers meet operational challenges such as developing and deploying services that include Internet Protocol (IP) TV, video-on-demand, maximizing customer value, deploying new service-oriented architectures (SOA), and driving cost savings through options such as outsourcing and shared services.
These challenges are a result of industry trends currently shaping the telecoms industry, he noted. These market movements include the need for convergent services such as voice-over-IP, the need to reduce customer churn and maximize average revenue per user (ARPU), the move to next-generation IP networks, and the increasing number of mergers and acquisitions, he explained.
Oracle will help customers address these challenges in three main forms, Wahlström said.
First, the Oracle Carrier Grade Framework is a modular, standards-based data management infrastructure which combines Oracle Database 10g, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database. The product is aimed at helping telecoms operators replace proprietary communications equipment.
Second, Oracle has created its first packaged BSS software suite for telecoms operators, which includes a billing and revenue management system, financials and a CRM tool for large communications call centers. Parts of the BSS suite was developed from technology inherited from the Siebel and Portal acquisitions.
Third, the Oracle IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS)/Service Delivery Platform (SDP), built on Oracle Fusion Middleware, will enable operators to offer services over converged IP networks, develop new services and integrate existing systems using SOA.
According to a May report by analyst Forrester Research, Oracle has an inroad--in selling its SDP and billing offerings--to service providers that are already using the vendor's database and middleware products.
However, the report stated, Oracle "must deal with SDP competition from the likes of BEA System, Microsoft and IBM, as well as competition from developers of billing systems such as Amdocs and Convergys".
In Asia, companies such as China Telecom and Korea's mobile telecoms operator KTF, are users of Oracle applications.
According to Oracle, China Telecom is developing an SOA-based information service platform for small and midsize businesses using Oracle Database and Oracle Fusion Middleware, while KTF is looking to improve its customer service platform using Oracle Application Server 10g.
|
|||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
0
| 24 |
https://www.orafaq.com/wiki/Oracle_Corporation
|
en
|
Oracle Corporation
|
[
"https://www.orafaq.com/forum/banner/logo.jpg",
"https://www.orafaq.com/wiki/images/thumb/d/d9/Orahq4.jpg/350px-Orahq4.jpg",
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"https://www.orafaq.com/wiki/images/a/ae/Orahq5.jpg",
"https://www.orafaq.com/img/orafaq-small.gif"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
en
|
/favicon.ico
| null |
Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) is one of the largest software development companies in the world.
Company history
Oracle was established in 1977 and has offices in more than 145 countries around the world. As of 2005, its employee count was over 50,000 worldwide.
Larry Ellison (Lawrence J. Ellison) has served as Oracle's CEO for several years. Ellison served as the chairman of the board until his replacement by Jeff Henley in 2004. Ellison retains his role as CEO. Forbes magazine once judged Ellison the richest man in the world.
Ellison was inspired by the paper written by Edgar Codd on relational database systems named A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks. He had heard about the IBM System R database, also based on Codd's theories, and wanted Oracle to be compatible with it, but IBM stopped this by keeping the error codes for their DBMS secret. He founded Oracle in 1977 under the name Software Development Laboratories. In 1979 SDL changed its name to Relational Software, Inc. (RSI). In 1983, RSI was renamed Oracle Corporation to more closely align itself with its flagship product Oracle database with Howard Johns as senior programmer.
Headquarters
Oracle's HQ buildings are located in Oracle Parkway, Redwood Shores, California, USA. These buildings were featured in the 1999 film, the Bicentennial Man. Here is a photo:
Use the following contact details to get in touch with Oracle Corporation:
Home Page: http://www.oracle.com
Phone: (650) 506-7000
Fax: (650) 506-7200
Postal address:
Oracle Corporation 500 Oracle Parkway Redwood Shores, CA 94065 United States of America
Product overview
Oracle provided a vast range of products and services. For a detailed list, see Oracle Product Set and Oracle Services.
In summary - they provide the following software solutions:
database management systems (Oracle Database, Oracle RDB, TimesTen, Berkeley DB, etc.)
tools for database development (Oracle Developer Suite - Forms, Reports, JDeveloper, etc.)
application server (OC4J, Portal, SSO, etc)
enterprise resource planning software (ERP)
customer relationship management software (CRM)
supply chain planning software (SCM)
Competitors
Oracle's main competitors in the database business are:
Microsoft SQL Server
IBM with DB2 and Informix
Sybase with their Sybase System
CA with Ingres
Software AG with ADABAS and MaxDB
Open source databases (free, but normally way behind their commercial equivalents):
MySQL
PostgreSQL
EnterpriseDB
Oracle's main competitors in the middleware/ application servers business are:
IBM WebSphere
BEA WebLogic (until January 2008 when they bought the company)
Oracle's main competitors in the applications business are:
SAP R/3
Oracle sponsors the following charities and sports clubs:
the Golden State Warriors basketball team. The Oakland Arena was re-branded as the Oracle Arena.
Oracle BMW Racing - a yachting syndicate that participates in the America’s Cup.
Oracle history
Here is a summary of Oracle's history. For details, look at the year pages:
1977 - Relational Software Inc. (RSI - currently Oracle Corporation) established.
1978 - Oracle 1 ran on PDP-11 under RSX, 128 KB max memory. Written in assembly language. Implementation separated Oracle code and user code. Oracle V1 was never officially released.
1980 - Oracle 2 released - the first commercially available relational database to use SQL. Oracle runs on on DEC PDP-11 machines. Code is still written in PDP-11 assembly language, but now ran under Vax/VMS.
1982 - Oracle 3 released, Oracle became the first DBMS to run on mainframes, minicomputers, and PC's (portable code base). First release to employ transactional processing. Oracle V3's server code was written in C.
1983 - Relational Software Inc. changed its name to Oracle Corporation.
1984- Oracle 4 released, introduced read consistency, was ported to multiple platforms, first interoperability between PC and server.
1986 - Oracle 5 released. Featured true client/server, VAX-cluster support, and distributed queries. First DBMS with distributed capabilities.
1987 - CASE and 4GL toolset
1988 - Oracle 6 released - PL/SQL introduced. Oracle Financial Applications built on relational database.
1989 - Released Oracle 6.2 with Symmetric cluster access using the Oracle Parallel Server
1991 - Reached power of 1,000 TPS on a parallel computing machine. First database to run on a massively parallel computer (Oracle Parallel Server).
1992 - Released Oracle 7 for Unix
1993 - Rollout of Oracle's Cooperative Development Environment (CDE). Introduction of Oracle Industries and the Oracle Media Server.
1994 - Oracle's headquarters moved to present location. Released Oracle 7.1 and Oracle7 for the PC.
1995 - Reported gross revenues of almost $3 billion.
1995 - OraFAQ.com website launched.
1997 - Oracle 8 released (supports more users, more data, higher availability, and object-relational features)
1998 - Oracle announces support for the Intel Linux operating system
1999 - Oracle 8i (the "i" is for internet) or Oracle 8.1.5 with Java integration (JVM in the database)
2000 - Oracle 8i Release 2 released. Oracle now not only the number one in Databases but also in ERP Applications. Oracle9i Application Server generally available: Oracle tools integrated in middle tier.
2001 - Oracle 9i Release 1 (with RAC and Advanced Analytic Service)
2002 - Oracle 9i Release 2
2004 - Oracle 10g Release 1 (10.1.0) available ("g" is for grid, the latest buzzword)
2005 - The Oracle FAQ (this site) is 10 years old! Oracle 10g Release 2 (10.2.0) available. Oracle released a free version of their database, called Oracle XE (Express Edition)
2006 - Oracle announced their Unbreakable Linux program
2007 - Oracle 11g release 1 available
2009 - September Oracle 11g release 2 is available
Oracle acquisitions
Oracle recently acquired the following companies:
Oracle Rdb Server from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) formerly known as DEC Rdb - 1994 - a relational database management system (RDBMS) for mission-critical systems running on Hewlett-Packard's OpenVMS operating system only
Omniscience - November 1996 - Oracle Lite
Darwin - June 1999 - Darwin, Datamining technology
Steltor - June 2002 - Enterprise calendaring system
Collaxa - June 2004 - Business Process Management. See BPEL and SOA Suite.
PeopleSoft - January 2005 - Enterprise applications (competitor to E-Business Suite).
Oblix - March 2005 - Identity management solutions. Also see Web Services Manager.
Retek - April 2005 - retail solution, including back-office functionality for finance and human resources and extends to planning, merchandising, supply chain, and retail channels
TripleHop - June 2005 - context-sensitive enterprise search products and technology.
TimesTen - June 2005 - real-time in-memory database. See TimesTen.
ProfitLogic - July 2005 - retail industry's most comprehensive software solution, helping create tightly integrated, customer- insight-driven retail enterprises
Context Media - July 2005 - enterprise content integration (ECI) software
i-flex - August 2005 - banking industry
G-Log - September 2005 - Logistics Hub solution for global supply chain and logistics management
Innobase - October 2005 - transactional open source database management system called InnoDB
Thor Technologies - November 2005 - enterprise-wide user provisioning solution
OctetString - November 2005 - virtual directory, identity and access management offerings
TempoSoft - December 2005 - managing time and labour, absences, and scheduling to meet a forecasted workload demand
360Commerce - January 2006 - merchandising, supply chain, and optimization solutions, from the enterprise to the store
Siebel - January 2006 - Enterprise applications (competitor to E-Business Suite).
Sleepycat - February 2006 - Berkeley DB, open source database for developers of embedded applications
HotSip - February 2006 - middleware and carrier-grade communications infrastructure
Portal Software - April 2006 - end-to-end packaged enterprise software suite for the communications industry. See Oracle BRM.
Net4Call - April 2006 - Service Delivery Platform (SDP) for the telecommunications industry
Demantra - June 2006 - demand-driven planning solutions
Telephony@Work - June 2006 - CRM applications provider to unify IP-based contact center technology and CRM software to deliver a complete "customer to agent" experience
Sigma Dynamics - August 2006 - leverage the insight contained in both historical and real-time data sources to drive better decisions in practically any situation
Sunopsis - October 2006 - high-performance, next-generation data integration capabilities. See Oracle Data Integrator
MetaSolv Software - October 2006 - key business processes of the communications industry
Stellent - November 2006 - content management solution
SPL WorldGroup - November 2006 - packaged solution to meet the unique needs of the utilities industry
Hyperion - March 2007 - enterprise performance management
Tangosol - March 2007 - extreme transaction processing
AppForge - April 2007 - mobile applications
LODESTAR - April 2007 - utilities applications, meter data management and energy operation solutions
Agile - May 2007 - Enterprise Product Life Cycle Management Software
Bridgestream, Inc - September 2007 - Enterprise Role Management and role mining
Interlace Systems - November 2007 - Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) software
BEA Systems, Inc - January 2008 - Middleware provider (Tuxedo, Weblogic, etc)
Captovation - January 2008 - Document capture software
Empirix (Web) - March 2008 - Web application testing software
Skywire Software - June 2008 - Insurance software
Global Knowledge Software - July 2008 - Technical Writing/Training Authoring software
ClearApp - September 2008 - Application management solutions for composite applications software
Primavera Systems - October 2008 - Project Portfolio Management solutions software
Haley Limited - October 2008 - Policy modeling and automation software
|
||||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 68 |
https://robbiesblog.com/domain-names-owned-by-oracle-corporation/7590
|
en
|
Domain Names Owned by Oracle Corporation
|
[
"https://robbiesblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/create.com-banner.jpg",
"https://robbiesblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Screenshot-2020-12-01-at-14.59.08.png",
"https://robbiesblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/DynaDot-AI-Auctions.webp",
"https://robbiesblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/DynaDot-AI-Auctions.webp",
"https://partner.domaining.com/award/ilovedomaining-160x31.gif",
"https://www.tqlkg.com/image-9106029-10730504",
"https://www.ftjcfx.com/image-9106029-10730841",
"https://www.lduhtrp.net/image-9106029-10419685",
"https://robbiesblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/WhoisXML-API-banner-300-x-250.png",
"https://robbiesblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/DynaDot-Auction-Robbies-Blog.png"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Robbie"
] |
2020-12-01T15:26:56+00:00
|
Oracle Corporation owns over 5000+ Domain Names, many are related to brand protection of Oracle and others are for services they operate.
|
en
|
/wp-content/uploads/fbrfg/apple-touch-icon-57x57.png
|
Robbie's Blog online since 2011 - Domain Names, Domain News, Domain Auctions & More...
|
https://robbiesblog.com/domain-names-owned-by-oracle-corporation/7590
|
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Redwood Shores, California. The company sells database software and technology, cloud engineered systems, and enterprise software products—particularly its own brands of database management systems. In 2019, Oracle was the second-largest software company by revenue and market capitalization. The company also develops and builds tools for database development and systems of middle-tier software, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, Human Capital Management (HCM) software, customer relationship management (CRM) software, and supply chain management (SCM) software
How do we find out which domain names are owned by Oracle Corporation well we use a feature called Reverse Whois Search with our partners WhoisXMLApi.com , they scan for the chosen term in this instance was domain names related to the registrant email address that Oracle Corporation uses for domain registrations which are “domain-contact_ww_grp@oracle.com” and we get the results of over 5,141 domain names that Oracle Corporation has registered in their names.
Top 5 Domain Names Owned by Oracle Corporation
Agile.com
ATG.com
BEA.com
BigMachine.com
DYN.com
CHEAPEST GODADDY DEALS – CLICK HERE!!!
Domain Names Owned by Oracle Corporation
|
||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
0
| 12 |
https://www.infoworld.com/article/2656316/oracle-to-buy-portal-software.html
|
en
|
Oracle to buy Portal Software
|
[
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] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"China Martens",
"Serdar Yegulalp Senior",
"Nick Hodges Contributing"
] |
2006-04-12T14:28:23-04:00
|
Oracle will pay $220M for maker of billing and revenue management software
|
en
|
https://www.infoworld.com/wp-content/themes/iw-b2b-child-theme/src/static/img/favicon.ico
|
InfoWorld
|
https://www.infoworld.com/article/2182860/oracle-to-buy-portal-software.html
|
Oracle intends to make another vertical-market acquisition, announcing plans Wednesday to offer about $220 million to acquire Portal Software, a maker of billing and revenue management software for the communications and media industry.
The database and applications company is making a cash tender offer of $4.90 per share. Subject to regulatory and other approvals, Oracle expects the transaction to close in June.
Portal’s software enables communications companies to bill and manage a wide range of services including wireline and wireless phones, broadband, cable, VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol), IP television, music and video. Oracle said it will integrate its ERP (enterprise resource planning) applications and the CRM (customer relationship management) software it acquired through the purchase of Siebel with Portal’s billing and revenue management capabilities. Over time, Oracle may consider expanding use of Portal’s software to other industries.
Although attention has been more heavily focused on Oracle’s recent acquisitions in the open-source arena, picking up database engine vendors Sleepycat and Innobase, the company has continued steadily buying up software companies in a range of verticals — Retek in retail, i-flex in financial services and TimesTen and HotSip in the communications industry. Oracle is also busy integrating the applications it gained through the multibillion dollar purchases of both Siebel and ERP and CRM player PeopleSoft.
The bulk of Portal’s customers, 96 percent, also use Oracle’s database, while 57 percent of Portal customers already use Oracle’s applications. Portal’s software is in use at 240 installations in 60 countries supporting over 150 million live subscribers.
Portal’s management and staff will form a global communications business unit focused on billing and revenue management. Bhaskar Gorti, Portal’s senior vice president of worldwide sales, services and marketing, is set to head up the unit, with Dave Labuda, Portal’s founder and chief executive officer, becoming the unit’s chief technology officer.
Oracle is due to hold a conference call for customers and partners to discuss the proposed acquisition Thursday. Portal’s Labuda and Gorti are due to be on the call along with Oracle President Charles Phillips.
Oracle has set up a special page on its Web site with information about the proposed acquisition.
|
||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 48 |
https://www.enterpriseappstoday.com/news/oracle-buys-into-ondemand-crm.html
|
en
|
Oracle Buys Into On-Demand CRM
|
[
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] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Clint Boulton"
] |
2006-06-14T12:10:00+00:00
|
Article courtesy of Internetnews.com. Oracle added a new weapon to fight Salesforce.com and SAP in the battle for on-demand customer relationship management (CRM) software, acquiring software maker Telephony@Work for an undisclosed sum. Telephony@Work makes CallCenterAnywhere, a software stack that supports hosted contact center services. CallCenterAnywhere was designed as an alternative to custom programming and systems integration. The software's ability to handle several customers at the same time makes it popular among Fortune 100 companies and Tier-1 carriers, Oracle said in a statement. These types of on-demand products have gained in popularity in the last few years. Salesforce.com and Siebel Systems…
|
en
|
Enterprise Apps Today
|
https://www.enterpriseappstoday.com/news/oracle-buys-into-ondemand-crm.html
|
Article courtesy of Internetnews.com.
Oracle added a new weapon to fight Salesforce.com and SAP in the battle for on-demand customer relationship management (CRM) software, acquiring software maker Telephony@Work for an undisclosed sum.
Telephony@Work makes CallCenterAnywhere, a software stack that supports hosted contact center services.
CallCenterAnywhere was designed as an alternative to custom programming and systems integration. The software's ability to handle several customers at the same time makes it popular among Fortune 100 companies and Tier-1 carriers, Oracle said in a statement.
These types of on-demand products have gained in popularity in the last few years. Salesforce.com and Siebel Systems are gaining traction in this sector by delivering software that easily enables a speedy call center response to customers.
For a growing number of customers, acquiring software over the Web is a less onerous alternative to the traditional methods of buying applications packages and installing them.
Oracle, which obtained its on-demand CRM software when it acquired Siebel earlier this year for $5.85 billion in cash, and SAP, are looking to cash in.
Oracle plans to offer CallCenterAnywhere through Oracle's Siebel Contact On Demand, but the technology will also be sold to end-user companies and to commercial service providers who host the technology on behalf of their corporate customers.
Oracle said buying Telephony@Work will make it the first CRM applications provider to meld contact center technology and CRM software.
In a stab at rivals Salesforce.com, SAP and other hosted CRM vendors, Rob Reid, group vice president of CRM On Demand at Oracle, said Oracle added CallCenterAnywhere to ease a pain point in the market caused by vendors offering “partial solutions” that required companies to purchase hardware and software to run them.
Oracle, which also rolled out a new Linux stack, maintains that it can help customers reduce cost and complexity by better tailoring contact center gear to work with CRM and business intelligence software.
Oracle has been on a torrid acquisition spree in the last few years, feasting on large companies PeopleSoft, Siebel and Retek, as well as smaller vendors like Portal Software, HotSIP and now TelePhony@Work.
The company has been boosting its portfolios across the board to play in competitive, multi-billion infrastructure and application sectors populated by Microsoft, IBM, BEA Systems and SAP.
In related acquisition news today, Mercury Interactive acquired software and research and development resources from Vertical Solutions, Inc. (VSI) and Tefensoft Inc. for total of $18.5 million in cash.
Mercury now owns the Vertical's PowerHelp IT product and related technology, as well as acquired research and development, support personnel, and facilities in the Tefen Industrial Park in northern Israel.
The new technology provides incident management, problem resolution, configuration management, change management and release management. It is based on ITIL, a framework for helping businesses map the relationships between software and hardware.
Mercury, itself the subject of a rumor that it would purchased by EMC or HP, provides this technology as part of its Mercury Service Desk product.
Read next /*More Posts By Clint Boulton */ ?>
|
|||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 33 |
https://techmonitor.ai/technology/oracle_announces_new_telco_platform
|
en
|
Oracle announces new telco platform
|
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"CBR Staff"
] |
2006-04-18T13:00:00+01:00
|
Oracle Corp has announced a couple new acquisitions and a major new platform initiative, but it isn't about Linux.
|
en
|
Tech Monitor
|
https://techmonitor.ai/technology/oracle_announces_new_telco_platform
|
The offering, the Service Delivery Platform (SDP), is a telco provisioning platform comprising Oracle’s response to similar initiatives from BEA and IBM. It will support a grab bag of standards and technologies, with Fusion middleware as the core building block that will expose telco infrastructure to an SOA environment.
When we go into an industry, we go all the way, said Oracle president Charles Phillips, during an analyst call. He was referring to a couple of acquisitions Oracle has made on the day, plus one that came just days beforehand.
They included Hotsip AB, a Sweden-based provider of SIP, or Session Initiation Protocol, infrastructure, and Net4Call, a Norway-based provider of Parley and SLEE (Java Service Logic Execution Environment) technology that enables established telco carriers to add IP-based services bridging their legacy infrastructures. They follow Oracle’s recent purchase of Portal Software, a California-based provider of telco billing software.
SDP will include support of a number of telco-related building blocks. It starts with SIP, the protocol favored by the VoIP industry, and IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS). Supporting technologies include legacy network connectivity via the Java Parlay API (Parlay is a telco services gateway standard) and SLEE technology, which is an event-driven processing approach for Java platforms.
SDP will also include a network adaptation layer; mobile messaging connectivity; and various pieces of carrier grade real-time back end communications infrastructure such as Oracle Database 10g, Real Application Clusters and Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database.
Oracle is coming from a well-established installed base on the IT and business side of telco. According to Oracle’s figures, it claims 90% of the world’s telco carriers use Oracle databases, and with the Siebel acquisition, it claims top position for telco CRM as well.
The SDP initiative is Oracle’s strategy to broaden from IT to the network operations and provisioning side. It claims that on the operations side, most rivals are niche players, and that for technologies like IMS, it will have the deepest support built directly into the product.
The impetus is the way IP technology is transforming the telco business from monopoly to competitive business. Thanks to a stream of new standards and gateways, it is becoming possible to develop new services from a Java platform, using the flexibility of services-oriented networks to compose or orchestrate services on the fly.
With the new standards, telcos could generate new services using Java, rather than lower level network protocols, enabling them to tap a broader technical skills base on platforms designed for more rapid development.
Although Oracle’s base in telco has primarily been on the business side, it claims that it has roughly 20 IMS customer pilots at varying stages of development today. It mentioned Turkcell, one of Eastern Europe’s largest mobile providers, which is roiling out GPRS broadband services.
Oracle says that some of the components of SDP are available today. Service gateway components are currently available a la carte, and will be rolled into the 10.3.1 release of Fusion middleware scheduled for late summer.
On the horizon, Oracle’s future functionality for SDP will include call control and charging facilities that work across IMS and legacy networks; device management and repositories; plus out of the box packaged offerings such as mobile content delivery, VoIP, and virtual PBX.
|
|||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 64 |
https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E12752_01/doc.1013/e12656/security.htm
|
en
|
Configuring Security and Login Modules
|
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] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] |
2005-07-10T12:57:20+08:00
|
en
| null |
4 Configuring Security and Login Modules
This chapter describes how to set the security provider for an application. This chapter includes the following topics:
"Overview of Security"
"Configuring Subscriber Data Services"
"Configuring Applications to Use Login Modules"
"Security in SIP Servlets"
"Authentication Using the P-Asserted Identity Header"
"Authentication of Web Service Calls and XCAP Traffic"
"Configuring Oracle Internet Directory as the User Repository"
Footnote Legend
Footnote 1: SIP Servlet API, Version 1.0
|
|||||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
0
| 28 |
https://www.myjob.ro/meserii/software-engineer/pagina-11/
|
en
|
Software Engineer
|
[
"https://www.myjob.ro/theme/images/bootstrap/logo_new.png"
] |
[
"https://www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-KP4HC7T"
] |
[] |
[
"myjob",
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[] | null |
- Pagina 11
|
en
| null | |||||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
0
| 29 |
https://www.oracle.com/communications/
|
en
|
Communications Solutions - Networks and Applications
|
[
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
Create new digital experiences with 5G and IoT business models. Let us show you how with our suite of cloud applications and network infrastructure solutions.
|
en
|
https://www.oracle.com/communications/
|
Communications
Create new digital experiences, deliver on the full potential of 5G, and easily deploy new IoT business models. With our complete suite of cloud native applications and secure network infrastructure solutions, you can evolve your network and grow revenue today.
The new Oracle Enterprise Communications Platform transforms how industries communicate.
|
||||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
0
| 2 |
https://www.eweek.com/database/oracle-acquires-hotsip-ab/
|
en
|
Oracle Acquires HotSip AB
|
[
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Renee Boucher Ferguson"
] |
2006-02-16T23:09:00+00:00
|
Oracle would add another component to its burgeoning middleware stack with its plans to acquire JBoss.
|
en
|
eWEEK
|
https://www.eweek.com/database/oracle-acquires-hotsip-ab/
|
eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison wasnt kidding when he said earlier in February that the company is looking to fill holes in its middleware stack.
On the heels of its SleepyCat embedded open-source database acquisition Feb. 14, Oracle announced the following day its purchase of HotSip AB.
HotSip, a Sweden-based company, provides telecommunications infrastructure software through a J2EE/SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) application server, as well as applications that enable messaging, telephony and conferencing capabilities.
The terms of the deal, subject to regulatory conditions, were undisclosed.
HotSip also brings a number of high-profile customers to the table, including Ericsson, Hewlett-Packard and Nokia.
Thomas Kurian, senior vice president of Oracle Server Technologies, said in a statement that the addition of HotSips technology “will allow Oracle to build on its leadership in middleware and in carrier-grade communications infrastructures.”
HotSip is Oracles 16th acquisition in just under 14 months.
The company has spent an estimated $19 billion acquiring everything from business applications software vendors—Oracle bought PeopleSoft in January 2005 for about $10.3 billion and Siebel Systems for $5.85 billion—to security software developers.
In the middleware sector—an area Oracle has claimed its dominance in for the past couple years—Oracle acquired ContextMedia last July, which develops content integration software.
Oracle is also rumored to be considering the acquisition of open-source application server provider JBoss.
The cost of that deal could reach $400 million, though some estimates go as low as $200 million.
There are a number of theories circulating, particularly among the analyst community, as to what Oracles acquisition of JBoss would mean—for its middleware stack, and for disparate application stacks.
/zimages/1/28571.gifRead more here about Oracles plans to acquire JBoss.
Judith Hurwitz, president of The Hurwitz Group, believes that the acquisition would be used to bolster a fledgling Fusion Middleware stack, and to provide a common set of services across the many, many applications Oracle has amassed in its 14-month tech shopping extravaganza.
“The Fusion [Middleware] spec is not codified software—that means they need middleware now. They cant wait,” said Hurwitz, in Waltham, Mass.
“Theyll use JBoss as integrating middleware…. [to develop] a consistent set of services across all their suites. Just to maintain each separate [infrastructure] is very expensive.”
Fusion, according to Hurwitz, is “just not done,” she said. “Its not consistent across the entire stack.”
Gartners Yvonne Genovese believes Oracle would use the open-source JBoss application server as an underlying component to services derived from Oracles applications—and open-source those services.
“What they could do is take some of those services that theyre building for their [on premises] repository and underpin them with an open-source app server, then drive people into their applications,” said Genovese.
“They dont really in the end have an open-source applications product—the holy grail that everyones been looking for—but some semblance of pieces of open source that are available. Thats the next step we expect a lot of application vendors to take, and then to make them more available to an ecosystem like SAP is doing.”
In fact, much of Oracles acquisition strategy centers on besting the No. 1 software developer in the world, Germany-based SAP.
Oracle, after the acquisition of PeopleSoft (and by default JD Edwards & Co) took a trailing second place to Oracle and has vowed to overtake its rival ever since.
Historically an ERP (enterprise resource planning) software developer, SAP entered the integration market in 2003 with the development of its ESA (Enterprise System Architecture) strategy and underlying NetWeaver process integration stack.
Oracle is moving on a similar platform strategy—as is Microsoft—with the development of its Fusion Architecture and underlying Fusion Middleware stack that will eventually feed into its next-generation Fusion Applications suite, expected in 2008.
SAP is expected to complete its ESA work by 2007.
|
|||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 32 |
https://esj.com/articles/2006/02/22/oracles-actionpacked-fortnight.aspx
|
en
|
Enterprise Systems
|
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[] |
[] |
[
"Web3",
"metaverse",
"crypto",
"blockchain",
"decentralized Web",
"augmented reality",
"data",
"security",
"privacy",
"industry"
] | null |
[
"About the Author",
"Stephen Swoyer"
] |
2006-02-22T00:00:00
|
It was a busy fortnight for Oracle, which completed its acquisition of Siebel, shipped new releases of Application Server 10g and JDeveloper 10g, and announced two new acquisitions, to boot.
|
en
|
/design/ECG/esj/img/favicon.ico?v=2
|
Enterprise Systems
|
https://esj.com/Articles/2006/02/22/Oracles-ActionPacked-Fortnight.aspx
|
In-Depth
Oracle’s Action-Packed Fortnight
It was a busy fortnight for Oracle, which completed its acquisition of Siebel, shipped new releases of Application Server 10g and JDeveloper 10g, and announced two new acquisitions, to boot.
It has been a busy fortnight for Oracle Corp., which completed its acquisition of the former Siebel Systems Inc., announced a new Release 3 edition of its Application Server 10g and JDeveloper 10g tools, and announced two new acquisitions, too.
Oracle’s mostly friendly acquisition last year of Siebel was a CRM market bombshell on par with its less-than-amicable pursuit, nearly three years ago, of former enterprise applications kingpin PeopleSoft Inc. Late last month, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison hyped the completion of the Siebel acquisition with typical sangfroid. “Oracle is now the undisputed leader in Customer Relationship Management software," Ellison said in a statement. “Oracle's focus on modern, standards-based applications and middleware is moving us into a leadership position in applications and on-demand services. Siebel accelerates that move.”
Officials stressed that at the new Oracle—as at former CRM champ Siebel—customers are priority number one. That may very well be the case, but all isn’t sweetness and light for at least one of the former Siebel’s most customer-centric technology assets and its more than thirty employees.
Last week—on Valentine’s Day, no less—Oracle disclosed plans to divest itself of Siebel’s OnTarget business unit. OnTarget, a part of Siebel University (Siebel’s training arm), is a sales training and methodology consultancy that, officials claim, has trained more than 100,000 sales professionals.
According to officials, OnTarget—at this point alone among the former Siebel properties—wasn’t going to fit into the post-acquisition landscape. “Oracle believes that for the right company OnTarget is a very valuable asset," said Douglas Kehring, Oracle’s senior vice president of corporate development, in a statement. What will become of OnTarget? It looks like the auction block, for sure: “Numerous parties have already expressed interest in acquiring the operation and we expect to complete the divestiture this spring.”
After closing the books on its Siebel acquisition, Oracle announced plans to eliminate as many as 2,000 jobs—the bulk of which will affect its own workforce (i.e., not former Siebel employees).
Oracle Announces New Application Server Middleware; Larry’s Spending Spree
It’s been an especially busy sennight for Oracle. Last week, the database giant announced new 10g R3 releases of its Application Server and JDeveloper tools. Both deliverables are part of Oracle’s hugely anticipated Project Fusion SOA middleware initiative, which aims to reconcile the disparate codebases of its J.D. Edwards, PeopleSoft, and Oracle applications.
Oracle made a number of notable acquisitions in 2005. There was Siebel, of course, but Mr. Ellison & Co. also nabbed retail specialists ProfitLogic and Retek, along with in-memory database specialist TimesTen.
Last week, Oracle announced an acquisition in a TimesTen-like vein, picking up privately held SleepyCat Software Inc., developer of an embedded open-source database solution called Berkeley DB, for an undisclosed sum.
Oracle’s latest acquisition will complement the former TimesTen technologies (which the database giant pitches for high performance in-memory applications) and Oracle’s Lite embedded database, which it markets for mobile devices. Oracle says Berkeley DB is the most widely used open-source database in the world, with an estimated deployment of more than 200 million instances. It’s embedded in the open source Linux and BSD operating systems, as well as the Apache Web server, OpenLDAP directory, and OpenOffice productivity software.
Also last week, Oracle nabbed a non-data management player, Swedish ISV HotSip AB, which develops telecommunications infrastructure software and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) enabled applications.
|
||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 49 |
https://www.orafaq.com/wiki/Oracle_Corporation
|
en
|
Oracle Corporation
|
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Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) is one of the largest software development companies in the world.
Company history
Oracle was established in 1977 and has offices in more than 145 countries around the world. As of 2005, its employee count was over 50,000 worldwide.
Larry Ellison (Lawrence J. Ellison) has served as Oracle's CEO for several years. Ellison served as the chairman of the board until his replacement by Jeff Henley in 2004. Ellison retains his role as CEO. Forbes magazine once judged Ellison the richest man in the world.
Ellison was inspired by the paper written by Edgar Codd on relational database systems named A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks. He had heard about the IBM System R database, also based on Codd's theories, and wanted Oracle to be compatible with it, but IBM stopped this by keeping the error codes for their DBMS secret. He founded Oracle in 1977 under the name Software Development Laboratories. In 1979 SDL changed its name to Relational Software, Inc. (RSI). In 1983, RSI was renamed Oracle Corporation to more closely align itself with its flagship product Oracle database with Howard Johns as senior programmer.
Headquarters
Oracle's HQ buildings are located in Oracle Parkway, Redwood Shores, California, USA. These buildings were featured in the 1999 film, the Bicentennial Man. Here is a photo:
Use the following contact details to get in touch with Oracle Corporation:
Home Page: http://www.oracle.com
Phone: (650) 506-7000
Fax: (650) 506-7200
Postal address:
Oracle Corporation 500 Oracle Parkway Redwood Shores, CA 94065 United States of America
Product overview
Oracle provided a vast range of products and services. For a detailed list, see Oracle Product Set and Oracle Services.
In summary - they provide the following software solutions:
database management systems (Oracle Database, Oracle RDB, TimesTen, Berkeley DB, etc.)
tools for database development (Oracle Developer Suite - Forms, Reports, JDeveloper, etc.)
application server (OC4J, Portal, SSO, etc)
enterprise resource planning software (ERP)
customer relationship management software (CRM)
supply chain planning software (SCM)
Competitors
Oracle's main competitors in the database business are:
Microsoft SQL Server
IBM with DB2 and Informix
Sybase with their Sybase System
CA with Ingres
Software AG with ADABAS and MaxDB
Open source databases (free, but normally way behind their commercial equivalents):
MySQL
PostgreSQL
EnterpriseDB
Oracle's main competitors in the middleware/ application servers business are:
IBM WebSphere
BEA WebLogic (until January 2008 when they bought the company)
Oracle's main competitors in the applications business are:
SAP R/3
Oracle sponsors the following charities and sports clubs:
the Golden State Warriors basketball team. The Oakland Arena was re-branded as the Oracle Arena.
Oracle BMW Racing - a yachting syndicate that participates in the America’s Cup.
Oracle history
Here is a summary of Oracle's history. For details, look at the year pages:
1977 - Relational Software Inc. (RSI - currently Oracle Corporation) established.
1978 - Oracle 1 ran on PDP-11 under RSX, 128 KB max memory. Written in assembly language. Implementation separated Oracle code and user code. Oracle V1 was never officially released.
1980 - Oracle 2 released - the first commercially available relational database to use SQL. Oracle runs on on DEC PDP-11 machines. Code is still written in PDP-11 assembly language, but now ran under Vax/VMS.
1982 - Oracle 3 released, Oracle became the first DBMS to run on mainframes, minicomputers, and PC's (portable code base). First release to employ transactional processing. Oracle V3's server code was written in C.
1983 - Relational Software Inc. changed its name to Oracle Corporation.
1984- Oracle 4 released, introduced read consistency, was ported to multiple platforms, first interoperability between PC and server.
1986 - Oracle 5 released. Featured true client/server, VAX-cluster support, and distributed queries. First DBMS with distributed capabilities.
1987 - CASE and 4GL toolset
1988 - Oracle 6 released - PL/SQL introduced. Oracle Financial Applications built on relational database.
1989 - Released Oracle 6.2 with Symmetric cluster access using the Oracle Parallel Server
1991 - Reached power of 1,000 TPS on a parallel computing machine. First database to run on a massively parallel computer (Oracle Parallel Server).
1992 - Released Oracle 7 for Unix
1993 - Rollout of Oracle's Cooperative Development Environment (CDE). Introduction of Oracle Industries and the Oracle Media Server.
1994 - Oracle's headquarters moved to present location. Released Oracle 7.1 and Oracle7 for the PC.
1995 - Reported gross revenues of almost $3 billion.
1995 - OraFAQ.com website launched.
1997 - Oracle 8 released (supports more users, more data, higher availability, and object-relational features)
1998 - Oracle announces support for the Intel Linux operating system
1999 - Oracle 8i (the "i" is for internet) or Oracle 8.1.5 with Java integration (JVM in the database)
2000 - Oracle 8i Release 2 released. Oracle now not only the number one in Databases but also in ERP Applications. Oracle9i Application Server generally available: Oracle tools integrated in middle tier.
2001 - Oracle 9i Release 1 (with RAC and Advanced Analytic Service)
2002 - Oracle 9i Release 2
2004 - Oracle 10g Release 1 (10.1.0) available ("g" is for grid, the latest buzzword)
2005 - The Oracle FAQ (this site) is 10 years old! Oracle 10g Release 2 (10.2.0) available. Oracle released a free version of their database, called Oracle XE (Express Edition)
2006 - Oracle announced their Unbreakable Linux program
2007 - Oracle 11g release 1 available
2009 - September Oracle 11g release 2 is available
Oracle acquisitions
Oracle recently acquired the following companies:
Oracle Rdb Server from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) formerly known as DEC Rdb - 1994 - a relational database management system (RDBMS) for mission-critical systems running on Hewlett-Packard's OpenVMS operating system only
Omniscience - November 1996 - Oracle Lite
Darwin - June 1999 - Darwin, Datamining technology
Steltor - June 2002 - Enterprise calendaring system
Collaxa - June 2004 - Business Process Management. See BPEL and SOA Suite.
PeopleSoft - January 2005 - Enterprise applications (competitor to E-Business Suite).
Oblix - March 2005 - Identity management solutions. Also see Web Services Manager.
Retek - April 2005 - retail solution, including back-office functionality for finance and human resources and extends to planning, merchandising, supply chain, and retail channels
TripleHop - June 2005 - context-sensitive enterprise search products and technology.
TimesTen - June 2005 - real-time in-memory database. See TimesTen.
ProfitLogic - July 2005 - retail industry's most comprehensive software solution, helping create tightly integrated, customer- insight-driven retail enterprises
Context Media - July 2005 - enterprise content integration (ECI) software
i-flex - August 2005 - banking industry
G-Log - September 2005 - Logistics Hub solution for global supply chain and logistics management
Innobase - October 2005 - transactional open source database management system called InnoDB
Thor Technologies - November 2005 - enterprise-wide user provisioning solution
OctetString - November 2005 - virtual directory, identity and access management offerings
TempoSoft - December 2005 - managing time and labour, absences, and scheduling to meet a forecasted workload demand
360Commerce - January 2006 - merchandising, supply chain, and optimization solutions, from the enterprise to the store
Siebel - January 2006 - Enterprise applications (competitor to E-Business Suite).
Sleepycat - February 2006 - Berkeley DB, open source database for developers of embedded applications
HotSip - February 2006 - middleware and carrier-grade communications infrastructure
Portal Software - April 2006 - end-to-end packaged enterprise software suite for the communications industry. See Oracle BRM.
Net4Call - April 2006 - Service Delivery Platform (SDP) for the telecommunications industry
Demantra - June 2006 - demand-driven planning solutions
Telephony@Work - June 2006 - CRM applications provider to unify IP-based contact center technology and CRM software to deliver a complete "customer to agent" experience
Sigma Dynamics - August 2006 - leverage the insight contained in both historical and real-time data sources to drive better decisions in practically any situation
Sunopsis - October 2006 - high-performance, next-generation data integration capabilities. See Oracle Data Integrator
MetaSolv Software - October 2006 - key business processes of the communications industry
Stellent - November 2006 - content management solution
SPL WorldGroup - November 2006 - packaged solution to meet the unique needs of the utilities industry
Hyperion - March 2007 - enterprise performance management
Tangosol - March 2007 - extreme transaction processing
AppForge - April 2007 - mobile applications
LODESTAR - April 2007 - utilities applications, meter data management and energy operation solutions
Agile - May 2007 - Enterprise Product Life Cycle Management Software
Bridgestream, Inc - September 2007 - Enterprise Role Management and role mining
Interlace Systems - November 2007 - Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) software
BEA Systems, Inc - January 2008 - Middleware provider (Tuxedo, Weblogic, etc)
Captovation - January 2008 - Document capture software
Empirix (Web) - March 2008 - Web application testing software
Skywire Software - June 2008 - Insurance software
Global Knowledge Software - July 2008 - Technical Writing/Training Authoring software
ClearApp - September 2008 - Application management solutions for composite applications software
Primavera Systems - October 2008 - Project Portfolio Management solutions software
Haley Limited - October 2008 - Policy modeling and automation software
|
||||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
0
| 13 |
https://convergedigest.com/oracle-outlines-roadmap-for-telecom/
|
en
|
Oracle Outlines Roadmap for Telecom Service-Oriented Architecture
|
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[
"Staff"
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2006-04-18T00:00:00+00:00
|
Oracle outlined its roadmap for a standards-based Service Delivery Platform (SDP) for the telecommunications industry. The plan is to help
|
en
|
Converge Digest
|
https://convergedigest.com/oracle-outlines-roadmap-for-telecom/
|
Oracle outlined its roadmap for a standards-based Service Delivery Platform (SDP) for the telecommunications industry. The plan is to help service providers, network operators and system integrators to evolve current silo-based network investments into a service-oriented architecture (SOA) supporting IP-based services. Enterprises could also deploy the Oracle SDP as a foundation for VoIP, mobile and real-time applications.
The Oracle SDP extends the company’s Fusion Middleware for network-centric applications. Key functionality includes:
IMS Support: Oracle SPD includes a SIP Application Server, Presence Server, Proxy Registrar and Location for a complete IMS-ready Infrastructure. Oracle acquired the SIP Infrastructure as part of its Hotsip acquisition.
Support for Legacy Networks: Oracle SDP provides a programming environment that extends J2EE for asynchronous, event-based programming that is crucial to support and leverage existing legacy telecommunication networks. It supports the industry standard Java API Parlay X Web Services standards. Oracle has acquired Parlay and SLEE technology as part of its acquisition of Net4Call, a Norway-based provider of carrier-grade Parlay infrastructure software.
Network Adaptation Layer: Oracle SDP provides a rich set of adapters to connect the SDP to existing network elements and telecommunications equipment enabling service providers to rapidly roll out new services while protecting their existing investments.
Messaging: Oracle SDP provides facilities to access content from Mobile Devices across a variety of standard protocols including SMS and MMS.
Carrier-grade Communication Infrastructure, including Oracle Database 10g, Real Application Clusters and Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database for supporting scalable, always-on, real-time services. This is particularly relevant in a telecom environment where end-to-end service availability across middleware and database tiers is critical.
Oracle SDP — Future Functionality Plans:
Call Control, and Charging Facilities: To provide call control capabilities that are intended to work across IMS and Legacy networks as well as a charging enabler to quickly integrate SDP with billing systems.
<
Device Management and Device repository: To provide support for standards-based device management, and a comprehensive device repository.
<
Out of the Box Services: To include a suite of services such as mobile content delivery, VOIP and virtual PBX that can be immediately deployed for faster Return on Investment.
Oracle said it is uniquely positioned to combine its identity management and middleware expertise to bring to market an SDP that would allow operators to provide highly personalized services to their customers based on customer profiles and preferences. It aims to enable a single J2EE-based programming environment to provide support across next generation and current generation networks and OSS/BSS integration, thereby simplifying service development, integration and management for developers.
“Our vision is to address market needs and provide customers with a comprehensive, scalable, IP-based services platform,” said Thomas Kurian, senior vice president, Oracle Server Technologies. “We are building the ideal platform for developing and deploying new telephony services that deliver value over today’s networks, both wireline and wireless, as well as for the converged networks of the future.”http://www.oracle.com
|
|||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
2
| 0 |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Oracle
|
en
|
List of acquisitions by Oracle
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/static/favicon/wikipedia.ico
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https://en.wikipedia.org/static/favicon/wikipedia.ico
|
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[
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[
"Contributors to Wikimedia projects"
] |
2007-05-22T21:05:26+00:00
|
en
|
/static/apple-touch/wikipedia.png
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Oracle
|
November, 2006 Stellent Inc Enterprise content management, Digital rights management. Stellent was previously named Intranet Solutions, and its product was initially IntraDoc!. The product was then briefly renamed Xpedio! before both the company and the product were renamed Stellent in 2001. At the time of the acquisition, Stellent had 575 employees.[39] Stellent was a publicly traded company (NASDAQ: STEL)[40] with trailing twelve month revenues in excess of $130 million.[citation needed] Stellent's primary product was known as Universal Content Management (UCM), which formed the foundation of most of its other content management products. This product and its related products were rolled into Oracle Fusion Middleware as part of the Oracle WebCenter Content product line. However, the term Stellent is still commonly used for this suite of applications. $440
|
||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 28 |
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2008/jan/16/oraclefinallybuysbeafor85
|
en
|
Oracle buys BEA for $8.5 billion as massive buying spree continues
|
[
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"Jack Schofield",
"www.theguardian.com"
] |
2008-01-16T00:00:00
|
<p>Who do you want to buy today? Oracle is adding yet another software company to its portfolio</p>
|
en
|
the Guardian
|
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2008/jan/16/oraclefinallybuysbeafor85
|
Oracle has finally bought BEA, reports Reuters, as Larry Ellison continues his "consolidation" of the enterprise software market. Basically the two companies split the difference. Oracle offered $17 last year, BEA said $21, and they did the deal for $19.375 per share in cash.
In 2005, Oracle bought Siebel for $5.85 billion, and shortly before that, picked up PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards for $11.1 billion, and Hyperion for $3.3 billion. It has also picked off a few dozen smaller companies such as Tangosol, AppForge, LoadStar, Agile, Bharosa, NetSure, Bridgestream, LogicalApps, Oblix, MetaSolv, Thor Technologies, HotSip, OctetString, Retek, G-log, Sleepycat Software, InnoDB, SPL WorldGroup and Collaxa, which are too small for anyone to bother about. (Even open source users don't seem too bothered about Oracle buying up open source database vendors.)
According to Forbes, late last year Oracle president Charles Phillips said they'd bought 41 companies in the past 45 months:
"At this point in our history, acquisition makes a lot more sense," Phillips said. "Companies are cheaper than in the Internet bubble. We can bring in innovation outside of Oracle. Anyone remotely thinking about selling their company is going to come to us. We've become the IPO market for the enterprise software industry."
|
|||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
3
| 5 |
https://www.scribd.com/document/358021799/Oracle-Corp
|
en
|
Oracle Corporation
|
https://imgv2-2-f.scribdassets.com/img/document/358021799/original/92c8f93973/1721599307?v=1
|
https://imgv2-2-f.scribdassets.com/img/document/358021799/original/92c8f93973/1721599307?v=1
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Doug"
] | null |
Oracle Corp - Free download as PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free. Oracle Corp
|
en
|
https://s-f.scribdassets.com/scribd.ico?668e60fe0?v=5
|
Scribd
|
https://www.scribd.com/document/358021799/Oracle-Corp
| |||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 69 |
http://oracleappstechnology.blogspot.com/2007/10/oracle-acquisitions.html
|
en
|
Oracle Apps Technology
|
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tY2gc-GG0Br--BFMPKBABogR6WSaS6t2mQfQuS_Dj3gu8TMryw909cYv5CN3uinHtFM2pmal9fkeewi2Rtl3_EXFJtro8pePwagUZWO5qVd5sFoY9NrTVFgE_fpA4_Hgc=w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu
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50 Acquisitions till date. Primary information is from wikipedia's Oracle Corporation page. Company Date Industry Valuation millions ...
|
http://oracleappstechnology.blogspot.com/favicon.ico
|
http://oracleappstechnology.blogspot.com/2007/10/oracle-acquisitions.html
| |||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 45 |
https://www.law.com/almID/900005447415/
|
en
|
Oracle to Book Restructuring Charges
|
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Software giant Oracle Corp. said late Wednesday it expects to book restructuring charges of $725 million to $800 million mostly in cash as a result of its recent $5.85 billion acquisition of Siebel Systems Inc. In a report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission Oracle said it expects $625 million to $675 million of the charges to be related to its purchase of Siebel a provider of customer-relationship management software.
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Legaltech News
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https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/almID/900005447415/
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Oracle Coherence Community
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Past and Present Coherence Community Speakers
Call for Speakers
Do you have an interesting Coherence implementation/experience/architecture you'd like to share? Are you interested in sharing your experience with the Coherence Community? If so let us know!
Co-Founder, Sigma Dynamics
A co-founder of Sigma Dynamics where the RTD technology was created.
Solutions Engineer, F5 Networks
Chris is a member of the F5 Networks Business Development team as a Solutions Engineer, specializing in solutions for Oracle products. Chris has previously worked for Microsoft for 10 years and has held multiple roles within the company - including MSN Operations Engineer, Infrastructure Engineer, Consultant, and Senior Program Manager. He has also worked for Arrowpoint, Cisco, and Blue Coat Systems supporting the NW territory as a Systems Engineer.
Senior Consultant, C2B2
Mark Addy currently works as a Senior Consultant at C2B2 a UK Java consultancy which specializes in building fast, scalable and reliable systems. He has extensive experience delivering development, troubleshooting, problem analysis and performance tuning services to clients spanning a wide range of industries. Mark has spoken at JUDCon Boston, London JBoss User Group and GeeCon 2013.
Software Development Manager, Oracle
Noah Arliss is a development manager with the Oracle Cloud Team, focusing on Coherence Cloud products. He currently manages a team of developers responsible for innovating and simplifying the process of building applications on top of Coherence in a Cloud. Noah has lead many efforts with the Coherence team including the C++ extend clients, and the Coherence Incubator. Prior to working at Oracle, Noah spent 7 years working in the internet infrastructure and security space, first at Netegrity where he focused on building SiteMinder, then at BEA working on the Aqualogic Enterprise Security.
Technical Director, Oracle
Phil has a wealth of expertise and field experience in Oracle technologies and a recognised expert in WebLogic Server, Oracle's Event Processing engine and Coherence. He has written a number of books and speaks regularly at technical events.
CTO of Tech-Con, Excelian
A co-founder of LogScape he now oversee and brings new technology into Exclleian, as well as shape the future of the people and offerings.
Co-Founder, Sigma Dynamics
A co-founder of Sigma Dynamics where the RTD technology was created.
Senior Principle Member of Technical Staff, Oracle
Ballav Bihani is part of the Oracle Coherence engineering group. He is one of the engineers responsible for the development of the Exabus transport and its integration in Coherence. Prior to joining the Coherence team, Ballav was a technical lead on the Oracle WebLogic Server Product where he was responsible for networking, clustering, and other HA features.
Technical Architect, eSpeed
Simon seems to have an infinite amount of knowledge about Trading Systems, Distributed and Parallel Computing. He's been working on, building and designing these things for well over 15 years and has recently lead the construction of a global trade capture system based entirely on Coherence. In reality there's probably no need to have a topic of discussion for Simon - just listening to him speak about his 30+ years of experience is valuable in itself. However, being one of the most talented Coherence Architects in London, he's decided to share his thoughts around a whiteboard on a pattern for guaranteed asynchronous persistence of Objects. Even if you're not doing this kind of work, Simon's insights into architectures and those based around Coherence will certainly improve your understanding of Coherence.
Senior Group Product Manager, Oracle
Craig Blitz heads product management of Oracle Coherence, the market leading distributed caching platform, where he helps customers understand how Coherence can help meet their scalability and high-performance computing needs. He has over 25 years experience in enterprise software with such companies as BEA Systems, Novell, and Bell Labs. He has served on the OSGi Alliance marketing committee and Board of Directors and has spoken at numerous industry events. Craig has an MBA and an MS in Computer Science from NYU. Craig hosts the New York Coherence Special Interest Group quarterly.
Senior Vice President, CloudTran
AJ Brown has 30+ years experience in software development and general business management. Early in his career, he implemented rollback and roll-forward logging for Hewlett-Packard’s IMAGE network database management system. This later developed into kernel work within the Allbase relational database product, and then AJ went on to work on query optimization, locking algorithms, and language pre-compilers. In addition to database engineering, AJ also spent time running the R&D lab for Microsoft Windows, OS/2, and Windows NT.
Business Development Manager, F5 Networks
Ron Carovano is a Business Development Manager with F5 Networks. Responsible for the global relationship with Oracle, Carovano oversees integration, testing, certification, and co-innovation efforts conducted between F5 and Oracle. He is also responsible for aligning F5 business programs with Oracle’s go-to-market initiatives. Carovano has 20 years experience in high-tech industries, ranging from medical device development, to health care simulation and education, to enterprise Application Delivery Networking. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and an M.B.A. from the University of Florida, and is also listed as an inventor on 14 U.S. patents.
Founder and CEO, Squarespace
Anthony Casalena has been developing software and user interfaces since the age of 15. Across the past decade, projects solely created, deployed, and designed by Anthony have been actively used by over half a million individuals, and have powered web experiences for over 50 million more. Anthony's projects have appeared in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, the Financial Times, and the Washington Post. His current organization, Squarespace, launched while Anthony was 20, has grown organically into a thriving, multi-million dollar software company located in the heart of Manhattan. Squarespace systems serve hundreds of millions of hits per month with unprecedented levels of reliability. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland.
Senior Software Engineer, Oracle
Ivan has a wealth of experience in the design and development of scalable distributed systems, using both Java/Oracle and .NET technologies and has hands-on experience in implementing Coherence solutions for a number of financial, retail, government and social networking industries.
Principal Solution Architect, Oracle
Phil Chung is an Oracle Principal Solution Architect in the area of real time in-memory data processing, in memory data grids, and grid architectures. In his previous roles, he has worked as part of a SWAT team of solution architects dedicated to Coherence and also as a pre-sales consultant focused on TimesTen. With a software development background spanning over 10 years in capital markets, wireless media, and online gaming, he has worked on trading systems for broker/dealers, messaging servers and telecommunications gateways. Phil works with customers to help architect, educate and evangelize best practices for in memory solutions to meet their business needs. Phil is based in the Oracle New York office. Phil has spoken at many java conferences recently including QCON.
Application Architect, Oracle
Paul Cleary is currently the Application Architect for the Oracle Insurance Group Policy Administration. Paul has worked with Oracle Insurance for 4 years, leading the integration of Oracle Coherence into core products. He developed the existing insurance batch processing and compute grid capabilities for Oracle Insurance products using Coherence and the Incubator Processing Pattern. He continues to lead the development of Oracle Insurance products to enhance performance and support evolving integration requirements.
Principal Sales Consultant, Oracle
Simon works with Oracle's Fusion Middleware stack, with a focus on Financail Services customers in the UK. His particular areas of expertise include Java, Java EE, Coherence, WebLogic, Event Processing and Oracle's Exalogic Engineered Systems.
CTO of C24 & Incept5
John has almost 30 years experience in IT, from hardware though C, C++, Java to enterprise architecture. He co-founded Century 24 (C24) with 3 others in 2000, specialising in investment banking integration, predominately SWIFT, FpML and ISO-20022. In 2007 he sold C24 to Iona Technologies (NASDAQ:IONA), Iona was then sold to Progress Software in 2008, and he bought C24 back in April 2011. His expertise lies in investment banking architecture and payments and in the past he has run the trading systems at Paribas, headed up global Architecture at BNP Paribas, been the global head of architecture at JP Morgan Chase and worked closely with Visa Inc's innovation.
Architect, Oracle
Torkel Dominique is a software engineer and lead developer for the Coherence*Web project. Having worked for Oracle for more than 7 years, he has contributed to several Oracle products such as the SIP Servlet Container and the Weblogic JavaEE platform. Prior to joining Oracle, Mr. Dominique worked for Hotsip, a startup in Stockholm, Sweden, developing Telecommunication systems based on the SIP protocol.
Java Technology Lead, Oracle
Steve is part of the UK Fusion MiddleWare pre-sales team. His focus is on Java Technology and CAF (Cloud Application Foundation), but he also covers Java SE/EE, JVMs, GlassFish, WebLogic, Coherence, ExaLogic, NetBeans and other Java related technologies.
Senior Director, Oracle
Nick is responsible for supporting Oracle's Real-Time Decisions technology offerings and strategy within and outside of Oracle. He also serves as an evangelist for Oracle's overall BI technology stack. Nick possesses an intimate knowledge of the enterprise software development process and its challenges. A true "valley veteran," Nick has 17 years of experience working in and around the BI space and the world of enterprise software. Nick holds the distinction of having been one of the first technical support people at Business Objects. Since then, his career path has taken him to several small startups, and now, to his second tour with Oracle. Nick holds a patent that relates to business intelligence and advanced semantic layer capabilities.
Architect, Oracle
Mark Falco is an Architect at Oracle. He has been part of the Coherence development team since 2005 where he has specialized in the areas of clustered communication protocols as well as the Coherence for C++ object model. Mark holds a B.S. in computer science from Stevens Institute of Technology.
Product Manager, Oracle
Christer Fahlgren joined the Coherence Incubator Team in the summer of 2009 as a Product Manager. In the Coherence Incubator team he is responsible for the implementation of the Processing pattern. Previously at Oracle he has been the Product Manager for Oracle WebLogic Communications Services as well as Oracle Communications and Mobility Server, middleware products that support enterprise and service providers communication platform needs. Prior to joining Oracle in 2006 with the HotSIP acquisition, Christer spent 11 years as a developer, software architect and product manager in the software industry, primarily with Telecommunications software solutions for technologies like ISDN, SS7 and SIP.
Technology Manager
Timur Fanshteyn is a technology manager with over 10 years experience in transaction processing at multiple financial institutions. Timur applied his experience as a technology architect and developer to implement a trade aggregation and processing system. Timur's coherence experience includes extensive use of Coherence in heterogeneous environments with .Net clients. Timur maintains his development blog at blog.tfanshteyn.com.
Coherence Product Manager, Oracle
Dave has a wealth of field experience in Coherence as well as Oracle's SOA products. With nearly 20 years experience in the computing industry, he has used most of the leading technologies across a wide range of customers, with a focus on those in Financial Services and eGaming. He is also a regular speaker at technology events and a contributor to Oracle's Technology Network.
Chief Technology Officer, CloudTran
Matthew has more than 35 years of experience in the tech industry with specific expertise in the area of data grids, transaction processing, data management, networking, and Java 2 EE. As the key inventor of the CloudTran technology, Matthew has paved the way for several patents and has been the primary architect for the CloudTran transaction processing system. He has helped firms including NatWest, British Telecom, and Nokia on enterprise-scale web applications.
Principal Client Architect, Grid Dynamics
Taylor Gautier is a Principal Client Architect for Grid Dynamics who specializes in high performance, high scale computing environments and leads the Coherence practice within Grid Dynamics. Previously Taylor worked as the Product Manager for Terracotta, Excite@Home, and Intel. Taylor is a co-author of "The Definitive Guide to Terracotta" and has published several patents in the areas of building scalable systems for the Telecommunications, Search, and Storage industries.
Solution Architect, Oracle
Eugen Gendelman is a Solution Architect for Oracle. He has many years of experience in the field working on a number extremely large Coherence projects. His deep product knowledge is complemented by his extensive delivery experience.
Enterprise Architect, Union Pacific Railroad
Arun Giri is the Lead Enterprise Architect for Union Pacific Railroad. He currently the Lead Architect for the Next Generation Logistics and Transportation management System called NetControl which UPRR is building as a replacement to its aging mainframe transportation control system, as part of this initiative he is also leading an enterprise wide effort to build and implement a "SOA Platform as a Service" offering for Union Pacific. Arun has over 21 years of software development experience, his focus in the last decade has been in SOA, Distributed computing, Messaging and Middleware. Arun has a lot of experience in the areas of System Integration patterns and utilizing Open source software for developing large, distributed, highly available and scalable java based systems. Arun's other area of expertise is in the Functional programming arena, especially utilizing RETE engines and various BRMS systems. He has built SEP/CEP frameworks for UPRR, which is being at the heart of many mission critical systems at UPRR, including NetControl.
Architect, Oracle
Gene Gleyzer is an Architect at Oracle responsible for the design of the Oracle Coherence product line. Prior to joining Oracle, Dr. Gleyzer was one of the founders and the CTO of Tangosol, whose revolutionary Coherence Data Grid product provides reliable and scalable data management across the enterprise. Dr. Gleyzer was a pioneer in the field of component-based technologies in the mid-1990's.
eCommerce Solutions Architect, El Corte Inglés
Néstor is an ATG/JEE software architect specializing in large-scale projects powered by ATG Commerce Suite, where performance and reliability is critical. He has experience includes architecture and design, development, systems installation, configuration and performance tuning.
Senior Principal CAF Product Manager, Oracle
Maciej is part of the EMEA Fusion Middleware Product Managment Group, covering the Cloud Application Foundation group of products. These include products like Oracle Weblogic Server, Oracle Glassfish Application Server, Oracle Coherence, Java, Oracle Tuxedo. He is also responsible for ExaLogic.
Principal Software Engineer, Oracle
David Guy is a software engineer and member of the Oracle Coherence team. He is currently the technical lead for the Coherence Container project. Mr. Guy has more than 30 years experience developing enterprise software products with companies such as BEA Systems, Netegrity, Sybase, PowerSoft, and Cullinet. He has worked on application servers, enterprise security, virtual machines, and programming language IDEs.
Coherence Architect/Developer, Oracle
Jon is a pragmatic, hands-on, delivery focused Enterprise Developer/Architect, with over 24 years IT experience and a proven track record in FTSE100 and NASDAQ companies, within a broad range of industries. He is also behind the popular littlegrid (www.littlegrid.org) Coherence test framework, for creating simple Coherence unit tests.
Vice President of Software and Data Architecture, Edmunds.com
Paddy Hannon is Vice President of Software and Data Architecture at Edmunds.com, the premiere web site for automotive consumers in the United States. Paddy provides the guidance and direction to teams that are responsible for developing the state of the art software infrastructure, data warehouse systems and reporting frameworks that allow Edmunds to provide volumes of automotive data and editorial content to over 20 million unique visitors to the Edmunds site every month. Paddy is an authority on enterprise systems and using Open Source software for developing very large, highly available, high performance, scalable publishing systems for the World Wide Web. Paddy has been working on web based products since the mid 1990's and has been involved in a wide range of web based products from bioinformatics to secure web based document management.
Senior eCommerce Developer, macys.com
Mario Hernandez is a graduate of University of Missouri-Columbia where he first developed his passion for mixing leading technology with innovative design. This passion was further encouraged through his work on logistics software with the United States Postal Service, and later the Department of Defense. In 2005 Mario made the transition to the retail sector, signing on with then Macy Company. His talent and skill quickly found him in the fast growing Macys.com development team where, through several cache optimization projects, he has become the resident Coherence domain expert. His work has been instrumental in highly stable holiday seasons with 0 down time, providing millions of Macys.com's customers with highly accurate product availability and information, all while processing over 100,000 orders daily. He continues to deliver highly stable and innovative design and has become one of the key players in the design of the future state of Macys.com.
Architect, Oracle
Hal Hildebrand is an architect for the Java Platform Group at Oracle where he works diligently on the next generation of application server architectures for large scale computing. He has been working on application server architecture at Oracle for the past 10 years and before that he had a successful company which produced an object oriented database for the smalltalk market.
Co-founder and EVP of Development, Evident Software
Ivan Ho serves as the EVP of Development at Evident Software. Ivan has lead the development of the Evident ClearStone product line for managing, monitoring, reporting, and chargeback of high performance distributed application infrastructures. The Evident ClearStone Live product provides real-time management of Oracle Coherence data grids and distributed Java applications. Prior to Evident, Ivan was a network programming engineer at Goldman Sachs. Ivan holds a B.S. Computer Science degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Architect, Oracle
Jason Howes is an Architect for the Oracle Coherence product. In addition to contributing to the core Coherence Data Grid product, Mr. Howes is also a primary architect of the Coherence*Extend and Coherence*Web technologies. Prior to joining Oracle, Mr. Howes was a staff software engineer at Tangosol, where he helped design and develop the revolutionary Coherence Data Grid product. He has also held engineering positions at BEA and Intel, where he worked on web-based technologies, rules-based intelligent systems, security infrastructure, and patented a digital rotoscoping method, the process for creating animation from live action video. Jason holds a BS and MEng in computer science from Cornell University.
Vice President, High Performance Computing, Solutions & Engineering, Merrill Lynch
Steve Jacobs heads up the High Performance Computing Engineering and Solutions team at Merrill Lynch, where he is responsible for grid computing, distributed data caching and utility computing. Prior to Merrill, Dr. Jacobs was CTO of online marketing company, Poindexter Systems, which serves, tracks and optimizes the delivery of over 10 billion ads per month. He holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Columbia University.
Principle Member of Technical Staff, Oracle
Jonathan Knight is a Coherence and security expert. Having used and extended Coherence for over four years in multiple globally recognised companies, he's a trusted source of information, innovation and adviser to the Coherence Engineering team on the subjects of security integration, configuration, deployment and push replication in the wild.
Architect, Oracle
Robert is an Architect in the Coherence development group and manages a team responsible for clustering, communications, data-services and core functionality. Robert's main focus areas recently have been surrounding partitioning and partition distribution features as well as solidifying the server-side programming model (e.g. lite-transactions). Prior to joining the Coherence team, Robert was a lead engineer on the Oracle database working on the embeded Java Virtual Machine product.
Consultant
Over the last 6 years Christoph has developed his expertise in the area of Large Scale Distributed Computing, in particular for the Financial Services Sector. He has expertise in integrating functional frameworks such as Scala and dynamic languages such as Groovy to create a power querying and compute layer on top of the distributed grid technology.
Principal Sales Consultant, Oracle
Asaf works with Oracle's Fusion Middleware and has many years of hands-on experience building applications that utilise a range of Oracle technologies, including Coherence, Oracle's Event Processor and SOA Suite.
Application Development Team Lead, OOCL
Leo Limqueco works as Application Development Team Lead at OOCL at the same location. Leo has been working with OOCL for 13 years, with work in design, development and support. His work on OOCL’s shipment domain application models spans three generations. His current team’s responsibility includes design and implementation of the interfaces between domain modules and applications for the latest ERP system, applying TopLink Grid, Coherence, WebLogic Server, and Oracle RAC among other technology platform components.
Senior Java Performance Architect, ON24
Alexander Livitz has over eighteen years of enterprise software engineering and management experience building scalable, high-availability integrated solutions with leading Java EE application servers, portals and SOA middleware. Alex currently serves as the Senior Java Performance Architect at ON24, a global leader in webcasting and virtual events, where he is responsible for the architecture, vision, high-availability, scalability analysis and performance tuning of their complex, multi-platform, mission-critical enterprise system. Prior to ON24, Alex served for over four years as a Technical Partner Manager and Solutions Architect at BEA Systems, working with multiple strategic partners to help integrate their products with the BEA WebLogic product stack. Earlier in his career, Alex held software architect and software engineering positions at several companies including Kaiser Permanente and Siemens Medical Systems. Mr. Alex holds a Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering from Odessa State Polytechnic University, and an MBA from John F. Kennedy University.
CTO, CEO and Founder, SL Corp
Tom Lubinski founded SL Corporation in 1983 and currently serves as the company's CEO and CTO. He has been instrumental in developing RTView, a real-time monitoring, analytics and visualization platform, as well as RTView for Oracle Coherence for the monitoring and management of Oracle Coherence data grids. Since founding the company, he has been involved in thousands of successful customer deployments of real-time visibility solutions. Prior to starting SL Corporation, Tom attended the California Institute of Technology and developed a substantial consulting practice specializing in object-oriented programming and graphical visualization systems. He has over thirty years experience in the development of computer hardware systems and software applications.
Senior Software Engineer, CloudTran
Ian has been working Enterprise application systems for many years. He is a key implementer of CloudTran, with prime responsibility for subsystem integration and tuning. Prior to that, he worked on Enterprise app implementation and automation with J2EE, Spring and all the related technologies. His first role was at British Airways - if you've ever logged in at one of BA's Kiosks, or moved your seat assignment, you were running Ian's code.
Software Architect, Deutsche Bank
Santiago is a Java/C# .NET/C++ software lead engineer with over 7 year hands-on development/architecture and customer interface experience. Specialized in distributed software solution development, architecture, and, fine tuning/production support. He specialties in HPC, grid computing, data grid, distributed in-memory caches, distributed systems, messaging solutions, trading systems, development, fine tuning and troubleshooting/production support, ESP/CEP solutions.
Vice President of Development, Oracle
Java expert Adam Messinger is Vice President of Development in the Fusion Middleware group at Oracle. He is responsible for managing the Oracle Coherence, Oracle JRockit, Oracle WebLogic Operations Control, and other web tier products. Prior to joining Oracle, he worked as a venture capitalist at Smartforest Ventures and O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. Adam is a graduate of the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he was a Sloan Fellow and of Willamette University where he was a G. Herbert Smith Scholar.
Solutions Architect, Oracle
Tim Middleton has over twenty-two years experience in the IT industry. During this time he has been involved in the design and implementation of many large and leading edge technology projects within the government and private sectors within Australia. He has held many technology roles with Oracle over the last fourteen years both in consulting, pre-sales and development. He has extensive experience with Oracle Coherence, Java and Application Server-based solutions, using WebLogic Server and SOA Suite as well as many years experience as a DBA. His current focus, as part of the Coherence Development Team, is enhancing the usability and integration of Coherence within both Oracles’ Middleware solutions as well as with third party products. Tim is a regular presenter at Oracle and technology conferences in Australia and is based in Perth, Western Australia.
Global Head of GDIS Engineering (DSL, XDS, Barracuda), HSBC
Philip Miller is Senior Architect and Engineer with over 15 year's experience in the Financial Services industry, focusing on high performance computing, massively parallel computing, complex event processing and system integration. Recently at the leading edge of real-time regulatory compliance for Dodd-Frank and other regulations. Highly experienced with Front Office application delivery within Global Markets.
Director, C2B2 Consulting Limited
Steve is a Founder and Director of C2B2 The Leading Independent Middleware Experts. C2B2 provide consultancy and 24/7 support services dedicated to maximising Performance, Scalability, High Availability and Reliability when deploying Java middleware.
Senior Product Manager, Oracle
Rob Misek is a Senior Product Manager at Oracle on the Cloud Product Management team. Prior to joining Oracle, Mr. Misek was the National Account Executive for Financial Services at Tangosol, whose revolutionary Coherence Data Grid product provides reliable and scalable data management across the enterprise. Mr. Misek has over ten years of experience with Java™ and Java-related technology. He holds a BS in mathematics, computer science and psychology from St. Lawrence University.
Senior Director of Business Development , Oracle
As a Senior Director of Business Development at Oracle, Stephane is responsible for the adoption and growth of Oracle Cloud Application Foundation and Exalogic product portfolio. Stephane's primary role is to help customers find solutions to implement their high-scalability and high-performance application requirements. Stephane has over 15 years of experience in business development, product management, and enterprise software product development. Prior to joining Oracle, Stephane was a Director at Tangosol, the creators of the Coherence Data Grid product, which delivers reliable and scalable data management across the enterprise.
Senior Principal Product Manager in the Java Platform Group, Oracle
Tomas is a technical leader and manager with a strong experience of the commercial side of the business. He is a passionate problem solver for all categories of problems, technical, process related, business or interpersonal. He has 14 years of experience from all parts of IT related projects from pricing, product definition and go-to-market requirements, project management, development and maintenance. In his role as Product Manager he has worked on large global projects, like launching Java 7, reaching 50+ countries and more than 80.000 developers directly, as well as running market ennoblement for Java SE, one of the most used pieces of software in the world.
Consulting Member of Technical Staff, Oracle
Mark Noyes is a software developer with the Oracle NoSQL Database team. He is currently focusing on product integration with Coherence and introducing security capabilities to the NoSQL Database product. Prior to joining Oracle he worked in the telecommunications software industry as software architect and development manager. He also previously worked on the development teams for two object database products.
Independent Consultant
Tom O'Connell is an independent consultant with over 25 years of experience in the architecture and implementation of large scale, high performance, distributed systems. Tom has worked with Oracle Coherence since 2008, in a variety of systems, involving distributed (server-side) computing and high transaction-rate systems. Previously he worked in telephony, providing distributed switching systems; in finance, focussing on distributed financial models, and creating distributed government information systems.
Architect, Oracle
Brian Oliver is an Architect at Oracle. He works within the Oracle Coherence Engineering group and predominantly focuses on enabling financial institutions across Europe and North America to implement massively scalable and high-performance Data Grid solutions. Over the past 10 years he's been leading the development of large-scale multi-language and multi-currency Web, E-Commerce, Sports Gaming and Financial systems making extensive use of Java technologies. He's the founder of the Coherence SIG, one of the only regularly meeting Data Grid Special Interest Groups in the world, and the Coherence Incubator, a site dedicated to providing reference implementations of architectural patterns on top of Oracle Coherence.
Senior Principle Product Manager, Oracle
Debu Panda, lead author EJB 3 in Action (Manning Publications), is a Product Manage Director on the Oracle Fusion Middleware Management development team, where he drives development of the middleware management functionalities of Oracle Enterprise Manager. He has more than 15 years of experience in the IT industry and has published numerous articles on enterprise Java technologies and has presented at many conferences. Debu maintains an active blog on enterprise Java at http://www.debupanda.com.
Principle Member of Technical Staff, Oracle
Patrick Peralta is a Principal Member of Technical Staff for Oracle (formerly Tangosol) specializing in Coherence and middleware Java. He wears many hats in Coherence engineering, including development, training, documentation, and support. He has extensive experience supporting and consulting customers with mission critical software in fields such as retail, hospitality and finance. Additionally, he served as technical reviewer and contributing author to Oracle Coherence 3.5 published by Packt. As an active member of the Java developer community he has spoken at user groups and conferences across the US including the New York Coherence SIG, Spring One and Oracle Open World. Prior to joining Oracle, Patrick was a senior developer at Symantec, working on Java/J2EE based services, web applications, system integrations, and Swing desktop clients. Patrick holds a BS in Computer Science from Stetson University in Florida.
Chief Technology Officer, Push Technology Limited
Andy is responsible for technology development and strategy at Push a middleware software provider linking live data with the edge. Prior to this role he worked at Oracle, building the Oracle Complex Event Processing product - a Java-based e-Commerce platform for in-memory processing of high volume, low-latency temporal data - from a niche player to a multi-million dollar revenue asset in a variety of technical and management roles.
Senior Vice President, Oracle
Cameron Purdy is Senior Vice President of Development at Oracle. Prior to joining Oracle, Mr. Purdy was the CEO of Tangosol, whose revolutionary Coherence Data Grid product provides reliable and scalable data management across the enterprise. Mr. Purdy has over ten years of experience with Java™ and Java-related technology. As a software visionary and industry leader, Mr. Purdy is a frequent presenter at industry conferences and has received a number of awards in recognition of his contribution to the Java community, including twice being named as a JavaOne RockStar and being recognized in TheServerSide's "Who's Who in Enterprise Java". He regularly participates in industry standards development and is a specification lead for the Java Community Process.
Technical Consultant
Alexey Ragozin is a Coherence and Java performance expert. He has worked with Java technologies across wide range of industries from embedded systems to automated trading systems. Since 2008, he has mainly focused on implementations involving Coherence, in various industries, such as Finance, eCommerce and Telecoms. Among his former employers are Deutsche Bank, Yandex (major Russian web search engine) and GridDynamics.
Consulting Member of Technical Staff, Oracle
Harvey is a key member of the Coherence engineering team and involved in all areas of the product. Predominantly he is focused in the core parts of Coherence, including distributed caches, clustering, serialization, as well as the products architecture.
Head of Business Services Integration, Wachovia
Jay is Director, Head of Business Services Integration, in the Wholesale banking Technology group. Jay manages the technology teams that provide architecture, service development and on-boarding services for caching, distributed computing, app server cloud and security managed services.
Architect, Oracle NoSQL Database development, Oracle
Naresh Revanuru is currently a WebLogic product architect. Prior to taking this role he was the technical lead for the WebLogic core component. He has worked in the WebLogic product division for more than 8 years.
Manager of Infrastructure Development, NetSuite
Ted Rice is the Manager of Infrastructure Development for NetSuite. He is responsible for the performance, scalability, reliability and up time of NetSuite's SaaS platform, which handles more than 65,000 active users and hundreds of millions of transactions per day. Ted stands behind NetSuite's uptime guarantee of 99.5%. Additionally, Ted is responsible for the design and implementation of the core services and APIs upon which NetSuite is built. He joined the company in 2002 and derived much satisfaction from the IPO in 2007. Prior to joining Netsuite, Ted was a member of the Platform SDK team at Apama, creator of the world's first large-scale event processing product. Ted holds a B.S.E. in Computer Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.
Director of Application Development, OOCL
Matt Rosen is Director of Application Development at OOCL’s San Jose Software Development Center, where he has been working for the past 8 years. He began his career booting timeshare computers with paper punched tape. In the meantime, he has helped to provide solutions in education administrative support systems, treasury management, and transportation and logistics. He has also provided architecture and technology adoption consulting services for companies in a variety of industries including banking, finance, and manufacturing.
Solution Realisation Manager, Activities Bank
Francisco has a wealth of experience using Oracle technologies, like WebLogic Server and Coherence. His team at Activities Bank have developed innovative solutions for the travel industry.
Architect, Oracle
Dave Rubin has extensive background in big data systems. Prior to Oracle, Dave was with Cox Enterprises where he ran the Infrastructure Engineering organization responsible for developing big data systems in the Online Display Advertising vertical. Previously, he ran the engineering teams at Rapt Inc, delivering Price Optimization and Inventory Forecasting solutions to online media companies. Dave started his career at Sybase where he worked on various parts of the database kernel including access methods, query optimization, resource management, and transaction management. He holds four U.S. patents in the areas of query optimization and advanced transaction models.
Fixed Income Solution Design Manager, LCH
Oliver leads a team of Architects and Analysts in the re-engineering of LCH's global Fixed Income service. This has been involved developing the architecture for a high performance web based full reval FHS VaR Margin Simulator utilising Oracle Coherence as a calculation engine
Senior Principal Curriculum Developer, Oracle
Al Saganich is a career software developer who's been working in the Java, Java EE and middleware spaces since the earliest versions of Java and J2EE. Al was with BEA for over 10 years, working as an engineer and architect in the education group, and with Oracle since the BEA acquisition. He has been working with Coherence for a number of years and leads the Coherence curriculum development effort for Oracle Education. In his spare time Al likes to study martial arts and ride his Harley. Al refuses to divulge how long he's been in software, we believe, because he's really old. We don't ask because he's been studying martial arts almost as long as software.
Principal Product Manager, Oracle
Madhav Sathe works as a Principal Product Manager for Oracle Enterprise Manager. His key focus areas are Enterprise Manager's features across Coherence, WebLogic Server, WebCenter and Non-Oracle Middleware. Madhav has 10 years of experience in software design, development and product management.
Architect, Oracle
Aleksandar Seovic is an Architect on the Coherence Engineering Team at Oracle. Prior to that he was a founder and managing director at S4HC, Inc., where he lead the professional services practice. In that role, he worked with customers throughout the world to help them implement innovative solutions to complex business and technical problems. Aleksandar lead the implementation of Oracle Coherence for .NET, a client library that allows applications written in any .NET language to access data and services provided by Oracle Coherence data grid, and was one of the key people involved in the design and implementation of Portable Object Format (POF), a platform-independent object serialization format that allows seamless interoperability of Coherence-based Java, .NET and C++ applications. Aleksandar is author of "Oracle Coherence 3.5" (Packt Publishing, 2009) and Oracle ACE Director for Fusion Middleware. He frequently speaks about and evangelizes Coherence at industry conferences, Java and .NET user group events, and Coherence SIGs.
Product Strategy Director, Oracle
As a Product Management/Strategy Director at Oracle Corporation, Robin is responsible for the Event Driven Architecture and Complex Event Processing strategies, focused on the evolution and delivery of the award winning and innovative Oracle CEP product, a corner-stone technology of the Oracle EDA Suite. At BEA Systems, he successfully delivered the BEA WebLogic Event Server, the industries first and only EDA CEP Java Application Server based on OSGi™. Previously, at Sun Microsystems, as a software Product Line Manager for 8 years, he lead the product management and marketing of the award winning Sun Java™ Studio Enterprise, development and infrastructure software, focused on visual SOA design tools and Java application visualization techniques. Over his career, Robin has designed, engineered and implemented, unique performance and systems management software for the Java Platform, AS/400 and VM Operating systems, that have been used worldwide.
Principal Product Manager, Oracle
Shaun Smith is a Principal Product Manager for Oracle TopLink and an active member of the Eclipse community. He's Ecosystem Development Lead for the EclipseLink project and a committer on the Eclipse Gemini Enterprise Modules, and the Dali Java Persistence Tools projects. Prior to joining Oracle Shaun was a consultant specializing in enterprise application architecture and agile software development. He's been involved with object persistence since 1996 starting with TopLink for Smalltalk and it's successor TopLink for Java. He's currently working on leveraging EclipseLink JPA and MOXy (JAXB and JSON binding) to accelerate the development of data services for HTML5 applications as well as Oracle TopLink Grid which supports the scaling out of EclipseLink JPA applications using Oracle Coherence.
Java VP Product Development, Oracle
Henrik Stahl is VP of Product Management in the Java Platform Group at Oracle, and is responsible for product strategy for Java ME and SE.
Consulting Solutions Architect, Oracle
Randy Stafford is a practicing software professional with 25 years of experience as a developer, analyst, architect, manager, consultant, and author. Currently with the Coherence product team at Oracle, he engages globally for proof-of-concept projects, architecture reviews, and production crises with diverse customer organizations, specializing in grid, performance, HA, SOA, and Java EE / JPA work. Long active in the professional community, he was a contributor to O’Reilly’s 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know, Martin Fowler’s Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture and Floyd Marinescu’s EJB Design Patterns; and he frequently presents at software conferences on the topics of application performance management, domain model persistence, and agile architecture.
Distributed Systems Software Architect
Ben has a wealth of software development and architecture experience, largely focused around distributed systems and caching - including Coherence, He is a regular blogger and his posts focus on Coherence and the wider issues of distributed computing.
Software Architect, HSBC
Raj specialises in Grid Computing, Enterprise and Large Scale Computing, Financial Product Quantitative Analysis. He has many years of experience designing and developing Coherence applications.
Java Product Manager, Oracle
Dalibor is a Java Product manager at Oracle. As a GNU Classpath developer he has been instrumental in bringing several Java-oriented free software projects together around the GNU Classpath community, and works on making it all happen again inside OpenJDK.
Vice President of Product Management, Oracle
Peter Utzschneider is a Vice President of Java Product Management at Oracle. Prior to joining Oracle, Mr. Utzschneider was the Vice President of Marketing at Tangosol, whose revolutionary Coherence Data Grid product provides reliable and scalable data management across the enterprise. He has spent over 14 years successfully marketing and selling best-of-breed software solutions in Europe and the U.S. by leveraging his ability to translate early market demand into broader market adoption. He led product strategy development at Lumigent Technologies, where he successfully guided overall product direction for the company, which delivers database security software solutions. He co-founded BDG, a leading IT security integration company in Germany, where he grew both the sales and marketing organizations and established the company as the premier provider of layered security to Germany's largest corporations.
Independent Coherence Consultant
Rob has many years of experience using Coherence and a wealth of practical project knowledge. He is also an Oracle ACE, on the Oracle Coherence Forum, and has helped numerous developers over the years solve all sorts of Coherence related problems.
Principal Sales Consultant, Oracle
Gerald has a wealth of knowledge and experience in Oracle database tuning and administration. His specialist area of expertise is Big Data solutions and managing un-struectured data, but he also has a detailed understanding of Oracle's in-memory technologies, including the Oracle IMDB, TimesTen and Oracle Coherence.
VP of Distributed Caching, Credit Suisse
Phil manages distributed caching architectures, providing standards, consultancy and shared services to application development teams in the bank. He also provide development tools expertise, especially in Java
Technical Architect, HSBC
David is an independent consultant in software development/architecture with extensive technical experience particularly in Java, and data grids. He also has business experience in many areas of investment banking, including Front, Middle, and Back Office, Credit, Rates, FI, FX, Derivatives. Currently he works at HSBC, but previously he worked for Credit Suisse and other investment banks.
Coherence Architect, Founder, JunoCube
Andrew Wilson has worked full time with Coherence since 2008. He has been a Coherence Architect at Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland and Credit Suise. Prior to that he worked at IBM, UBS and was a co-founder of BlueLobster which was acquired in 1998 in the heady days of the first dot-com boom. He is interested in making complicated problems simpler.
Senior Director of Technology, SL Corp
Everett has worked with Oracle Coherence since 2006 when he joined the Tangosol development team where he was responsible for monitoring and management. At Oracle and Tangosol Everett worked on the Coherence management framework and wrote the Coherence Reporter. Everett joined SL Corp in 2010 where he is responsible for SL’s RTView Oracle Coherence Monitor and Viewer as well as SL’s Coherence performance analysis, tuning and troubleshooting services.
Cheif Technology Officer, Legerity
Jeremy has over 25 years’ experience in Enterprise financial software. He was founder and Managing Director of OST Business Rules Ltd, a financial services software house, whose financial reporting and integration software was used by more than 30 of the world’s largest financial institutions. Within 3 years he grew OST to over 100 staff and successfully led the sale of the company to Microgen plc. Prior to OST he was an executive director at The Dodge Group, a US based financial services ERP vendor. He is a past winner of the prestigious Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award.
Principal Member of Technical Staff, Oracle
Lina Xu works in the Coherence QA team at Oracle and leads a team responsible for testing Coherence features, HA/failover, large cluster, and WebLogic Suite that includes Coherence*Web and Coherence TopLink JPA integration. Prior to joining Oracle in 2008, Lina worked in the BEA WebLogic stress QA team that focused on the RASp and end-to-end testing on the WebLogic server products.
|
||||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 46 |
https://www.academia.edu/7524747/THE_ORACLE_UNIVERSE_A_constantly_evolution
|
en
|
THE ORACLE UNIVERSE A constantly evolution
|
http://a.academia-assets.com/images/open-graph-icons/fb-paper.gif
|
http://a.academia-assets.com/images/open-graph-icons/fb-paper.gif
|
[
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Simona Maria",
"independent.academia.edu"
] |
2014-07-01T00:00:00
|
THE ORACLE UNIVERSE A constantly evolution
|
https://www.academia.edu/7524747/THE_ORACLE_UNIVERSE_A_constantly_evolution
|
This case makes a contribution to the field of entrepreneurship by focusing on one of the most successful entrepreneurs and companies of our generation. The cases focuses on the personality and background of Larry Ellison. What were his motivations and experience before he became an entrepreneur? Students will also learn about how Ellison founded and grew Oracle Corporation. Finally, we examine the current problems and opportunities that confront Oracle in 2011.
|
|||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 11 |
https://www.gpbullhound.com/articles/hotsip/
|
en
|
Building on telecommunications infrastructure software.
|
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] |
2006-02-13T20:26:00+00:00
|
Hotsip provides communications infrastructure software. The company offers telecommunications infrastructure software and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)…
|
en
|
GP Bullhound
|
https://www.gpbullhound.com/articles/hotsip/
|
February 2006 - GP Bullhound acted as financial advisor to Hotsip on its sale to Oracle.
Hotsip provides communications infrastructure software. The company offers telecommunications infrastructure software and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) enabled applications for IP telephony, presence, messaging etc.
|
|||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 4 |
https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2006/02/13/daily38.html
|
en
|
[] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] |
2006-02-13T00:00:00
| null | ||||||||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 50 |
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/List_of_acquisitions_by_Oracle
|
en
|
List of acquisitions by Oracle
|
[
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/1d/Information_icon4.svg/20px-Information_icon4.svg.png"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
This is a listing of Oracle Corporation's corporate acquisitions, including acquisitions of both companies and individual products.
|
en
|
Wikiwand
|
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/List_of_acquisitions_by_Oracle
|
November, 2006 Stellent Inc Enterprise content management, Digital rights management. Stellent was previously named Intranet Solutions, and its product was initially IntraDoc!. The product was then briefly renamed Xpedio! before both the company and the product were renamed Stellent in 2001. At the time of the acquisition, Stellent had 575 employees.[39] Stellent was a publicly traded company (NASDAQ: STEL)[40] with trailing twelve month revenues in excess of $130 million.[citation needed] Stellent's primary product was known as Universal Content Management (UCM), which formed the foundation of most of its other content management products. This product and its related products were rolled into Oracle Fusion Middleware as part of the Oracle WebCenter Content product line. However, the term Stellent is still commonly used for this suite of applications. $440
|
|||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 27 |
https://www.infoworld.com/article/2656316/oracle-to-buy-portal-software.html
|
en
|
Oracle to buy Portal Software
|
[
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"China Martens",
"Serdar Yegulalp Senior",
"Nick Hodges Contributing"
] |
2006-04-12T14:28:23-04:00
|
Oracle will pay $220M for maker of billing and revenue management software
|
en
|
https://www.infoworld.com/wp-content/themes/iw-b2b-child-theme/src/static/img/favicon.ico
|
InfoWorld
|
https://www.infoworld.com/article/2182860/oracle-to-buy-portal-software.html
|
Oracle intends to make another vertical-market acquisition, announcing plans Wednesday to offer about $220 million to acquire Portal Software, a maker of billing and revenue management software for the communications and media industry.
The database and applications company is making a cash tender offer of $4.90 per share. Subject to regulatory and other approvals, Oracle expects the transaction to close in June.
Portal’s software enables communications companies to bill and manage a wide range of services including wireline and wireless phones, broadband, cable, VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol), IP television, music and video. Oracle said it will integrate its ERP (enterprise resource planning) applications and the CRM (customer relationship management) software it acquired through the purchase of Siebel with Portal’s billing and revenue management capabilities. Over time, Oracle may consider expanding use of Portal’s software to other industries.
Although attention has been more heavily focused on Oracle’s recent acquisitions in the open-source arena, picking up database engine vendors Sleepycat and Innobase, the company has continued steadily buying up software companies in a range of verticals — Retek in retail, i-flex in financial services and TimesTen and HotSip in the communications industry. Oracle is also busy integrating the applications it gained through the multibillion dollar purchases of both Siebel and ERP and CRM player PeopleSoft.
The bulk of Portal’s customers, 96 percent, also use Oracle’s database, while 57 percent of Portal customers already use Oracle’s applications. Portal’s software is in use at 240 installations in 60 countries supporting over 150 million live subscribers.
Portal’s management and staff will form a global communications business unit focused on billing and revenue management. Bhaskar Gorti, Portal’s senior vice president of worldwide sales, services and marketing, is set to head up the unit, with Dave Labuda, Portal’s founder and chief executive officer, becoming the unit’s chief technology officer.
Oracle is due to hold a conference call for customers and partners to discuss the proposed acquisition Thursday. Portal’s Labuda and Gorti are due to be on the call along with Oracle President Charles Phillips.
Oracle has set up a special page on its Web site with information about the proposed acquisition.
|
||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 66 |
https://www.tiktok.com/%40su.savory.bites/video/7315925786593381678
|
en
|
Make Your Day
|
[] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
en
| null | ||||||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
0
| 1 |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Oracle
|
en
|
List of acquisitions by Oracle
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/static/favicon/wikipedia.ico
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/static/favicon/wikipedia.ico
|
[
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[
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[
"Contributors to Wikimedia projects"
] |
2007-05-22T21:05:26+00:00
|
en
|
/static/apple-touch/wikipedia.png
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Oracle
|
November, 2006 Stellent Inc Enterprise content management, Digital rights management. Stellent was previously named Intranet Solutions, and its product was initially IntraDoc!. The product was then briefly renamed Xpedio! before both the company and the product were renamed Stellent in 2001. At the time of the acquisition, Stellent had 575 employees.[39] Stellent was a publicly traded company (NASDAQ: STEL)[40] with trailing twelve month revenues in excess of $130 million.[citation needed] Stellent's primary product was known as Universal Content Management (UCM), which formed the foundation of most of its other content management products. This product and its related products were rolled into Oracle Fusion Middleware as part of the Oracle WebCenter Content product line. However, the term Stellent is still commonly used for this suite of applications. $440
|
||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 31 |
https://www.ireasoning.com/customers.shtml
|
en
|
Network Management
|
[
"https://www.ireasoning.com/_images/banner.jpg",
"https://www.ireasoning.com/images/customers.gif",
"https://www.ireasoning.com/images/spacer.gif"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
"network monitor",
"network monitoring",
"server monitor",
"exchange server",
"SQL",
"oracle",
"network",
"server monitoring",
"SNMP",
"TL1",
"mib browser",
"snmp agent",
"web monitoring"
] | null |
[] | null |
SNMP MIB Browser. SNMP Agent Builder. SNMP Agent Simulator. iDesktop Desktop Management Software, SysUpTime Network Monitor is a network monitoring tool that
checks for failures and fixes them automatically. Network monitor and server monitor for your enterprise
- checks Exchange Server, SQL, Oracle, HTTP/FTP, Disk health, space, event logs and more. SNMP/TL1 products.
|
en
| null |
Partial List of Recent Customers
Akamai Technologies
Alcatel Internetworking
AppIQ
AT&T
AVAYA
BMC
Cisco Systems
Comverse, Inc
Core Networks
Ericsson Sp.
Hotsip AB
HP
Intersperse, Inc.
Italtel Spa
LightSurf Technologies
Lucent
Manage.it GmbH
McDATA Corporation
Motorola
NEC Telecom
N2 BroadBand
NetScreen Technologies
Nokia Corporation
Nortel Networks
NTT Data Corporation
Oracle Corporation
Orbitz.com
Qualcomm
RSA Security Inc
Samsung Electronics
SeeBeyond Technology
Siemens AG
Toshiba Communication Systems
Tyco Telecommunications Inc
Unisys Corporation
Viasat
Webex
Xerox
...
|
||||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
3
| 12 |
https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/enterux-company-profile/2939280
|
en
|
Enterux Company Profile
|
[
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] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] |
2010-01-18T04:43:01+00:00
|
Enterux Company Profile - Download as a PDF or view online for free
|
en
|
https://public.slidesharecdn.com/_next/static/media/favicon.7bc3d920.ico
|
SlideShare
|
https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/enterux-company-profile/2939280
|
1. Enterux Solutions Pvt. Ltd. - Company Profile Author: Sanket Medhi ENTERUX SOLUTIONS PVT. LTD. sanket@enterux.com Revision: 1 COMPANY PROFILE December 29, 2009 Enterux Solutions Pvt. Ltd. Communication & Development Office: 203, Shiv Shakti Industrial Estate, LBS Marg, Ghatkopar (W), Mumbai - 400086 +91 22 6144 7699 +91 976 999 5883 Website: http://www.enterux.com Email: info@enterux.com 2000-2009 © Enterux Solutions Pvt. Ltd. All Rights Reserved. - Page 1 -
2. Enterux Solutions Pvt. Ltd. - Company Profile About Us Enterux Solutions was founded by Mr. Mitul Limbani in 2000. Enterux offers its consultancy and development services in the area of software and hardware technologies. It’s an international Business though based in Mumbai (India) that serves clients worldwide, majorly in USA, UK and Singapore. With superlative management and a talent pool of consultants, we provide our customer with best possible solutions that accomplish its requirements. We focus on free or low–cost revolutionary open source technologies that make the projects money-spinning for our clients. We identify and isolate performance bottlenecks in the existing system and come up with a solution that empowers the customer for its utmost utilization. We are also active in customized application software development by exploiting diverse technologies and tools. Company Profile Established in 2000, Enterux Solutions provides proven quality in open-source technologies consulting, and focuses on VoIP solutions for SMB and Enterprise markets. Enterux Solutions provides reliability for its clients within global technologies progress and re-innovation. With superlative management and a talent pool of consultants, we provide our customer with best possible solutions that accomplish its requirements. We focus on free or low cost revolutionary open source technologies that make the projects money-spinning for our clients. We identify and isolate performance bottlenecks in the existing system and come up with a solution that empowers the customer for its utmost utilization. We are also active in customized application software development by exploiting diverse technologies and tools. We deliver technology-driven business solutions that meet the strategic objectives of our clients. Enterux is an also the authorized training partner of “Digium Inc, USA” for entire Asia-Pacific region. Enterux has developed commercial grade Voice products based on Asterisk, OpenSER, Freeswitch and has launched these products under a single brand entVoice. 2000-2009 © Enterux Solutions Pvt. Ltd. All Rights Reserved. - Page 2 -
3. Enterux Solutions Pvt. Ltd. - Company Profile The entVoice brand of products includes: entVoice PBX IVR Edition entVoice ITSP Billing Edition entVoice PBX Enterprise Edition entVoice PBX Call Center Edition Enterux Solutions maintains its leadership position today, by continuing to focus on its primary goals of cost reduction, customer satisfaction, innovation, and market driven expansion. Vision & Mission Our Business Statement We are in the business of open source telecom with our products, defining new open standards in all aspects of our customers business, helping them be market leaders. Our Vision To be the leaders in our business. We stand apart from the competition by being the first in market to innovate and change the game, making our customers market leaders. Our Mission We will be the leaders in our business by - maintaining high quality, introducing new and innovative products, reaching every part of world, remaining customer-centric, constantly upgrading our knowledge and skills. Our Values As we grow, we are guided by the following values: To be passionate about everything we do. To listen to our customers and provide them with quality solutions, that is the best value for their money and which brings a smile to their face. To maintain our integrity and nurture an open, innovative and fun open source work culture. To be a leader, leading a team to success, exceeding expectations in the assigned tasks, or taking new initiatives that create value for the company and the customer. To Innovate, newer ideas to change the game, the processes, the engineering. 2000-2009 © Enterux Solutions Pvt. Ltd. All Rights Reserved. - Page 3 -
4. Enterux Solutions Pvt. Ltd. - Company Profile Value Proposition Our value proposition is to deploy the most cost efficient Open source solution fit for your business requirement providing you the competitive edge over your competitors by reducing the time to market factor. Our ultimate focus is to bridge the gap between Open Source technologists and the business users who can benefit from their expertise. The Enterux Team consists of highly talented Spartans, collectively having experience both in open source and enterprise-class solutions. Enterux is committed to providing innovative, cost-effective Voice over IP solutions to its customers. We strive to provide our customers with value-added services and continue to develop and deliver innovative, high quality VoIP solutions by leveraging our expertise in Internet telephony. Our industry leading knowledge, cutting edge innovation and standard setting achievements ensure our customer’s success at all times. Superlative Domain Expertise The senior management and consultants of Enterux has many years of experience in educating the public and private sector on the advantages of open, customer-controlled computing environments. They are equally conversant in the languages of technology and business. Their in-depth understanding of business processes in these industries ensures that we effectively and efficiently meet customer objectives. 2000-2009 © Enterux Solutions Pvt. Ltd. All Rights Reserved. - Page 4 -
5. Enterux Solutions Pvt. Ltd. - Company Profile Why Enterux? Turnaround Time • We can handle projects with 24-48 hours turnaround time • Enterux has never failed in delivery of any of its projects Quality Processes • We provide clients with output accuracy up to 99.9% • CESM based QC processes Business Continuity • We have multiple processing facilities in other parts of India and the globe to allow 48 hours disaster recovery • Interconnected Telecommunication Connectivity Trained Personnel • Enterux invests heavily in training and knowledge management processes • All consultants are experienced, certified and fluent in English • Staff have to undergo training on project specifics including trials • We have dedicated training facilities and library facilities for staff Superlative Management Team • Team with a proven track record in telecommunication solutions development and deployment • Independent Board Management capable of running large organizations while maintaining close client contact • Strong domain knowledge in Open Source and business application consulting. 2000-2009 © Enterux Solutions Pvt. Ltd. All Rights Reserved. - Page 5 -
|
||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
0
| 10 |
https://www.cio.com/article/257065/it-organization-oracle-lays-out-telecom-service-delivery-platform.html
|
en
|
Oracle Lays Out Telecom Service Delivery Platform
|
[
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] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"CIO Staff"
] |
2006-04-18T08:00:00-07:00
|
Oracle made another move to target telecommunications providers Tuesday, unveiling plans for a telecom service delivery platform (SDP).The move comes ...
|
en
|
https://www.cio.com/wp-content/themes/cio-b2b-child-theme/src/static/img/favicon.ico
|
CIO
|
https://www.cio.com/article/257065/it-organization-oracle-lays-out-telecom-service-delivery-platform.html
|
Oracle made another move to target telecommunications providers Tuesday, unveiling plans for a telecom service delivery platform (SDP).
The move comes less than a week after the database and applications vendor announced its intention to buy Portal Software, a maker of billing and revenue management software for the communications and media industries, for US$220 million.
Oracle is designing the SDP for use by carriers, network operators and systems integrators to help them move to service-oriented architecture (SOA), according to a release.
SOA describes the creation and management of IT systems through reusable software and services. The SOA approach is proving particularly popular in the telecom industry as providers are trying to rapidly morph their businesses to reflect the growing convergence of data, voice and video services.
Pieces of the SDP are already available, and Oracle plans to bring out more functionality later this year. The aim is to provide a single programming environment based on J2EE to make it easier for developers to deploy new services quickly and integrate and manage those offerings with existing services.
Oracle plans to expand its Fusion middleware so that users can access newer mobile, voice services and enterprise applications through traditional communication networks and networks based on IP multimedia subsystems also known as IMS and voice over IP.
So far, Oracle’s SDP includes its Oracle 10g relational database and its real application clusters, as well as the TimesTen in-memory database the company acquired in June through the purchase of TimesTen. Other Oracle acquisitions have helped fill out the SDP, including HotSip, which enables IMS support, and Net4Call, which facilitates support for legacy networks. The SDP also includes a set of adapters to connect the platform to network elements and telecom equipment along with messaging capabilities to access content from mobile devices.
Still in the planning stage for the SDP are call control across IMS and legacy networks, the integration of the SDP with billing systems, support for device management and a device repository, and a suite of services including mobile content delivery, VoIP and virtual public branch exchange.
The SDP will support not only Oracle Application Server, but rival offerings from BEA Systems and JBoss, Oracle said. Oracle had been rumored to be in talks to acquire JBoss in February, but last week Linux distribution vendor Red Hat announced its intention to buy the open-source middleware player.
|
||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 9 |
https://mergr.com/hotsip-ab-overview
|
en
|
HotSip AB - Ownership and Business Overview
|
[
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] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
Who owns HotSip AB? HotSip AB is owned by Oracle. It was acquired on February 15, 2006.
|
https://mergr.com/assets/member/img/favicon.ico
| null |
Subscribe to unlock this and 204,477
investor and company profiles
What's Mergr?
We built Mergr to save people the arduous and time-consuming process of tracking when companies are bought, sold, and who currently owns them.
Every day, new opportunities emerge around M&A and we help professionals of all types comb through transactions, investors, and corporate acquirers via an easy-to-use web database that is accessible to anyone.
Try us for 1 week free today!
Mergr, the Easiest-to-Use PE and M&A DB
Ready to try?
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|
||||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 30 |
https://convergedigest.com/oracle-outlines-roadmap-for-telecom/
|
en
|
Oracle Outlines Roadmap for Telecom Service-Oriented Architecture
|
[
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] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Staff"
] |
2006-04-18T00:00:00+00:00
|
Oracle outlined its roadmap for a standards-based Service Delivery Platform (SDP) for the telecommunications industry. The plan is to help
|
en
|
Converge Digest
|
https://convergedigest.com/oracle-outlines-roadmap-for-telecom/
|
Oracle outlined its roadmap for a standards-based Service Delivery Platform (SDP) for the telecommunications industry. The plan is to help service providers, network operators and system integrators to evolve current silo-based network investments into a service-oriented architecture (SOA) supporting IP-based services. Enterprises could also deploy the Oracle SDP as a foundation for VoIP, mobile and real-time applications.
The Oracle SDP extends the company’s Fusion Middleware for network-centric applications. Key functionality includes:
IMS Support: Oracle SPD includes a SIP Application Server, Presence Server, Proxy Registrar and Location for a complete IMS-ready Infrastructure. Oracle acquired the SIP Infrastructure as part of its Hotsip acquisition.
Support for Legacy Networks: Oracle SDP provides a programming environment that extends J2EE for asynchronous, event-based programming that is crucial to support and leverage existing legacy telecommunication networks. It supports the industry standard Java API Parlay X Web Services standards. Oracle has acquired Parlay and SLEE technology as part of its acquisition of Net4Call, a Norway-based provider of carrier-grade Parlay infrastructure software.
Network Adaptation Layer: Oracle SDP provides a rich set of adapters to connect the SDP to existing network elements and telecommunications equipment enabling service providers to rapidly roll out new services while protecting their existing investments.
Messaging: Oracle SDP provides facilities to access content from Mobile Devices across a variety of standard protocols including SMS and MMS.
Carrier-grade Communication Infrastructure, including Oracle Database 10g, Real Application Clusters and Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database for supporting scalable, always-on, real-time services. This is particularly relevant in a telecom environment where end-to-end service availability across middleware and database tiers is critical.
Oracle SDP — Future Functionality Plans:
Call Control, and Charging Facilities: To provide call control capabilities that are intended to work across IMS and Legacy networks as well as a charging enabler to quickly integrate SDP with billing systems.
<
Device Management and Device repository: To provide support for standards-based device management, and a comprehensive device repository.
<
Out of the Box Services: To include a suite of services such as mobile content delivery, VOIP and virtual PBX that can be immediately deployed for faster Return on Investment.
Oracle said it is uniquely positioned to combine its identity management and middleware expertise to bring to market an SDP that would allow operators to provide highly personalized services to their customers based on customer profiles and preferences. It aims to enable a single J2EE-based programming environment to provide support across next generation and current generation networks and OSS/BSS integration, thereby simplifying service development, integration and management for developers.
“Our vision is to address market needs and provide customers with a comprehensive, scalable, IP-based services platform,” said Thomas Kurian, senior vice president, Oracle Server Technologies. “We are building the ideal platform for developing and deploying new telephony services that deliver value over today’s networks, both wireline and wireless, as well as for the converged networks of the future.”http://www.oracle.com
|
|||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
0
| 0 |
https://www.oracle.com/corporate/pressrelease/oracle-buys-hotsip-021506.html
|
en
|
Oracle Buys HotSip
|
[] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] |
2006-02-15T00:00:00
|
en
|
https://www.oracle.com/corporate/pressrelease/oracle-buys-hotsip-021506.html
|
News Facts
Oracle today announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Sweden-based HotSip AB. HotSip is a provider of telecommunications infrastructure software and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) enabled applications for IP telephony, presence, messaging and conferencing on new converged networks. "The addition of HotSip's technology will allow Oracle to build on its leadership in middleware and in carrier-grade communications infrastructures," said Thomas Kurian, senior vice president, Oracle Server Technologies.
Terms of the pending transaction were not disclosed.
Contact Info
Letty Ledbetter
Oracle
+1.650.506.8071
letty.ledbetter@oracle.com
About Oracle
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, please visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com.
Trademarks
Oracle, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft and Siebel are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. PORTAL, and the PORTAL LOGO are trademarks or registered trademarks in the United States and in other countries, all owned by Portal Software, Inc. or its subsidiaries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
The above is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decision. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for Oracle's products remains at the sole discretion of Oracle.
|
|||||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 67 |
https://marketbusinessnews.com/oracle-corporation-company-information/15070/
|
en
|
Oracle Corporation – Company Information
|
[
"https://marketbusinessnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/MBN_Logo.png",
"https://marketbusinessnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/MBN_Logo.png",
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] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Alexander Joe"
] |
2014-03-10T22:46:48+00:00
|
This article provides information on Oracle Corporation, including a general overview of the company and the latest financial results.
|
en
|
https://marketbusinessnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/favicon11.ico
|
Market Business News
|
https://marketbusinessnews.com/oracle-corporation-company-information/15070/
|
Oracle Corporation – Company Overview
Company Oracle Corporation Headquarters 500 Oracle Parkway, Redwood Shores, CA 94065, US CEO Safra A. Catz and Mark Hurd Chairman of the board Larry Ellison Industry Software Type Public Founders Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates Founded 1977 NYSE stock symbol ORCL Net Revenues $37,047 million USD (2016) Operating income $12,602 million USD (2016) Net earnings $8,901 million USD (2016) Employees 136,000 (2016) Website https://www.oracle.com/ IR contact number +1.650.506.4073 IR email address [email protected]
Oracle Corporation is one of the largest software companies in the world (behind Microsoft).
The company, which is based in California, develops and markets computer hardware systems, software products, and database development tools.
Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates founded the company in 1977 under the name Software Development Laboratories (SDL).
Two years later the three changed the name of the company to Relational Software, Inc and the first version of the Oracle database software ran on PDP-11 hardware.
With the success of its Oracle database software, RSI decided to change its name to something more closely related to its primary products. In 1982 it changed its name to Oracle Systems Corporation.
In 1986 Oracle went public and made an initial public stock offering of 2.1 million shares on the NASDAQ exchange – and reported annual revenue of $55 million USD.
In 1989 the company made a move to prepare for the internet boom, developing database support of online transaction processing. The same year Oracle moved its headquarters to its campus at Redwood Shores, California.
In 1995, the company changed its name to Oracle Corporation.
Larry Ellison, Founder and CEO of Oracle, said the following in 1998: “If the internet turns out not to be the future of computing, we’re toast. But if it is, we’re golden.”
Oracle Corporation – Products and Services
Oracle focuses on providing integrated business software, development software, various databases, application products, and hardware systems.
Software products: Oracle Designer, Oracle Developer, Oracle JDeveloper, NetBeans, Oracle Application Express (APEX), Oracle SQL Developer, Oracle SQL Plus Worksheet, OEPE, Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse.
Database products: Oracle Database, Oracle Rdb, TimesTen, Oracle Essbase, MySQL, Oracle NoSQL Database.
Application products: Oracle Fusion Applications, Oracle Social Engagement and Monitoring System, Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft Enterprise, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne.
Services: Oracle Academy, Oracle Cloud Platform Services, Oracle Consulting, Oracle Database Cloud Service, Oracle Financing, Oracle On Demand, Oracle Support, Oracle University
Company acquisitions: 360Commerce (January 2006), AdminServer (May 2008), Advanced Visual Technology (AVT) (October 2008), Agile (May 2007), AmberPoint (February 2010), AppForge (April 2007), ATG (November 2010), BEA (January 2008), Bharosa (July 2007), Bridgestream (September 2007), Captovation (January 2008), ClearApp (September 2008), Conformia Software (June 2009), Context Media (July 2005), Convergin (February 2010), Datanomic (April 2011), DataScaler (October 2010), Demantra (June 2006), Endeca (October 2011), eServGlobal’s Universal Service Platform (USP) (May 2010), e-Test (acquired from Empirix) (March 2008), FatWire (June 2011), G-Log (September 2005), Global Knowledge Software (GKS) (July 2008), GoAhead (September 2011), GoldenGate (July 2009), Haley (October 2008), HotSip (February 2006), Hyperion (March 2007), HyperRoll (September 2009), i-flex (August 2005), Innobase (October 2005), InQuira (July 2011), Interlace Systems (October 2007), Java (April 2009), Ksplice (July 2011), LODESTAR (April 2007), LogicalApps (October 2007), Market2Lead (May 2010), MetaSolv Software (October 2006), Moniforce (December 2007), mValent (February 2009), Ndevr (February 2011), Net4Call (April 2006), Netsure Telecom Limited (September 2007), Oblix (March 2005), OctetString (November 2005), Passlogix (October 2010), PeopleSoft (January 2005), Phase Forward (April 2010), Pillar Data Systems (June 2011), Portal Software (April 2006), Primavera (October 2008), ProfitLogic (July 2005), Relsys (March 2009), Retek (April 2005), RightNow (October 2011), Secerno (May 2010), Siebel (January 2006), Sigma Dynamics (August 2006), Silver Creek Systems (January 2010), Skywire Software (June 2008), Sleepycat (February 2006), SPL WorldGroup (November 2006), Sophoi (October 2009), Stellent (November 2006), Sun (April 2009), Sunopsis (October 2006), Tacit Software (November 2008), Tangosol (March 2007), Telephony@Work (June 2006), TempoSoft (December 2005), Thor Technologies (November 2005), TimesTen (June 2005), TripleHop (June 2005), Virtual Iron (May 2009)
Oracle Corporation – Financial Results
Key figures (in millions of USD) 2016* 2015* Revenues $37,047 $38,226 Operating expenses $24,443 $24,355 Operating income $12,604 $24,355 Net income $8,901 $9,938 Total assets $112,180 $110,903 Cash and cash equivalents at beginning of period $49,098 $47,447 Cash and cash equivalents at end of period $47,790 $49,098
*For the years ended May 31, 2016 and 2015
Source: “Oracle Corporation – 2016 Form 10-K”
|
||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 5 |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Oracle
|
en
|
List of acquisitions by Oracle
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/static/favicon/wikipedia.ico
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/static/favicon/wikipedia.ico
|
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/footer/poweredby_mediawiki.svg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Contributors to Wikimedia projects"
] |
2007-05-22T21:05:26+00:00
|
en
|
/static/apple-touch/wikipedia.png
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Oracle
|
November, 2006 Stellent Inc Enterprise content management, Digital rights management. Stellent was previously named Intranet Solutions, and its product was initially IntraDoc!. The product was then briefly renamed Xpedio! before both the company and the product were renamed Stellent in 2001. At the time of the acquisition, Stellent had 575 employees.[39] Stellent was a publicly traded company (NASDAQ: STEL)[40] with trailing twelve month revenues in excess of $130 million.[citation needed] Stellent's primary product was known as Universal Content Management (UCM), which formed the foundation of most of its other content management products. This product and its related products were rolled into Oracle Fusion Middleware as part of the Oracle WebCenter Content product line. However, the term Stellent is still commonly used for this suite of applications. $440
|
||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 10 |
https://system.privco.com/company/hotsip
|
en
|
HotSip Company Profile: Financials, Valuation, and Growth
|
https://system.privco.com/api/og?type=company&name=HotSip&imageUrl=
|
https://system.privco.com/api/og?type=company&name=HotSip&imageUrl=
|
[] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
HotSip is a company that operates in the software & internet services industry. HotSip headquarters are located in Stockholm, Sweden.
|
en
|
/icons/apple-touch-icon.png
|
PrivCo
|
https://system.privco.com/company/hotsip
| |||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 47 |
https://www.crn.com/news/applications-os/198500404/oracle-buys-grid-computing-developer-tangosol
|
en
|
Oracle Buys Grid Computing Developer Tangosol
|
[] |
[] |
[] |
[
"Oracle",
"Tangosol",
"Fusion",
"middleware",
"grid computing",
"Applications and OSes",
"Thin Clients",
"Software",
"Network/Systems Management"
] | null |
[
"Stacy Cowley"
] | null |
The headline-grabbing lawsuit Oracle filed yesterday against archrival SAP hasn't distracted the acquisitive company from its shopping expeditions. Oracle said Friday it has reached a deal to acquire Tangosol, a Somerville, Mass., developer of grid computing software technologies.
|
/icons/apple-touch-icon.png
|
https://www.crn.com/news/applications-os/198500404/oracle-buys-grid-computing-developer-tangosol
|
lawsuit Oracle filed yesterday against archrival SAP
Privately held Tangosol launched its first product in early 2001. Its flagship Tangosol Coherence software dynamically partitions and distributes data in memory across a data grid, reducing the costs and resource demands of managing distributed data. Oracle plans to add Tangosol's technology to its Fusion middleware portfolio, boosting its offerings for heavy-duty transaction processing needs.
Oracle expects the acquisition to close next month.
Oracle, based in Redwood Shores, Calif., has bought more than two dozen companies in the past two years, mixing splashy deals like its PeopleSoft, Siebel and Hyperion buys with smaller purchases to fill specific gaps in its technology stack.
Its Fusion middleware line has been a frequent beneficiary of Oracle's shopping. Other middleware acquisitions include buyouts of real-time data management software maker TimesTen, predictive analytics maker Sigma Dynamics and communications infrastructure developer HotSip.
|
||||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
0
| 27 |
https://marketbusinessnews.com/oracle-corporation-company-information/15070/
|
en
|
Oracle Corporation – Company Information
|
[
"https://marketbusinessnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/MBN_Logo.png",
"https://marketbusinessnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/MBN_Logo.png",
"https://marketbusinessnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Oracle-Logo.png"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Alexander Joe"
] |
2014-03-10T22:46:48+00:00
|
This article provides information on Oracle Corporation, including a general overview of the company and the latest financial results.
|
en
|
https://marketbusinessnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/favicon11.ico
|
Market Business News
|
https://marketbusinessnews.com/oracle-corporation-company-information/15070/
|
Oracle Corporation – Company Overview
Company Oracle Corporation Headquarters 500 Oracle Parkway, Redwood Shores, CA 94065, US CEO Safra A. Catz and Mark Hurd Chairman of the board Larry Ellison Industry Software Type Public Founders Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates Founded 1977 NYSE stock symbol ORCL Net Revenues $37,047 million USD (2016) Operating income $12,602 million USD (2016) Net earnings $8,901 million USD (2016) Employees 136,000 (2016) Website https://www.oracle.com/ IR contact number +1.650.506.4073 IR email address [email protected]
Oracle Corporation is one of the largest software companies in the world (behind Microsoft).
The company, which is based in California, develops and markets computer hardware systems, software products, and database development tools.
Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates founded the company in 1977 under the name Software Development Laboratories (SDL).
Two years later the three changed the name of the company to Relational Software, Inc and the first version of the Oracle database software ran on PDP-11 hardware.
With the success of its Oracle database software, RSI decided to change its name to something more closely related to its primary products. In 1982 it changed its name to Oracle Systems Corporation.
In 1986 Oracle went public and made an initial public stock offering of 2.1 million shares on the NASDAQ exchange – and reported annual revenue of $55 million USD.
In 1989 the company made a move to prepare for the internet boom, developing database support of online transaction processing. The same year Oracle moved its headquarters to its campus at Redwood Shores, California.
In 1995, the company changed its name to Oracle Corporation.
Larry Ellison, Founder and CEO of Oracle, said the following in 1998: “If the internet turns out not to be the future of computing, we’re toast. But if it is, we’re golden.”
Oracle Corporation – Products and Services
Oracle focuses on providing integrated business software, development software, various databases, application products, and hardware systems.
Software products: Oracle Designer, Oracle Developer, Oracle JDeveloper, NetBeans, Oracle Application Express (APEX), Oracle SQL Developer, Oracle SQL Plus Worksheet, OEPE, Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse.
Database products: Oracle Database, Oracle Rdb, TimesTen, Oracle Essbase, MySQL, Oracle NoSQL Database.
Application products: Oracle Fusion Applications, Oracle Social Engagement and Monitoring System, Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft Enterprise, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne.
Services: Oracle Academy, Oracle Cloud Platform Services, Oracle Consulting, Oracle Database Cloud Service, Oracle Financing, Oracle On Demand, Oracle Support, Oracle University
Company acquisitions: 360Commerce (January 2006), AdminServer (May 2008), Advanced Visual Technology (AVT) (October 2008), Agile (May 2007), AmberPoint (February 2010), AppForge (April 2007), ATG (November 2010), BEA (January 2008), Bharosa (July 2007), Bridgestream (September 2007), Captovation (January 2008), ClearApp (September 2008), Conformia Software (June 2009), Context Media (July 2005), Convergin (February 2010), Datanomic (April 2011), DataScaler (October 2010), Demantra (June 2006), Endeca (October 2011), eServGlobal’s Universal Service Platform (USP) (May 2010), e-Test (acquired from Empirix) (March 2008), FatWire (June 2011), G-Log (September 2005), Global Knowledge Software (GKS) (July 2008), GoAhead (September 2011), GoldenGate (July 2009), Haley (October 2008), HotSip (February 2006), Hyperion (March 2007), HyperRoll (September 2009), i-flex (August 2005), Innobase (October 2005), InQuira (July 2011), Interlace Systems (October 2007), Java (April 2009), Ksplice (July 2011), LODESTAR (April 2007), LogicalApps (October 2007), Market2Lead (May 2010), MetaSolv Software (October 2006), Moniforce (December 2007), mValent (February 2009), Ndevr (February 2011), Net4Call (April 2006), Netsure Telecom Limited (September 2007), Oblix (March 2005), OctetString (November 2005), Passlogix (October 2010), PeopleSoft (January 2005), Phase Forward (April 2010), Pillar Data Systems (June 2011), Portal Software (April 2006), Primavera (October 2008), ProfitLogic (July 2005), Relsys (March 2009), Retek (April 2005), RightNow (October 2011), Secerno (May 2010), Siebel (January 2006), Sigma Dynamics (August 2006), Silver Creek Systems (January 2010), Skywire Software (June 2008), Sleepycat (February 2006), SPL WorldGroup (November 2006), Sophoi (October 2009), Stellent (November 2006), Sun (April 2009), Sunopsis (October 2006), Tacit Software (November 2008), Tangosol (March 2007), Telephony@Work (June 2006), TempoSoft (December 2005), Thor Technologies (November 2005), TimesTen (June 2005), TripleHop (June 2005), Virtual Iron (May 2009)
Oracle Corporation – Financial Results
Key figures (in millions of USD) 2016* 2015* Revenues $37,047 $38,226 Operating expenses $24,443 $24,355 Operating income $12,604 $24,355 Net income $8,901 $9,938 Total assets $112,180 $110,903 Cash and cash equivalents at beginning of period $49,098 $47,447 Cash and cash equivalents at end of period $47,790 $49,098
*For the years ended May 31, 2016 and 2015
Source: “Oracle Corporation – 2016 Form 10-K”
|
||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
3
| 7 |
https://www.scribd.com/document/182378404/projects-pdf
|
en
|
Download Free PDF
|
https://imgv2-2-f.scribdassets.com/img/document/182378404/original/dfed203245/1721667972?v=1
|
https://imgv2-2-f.scribdassets.com/img/document/182378404/original/dfed203245/1721667972?v=1
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[
"https://s-f.scribdassets.com/webpack/assets/images/shared/gr_table_reading.9f6101a1.png"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"davidcooper025"
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projects.pdf - Free download as PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free. Oracle Projects
|
en
|
https://s-f.scribdassets.com/scribd.ico?6ba5dd86a?v=5
|
Scribd
|
https://www.scribd.com/document/182378404/projects-pdf
| |||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 60 |
https://matttopper.com/category/mapviewer-gis/
|
en
|
GIS .:MattTopper.com:.
|
[
"https://matttopper.com/images/blog/lost_developers/lost_developers_small.gif"
] |
[] |
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[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
en
| null |
In the IOUG Fusion Task Force meeting this week, we were discussing what could be provided to build a better community around the Fusion Middleware world and it’s ever growing list of products and acquisitions. A lot of us are classic Oracle guys that have been doing Java, ADF, App Server, Portal, Discoverer, etc. since its first release. We’ve always known the standard Oracle Metalink, Forums, and ListServs for Oracle help when we need it. Now with so many acquisitions it’s getting incredibly hard to catch up and the communities for many of the new products don’t exist.
One of the big questions that came up was where have all the developers gone. For some reason the term “The Lost Developers” popped into my head, which of course popped the bad 80’s movie “The Lost Boys,” and in turn this bad graphic. (Trust me you don’t want to try and understand whats in my head)
But in all seriousness, where did everyone go. I know a lot of the people went to start their own independent consulting shops, some stayed with Oracle, but what about the rest of the world? What about all the customers and other implementation partners? I went through, looked at the acquisition list, and couldn’t find user groups or message boards for many of them. Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places or haven’t been taught the secret handshake yet, but here is the list I came up with:
Agile: Nothing
AppForge: Palm and Windows Media Local User Groups, nothing centralized
Bharosa: Nothing
Tangosol: LCUG (http://wiki.tangosol.com/display/LCUG/Home)
HotSip: Nothing
Siebel (Analytics): ITtoolbox Group (http://siebel.ittoolbox.com/groups/technical-functional/siebel-analytics-l)
SigmaDynamics: Nothing
Sleepycat: Nabble Forums (http://www.nabble.com/Berkeley-DB-f2899.html)
Stellent: Stellentforums.com and regional user groups
Context Media: Nothing
Oblix: Nothing
Octet String: Nothing
Thor Technologies: Nothing
TimesTen: Nothing
TripleHop: Nothing
Yes there are the Oracle boards, but many of them aren’t trolled by the experts of the acquired companies yet. So what happened? Where did everyone go? Right now I’m working on building a lot of pre-built virtual machines for my side project (thanks again for the people volunteering to help), but on the newer components I’m having to learn a ton as I go and it would be helpful to bounce ideas / questions off of people who have already been there and done that. I’m sure a lot of them are having the same problems now trying to deploy on to the Fusion Middleware stack.
So here it is, an open invite to come out of the corners and reveal yourselves. Where is everyone hiding? How can we build a better collaborative Oracle development world? I would love to hear people’s feedback. Maybe we need a myspace or facebook for Oracle people? I’m only half joking here, there sure are enough of us to keep it busy. What features would make it a kick ass collaboration environment? Forums? Wiki? Torrents? Instant Messaging? Desktop Sharing? Blogs Provider? Maybe just an Aggregator? Rent a VM development environments? Calendaring? Mapping? Presence? Ok, enough web 2.0 buzz words (crap, there was another one).
Call me, email me, IM me, post comments here, I just want to figure out how to make it easier on all of us.
As promised (I know a couple days late, but I had a brainfart on some of the non-codable data) here is the analysis of the Geocoder.us data vs. the Free San Francisco data from Navteq. The data I used to prove this was 75 records for the Starbucks with a San Francisco address.
The first thing to discuss is the extra time it took for the Geocoder.us data. When I geocoded the data against the Navteq data that was loaded inside of the Oracle database it took me approximately 1:15 seconds to geocode the 75 records on my laptop. The same data through the Geocoder.us csv webservice took almost 10x as long, it was ~10 minutes to took to code the same 75 rows. OK, definitely a major hit there, the latency was due to the UTL_HTTP call I was making out of the database was taking 12 seconds per record to return. The Geocoder.us website discusses how to setup your own local Geocoder.us server, maybe in the future I will see what the difference in time is using their interface locally.
On a good note, there were 3 addresses that the Navteq data would not recognize, but the Geocoder.us data recognized all but one row. The one row that it did not recognize had ‘ONE’ for the street number instead of the actual number 1. When replacing the number for the string in the data, the site was successfully coded. Simple enough to fix, but still a limitation.
OK, now onto the data. The Navteq data was coded down to 12 decimal places, while the Geocoder.us data only gets coded down to 5 decimal places. This might not seem like a big deal, but take this into account.
decimals degrees miles-statute feet inches 0 1 69 364320 4371840 1 0.1 6.9 36432 437184 2 0.01 0.69 3643.2 43718.4 3 0.001 0.069 364.32 4371.84 4 0.0001 0.0069 36.432 437.184 5 0.00001 0.00069 3.6432 43.7184 6 0.000001 0.000069 0.36432 4.37184
So basically we are talking a difference in less than inches. While this might not be a big deal for the address is off by 4″ (I think we’ll be able to find it) but if it was a missle defense system, we may have some issues that need to be discussed. Since normal GPS devices are only accurate to about 15 feet on the best days this pretty darn good for free.
The first problem we run into is that the Geocoder data from Navteq is in SRID 8307 format, aka Longitude/Latitude (WGS 84) and the Geocoder.us data is in SRID 8265 format aka Longitude / Latitude (NAD83). So for most people this means nothing, but its actually very important. Remember back in elementary / middle school where they showed all the different maps of the world; one where greenland was really big, one where there were rips in the map, etc. Well this all comes back to us when we are talking about Coordinate Systems in Oracle Spatial. All the different types of map projections; coordinate, catesian, geodetic, projected, geodetic datum, and authalic sphere are all present in the Oracle Spatial database predefined for our use. These projections follow the defined standard projections defined by the OpenGIS consortium ( http://www.opengeospatial.org/specs/?page=specs ).
Very simply I wrote a quick SQL statement that uses the built in SDO_CS package to transform the data from 8265 to 8307 and then calculates the distance between the two points in meters.
select /*+ordered*/
o.store_name
, o.location navteq_location
, g.location geocoder_location
, sdo_geom.sdo_distance ( o.location, sdo_cs.transform(g.location, 8307), .005, 'unit=METER') distance
from sf_starbacks o,
sf_starbucks_geocoder_us g
where g.store_name=o.store_name
order by distance;
Below is the results table that was returned from the function.
Store Name Distance in Meters SF Courtyard Marriott Lobby 2.71659553129724 Spear Street 3.34121058899212 455 Market 3.55328348605654 Market & Fell – San Francisco 3.8057058105241 1750 Divisadero Street 4.69942861653962 99 Jackson 4.70218233521226 Sansome 5.11814739909792 California & Battery – SF 5.29755965611037 123 Battery 6.05824239531821 505 Sansome Street 6.08548442574047 Laurel Village 6.3455649117665 3727 Buchanan – San Francisco 7.21260972749949 Kearny @ Bush 7.22469004513458 123 Mission Street 7.4188927049375 1231 Market Street 7.42953327611775 4094 18th St. 8.08740578188483 3rd & Howard 8.64205159112492 701 Battery 9.9626753714261 Grant & Bush – San Francisco 10.0439995350524 1800 Irving Street 10.0918780314643 398 Market St. 10.0937804181894 425 Battery – San Francisco 10.2121900661491 333 Market St. 10.3904072176329 340 Mission 10.4766571905475 Hills Plaza 10.5820256764645 50 California St. 10.812256443162 Fillmore & O'Farrell (UCO) 11.235605600453 Masonic @ Fulton – S.F. 11.2570582622603 901 Market St. 11.383558585046 565 Clay St. 11.500375430594 675 Portola – Miraloma 12.0143457537109 4th & Brannan – WFB 12.0215273447908 Chestnut 12.7235318198783 199 Fremont @ Howard – SF 13.2578337955333 Union Street 14.4825612550203 390 Stockton @ Sutter (Union Sq) 15.419906040731 36 Second Street 15.6140523231353 74 New Montgomery 15.9682235898887 Safeway-San Francisco #1490 16.1190250104597 Safeway-San Francisco #2606 16.1745772800324 Mariposa & Bryant 16.2510104423628 44 Montgomery @ Market St. 16.4293094494693 King & 4th Street – San Francisco 16.5061673580469 Levi's Plaza @ Sansome 17.097438240954 Fillmore 17.2944166057407 Kansas & 16th St. – San Francisco 17.4991251104624 9th & Howard 17.6327431473884 Sony Metreon SF (UCO) 18.213309935106 120 4th Street 18.3932339959993 27 Drumm Street 19.067431537748 Polk Street 19.2677065095131 201 Powell Street – San Francisco 19.2714989034239 Beach & Hyde – San Francisco 19.3904276298555 Irving Street 19.5731611233583 Van Ness & California – WFB 19.5861907980684 15 Sutter St. 19.9180139893338 Grand Central Market – Mollie Stone 21.2170151879307 Albertsons – San Francisco #7146 21.217250792467 Jones @ Jefferson – San Francisco 21.3270789286301 Cyril Magnin @ O`Farrell – Nikko 21.4961567925423 24th & Noe 22.2641624424109 Geary & Taylor – San Francisco 24.0074384547142 350 Parnassus 25.5867539051804 555 California St. 27.5157348868899 Safeway – San Francisco #667 28.7814007353958 Bush & Van Ness – S.F. 28.9662827730563 100 West Portal/Vicente 31.8815087423281 4th & Market – S.F. 49.9397278381422 Church & Market – S.F. 71.3778706089687 Safeway-San Franscisco #1507 74.3198277064713 Stonestown Galleria 76.3800406139539 Albertsons – San Francisco #7128 182.468554131262 5455 Geary Blvd. – WFB N/A Albertsons – San Francisco #7137 N/A
Out of the 75 Starbuck stores in the table, 3 could not be compared because one of the two distances did not have a geocoded value for the address. The minimum distance difference was 2.71 meters and the maximum was 182.47 meters. The average distance difference was 19.44 meters. So on average the difference is alright, 20 meters average is fine if your trying to find a stores location on the street, but to do anything that requires more precision than driving directions you’d probably want to be assured that your data was more accurate. Even in the worst case it is only off by a tenth of a mile. Which data is more correct? Within the industry its typically accepted to be the Navteq data. Navteq spends many dollars a year to validate their data and make sure its the most accurate around.
The Yahoo uses both Navteq and TeleAtlas data for their geocoder. Maybe I should run some analysis against their service to see what comes out…anyone interested?
In my “Spatially Enabling Your Oracle Business Intelligence Solution” presentation today a question was asked about free geocoding services. The Navteq and TeleAtlas spatial data is expensive and there are some free alternatives out there. One of those options for US data is the website geocoder.us . The data is gathered from the US census data and is definitely not as accurate as the commercial providers, it does an extremely good job at making it easy to geocode your data and is free for non-commercial purposes. Thats right FREE!!! If you do decide to use it for commercial purposes their pricing is more than reasonable in my opinion, as of today they charge $50 US Dollars to geocode 20,000 addresses. There developer documentation is available online and they provide four different web service interfaces to access the data (http://geocoder.us/help/). As promised, here is a simple function that uses their CSV webservice to geocode an address and return it as the Oracle Spatial native datatype sdo_geometry.
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION geocode_address_geocoder_us (
street varchar2 --Includes street number and street name
,city varchar2 --Name of the city for the address
,state varchar2 --US Standard Postal Abbreviation for the state
-- Official List: http://www.usps.com/ncsc/lookups/abbr_state.txt
,zipcode varchar2 --Either the 5 digit or zip+4 notation for the address
)
RETURN sdo_geometry IS
l_geocoder_url varchar2(100) := 'http://rpc.geocoder.us/service/csv?address='; --URL to the csv geocoder.us interface
l_returned_address varchar2(2000); --String of the returned URL from geocoder.us
l_address_not_found varchar2(100) := 'couldn''t find this address! sorry'; --The error string that is returned
-- if an address is not found
l_not_found_position integer; -- Position of not found string
l_latitude varchar2(50);
l_longitude varchar2(50);
l_geo_location sdo_geometry; --Geographical location
l_srid number := '8265'; --The SRID is the Oracle Spatial Projection code for NAD83,
-- the projection that all US census data is in
BEGIN
--Make a call to the csv webservice
l_returned_address := utl_http.request( l_geocoder_url || urlencode( street || ',' || city || ', ' || state || ' ' || zipcode) );
--Check the return string to see if the address was found
l_not_found_position := instr(l_returned_address, l_address_not_found, 1, 1);
--If we find the address not found string we raise a NO_DATA_FOUND exception
if ( l_not_found_position > 0 ) then
RAISE NO_DATA_FOUND;
else
--The data returned is a comma separated list
--The first element returned in the string is the latitude of the address, so we substring out the element
l_latitude := substr(l_returned_address, 0, instr(l_returned_address, ',', 1, 1) - 1);
--The second element returned in the string is the longitude of the address, so we substring out the element
l_longitude := substr(l_returned_address, instr(l_returned_address, ',', 1, 1) + 1, instr(l_returned_address, ',', 1, 1));
--We not create the point location for the address we have geocoded
l_geo_location := sdo_geometry (2001, l_srid, sdo_point_type (l_longitude, l_latitude, null), null, null);
RETURN l_geo_location;
end if;
EXCEPTION
WHEN NO_DATA_FOUND THEN
RAISE;
WHEN OTHERS THEN
RAISE;
END geocode_address_geocoder_us;
/
The code uses a function from an askTom article to urlencode the query string sent to the geocoder.us webservice. The function is available here: http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/ask/f?p=4950:8:::::F4950_P8_DISPLAYID:10444643777538. This function is included inside of HTMLDB and Oracle Portal, but I can’t assume your using those products so there you have it. The geocoder.us service will attempt to make changes to the address if it doesn’t follow the address listed in the census data. I will warn that this function does not take into account any of those changes to the address that the geocoder returns. I can write a procedure, if need be, that takes that into account if anyone needs one.
Tomorrow night, I’m going to do some analysis to compare how close the geocoder.us data matches the free geocoder data available from Navteq for San Francisco.
So I’ve been looking for a good excuse to play with the google maps API a little bit. After all I haven’t touched spatial in a while and its supposed to be my specialty. (Note to self, you still need to setup that 10.1.2 database with all the new Oracle spatial features and get playing) Anyways, I decided to throw together a little site that would allow the members of LS1GTO to put down where they live, their handle on the boards and their year and color. I geocoded all of the cities on the 2000 census, I would have done it at the zip code level, but I couldn’t find a good dataset. The google maps api is pretty slick and really easy to use. It definitely does start to get bogged down when you have many members your looking to map. Does anyone have any good free resources of Oracle spatial data for the US? I’d like to do this in mapviewer and spatial, largely due to the performance benefits, but I can’t find a decent dataset. I might just make my own, it sure would be cool if somone would but out a free Oracle/Navteq competitor to google maps using the mapviewer APIs (anyone from Oracle listening, I’ll write the code, you just provide the hardware and data). Anyways, heres the quick and dirty version of the site:
https://matttopper.com/gto-maps/
A week out at Oracle World is enough to kill anyone, I thought that I would get a week of rest away from work. Boy was I wrong. It seemed like everyday I was busy from 7am to 10pm. The BI Customer Advisory Council was really good. There are a lot of people out there doing some cool stuff with Discoverer. Its amazing how many different ways a ‘Ad-hoc Query’ tool is interpretted by so many different people.
I really enjoyed taking a look at the new OWB “Paris” it really helps in automating and prototyping Discoverer EULs. Jean-Pierre Dijcks and John Leigh really put on a good presenation about this, you can find it here .
I went to the inaugural Oracle Spatial Special Interests Group meeting on Tuesday night. It really wasn’t what I expected, way too many sales guys and not enough people who are in the meat everyday. And the technical people I met were more interested in spatial data rather than rendering information in a map. They are having a follow up meeting at a conference in March. I’m not sure whether or not I want to go yet.
Speaking of Spatial and GIS, a lot of people want mapping built into Discoverer. Being able to select data like from a parameter from at map and also displaying maps like another graph type. I think its a great idea. Obviously, since I went through so much pain implementing it in the previous versions of Discoverer. I’m happy to continue adding the functionality but if its something they want to support I’ll let them. By not having an API into their cache and backend it really makes it painful to having to rewrite the integration with almost every upgrade. I think a lot of people aren’t thinking about the cost of the spatial data if they enable mapping in Discoverer though. I haven’t found a good source of cheap, accurate and detailed spatial data for Oracle yet. Hopefully they’ll realize the need for people to support custom geography as well since most corporations have their own regional, market and retial store geographies that would need to be included as well.
Its really going to be a fun couple of years for the Oracle BI team. It looks like Larry is back to supporting them and the rest of the tools stack and there is a definite drive to have the best BI tools in the industry. I think with the right group of people they can be there pretty quickly
Most people have mixed emotions when have to goto a conference. First you think, ahh a nice 4 days away from the office, then the reality sets in that the work doesn’t stop when your gone and chances are your gonna have to work twice as hard when you get back just to catch up. I’m actually looking forward to this year’s Oracle World Conference.
The Business Intelligence group is going to launch a huge number of new applications. Oracle Discoverer Drake will finally be released. I’m going to be on the customer panel for the Mini Keynote called “Oracle and Gartner unveil the new Oracle Business Intelligence 10g.’ My first 5 minutes of conference fame.
I’m also looking forward to taking a look at the new Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB) Paris from what I’ve heard it does a great job at creating OLAP warehouses and automatically generates the Discoverer OLAP EULs. Should be great for doing some rapid OLAP prototyping.
Lastly, I’m geeked to see Oracle’s plan for SOA, while probably nothing ground breaking, it’ll be interesting to see what components Oracle is going to implement for their SOA stack, whether its just a container and BPEL or if its actually a big competitive stack with logging, auditing, security, realiability, etc. Most importantly how closely does it follow the standards that are out there.
|
|||||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
0
| 7 |
https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/podcast/knowledge-at-wharton-podcast/oracles-acquisition-binge-trying-to-cover-all-its-data-bases/
|
en
|
Oracle’s Acquisition Binge: Trying to Cover All Its (Data) Bases
|
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2006-03-08T08:42:20+00:00
|
For Oracle, the past few months have been one big shopping spree. On January 31, the enterprise software giant purchased longtime rival Siebel Systems, the leading provider of customer relationship management software. On February 14, it acquired Sleepycat, an "open source" database maker; two days later it bought HotSip AB, a Swedish telecommunications software provider. For many companies, Oracle's month would have been a year's worth of merger and acquisition activity, but for the Redwood Shores, Calif.-based firm, it's the norm. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison made a big splash in 2004 by announcing he would consolidate the software industry, starting with archrival PeopleSoft, and he has been true to his word. The real test, however, lies ahead: Can Oracle attract new customers?…Read More
|
en
|
https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/themes/knowledge-wharton/images/icons/favicon.ico
|
Knowledge at Wharton
|
https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/podcast/knowledge-at-wharton-podcast/oracles-acquisition-binge-trying-to-cover-all-its-data-bases/
|
For Oracle, the past few months have been one big shopping spree. On January 31, 2006, the enterprise software giant purchased longtime rival Siebel Systems, the leading provider of customer relationship management software. On February 14, it acquired Sleepycat, an “open source” database maker; two days later it bought HotSip AB, a Swedish telecommunications software company. Meanwhile, press reports suggest two more acquisitions will occur in the near future.
For many companies, Oracle’s month would have been a year’s worth of merger and acquisition activity, but for the Redwood Shores, Calif.-based firm, it’s the norm. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison made a big splash in 2004 by announcing he would consolidate the software industry, starting with archrival PeopleSoft, and he has been true to his word. Since Oracle closed the PeopleSoft deal in January 2005, it has averaged more than an acquisition a month.
The company is viewed by analysts as the leading provider of database software, which allows customers to track everything from financial data to customer profiles. It has also expanded into enterprise applications that run human resources, accounting and supply chain management functions. While this software may not get the press of Apple’s iTunes or Microsoft’s latest operating system, applications from Oracle and its main rival SAP serve as the nervous system of corporate America.
Given the emerging dynamics of the software industry, Oracle’s acquisition spree isn’t that surprising, says Wharton operations and information management professor Morris Cohen. “It’s getting harder and harder to go back to customers and sell upgrades for applications. By building an infrastructure of interconnected applications, you can sell other things when the upgrades aren’t coming. This is really about building the customer base and then leveraging it.” In other words, Oracle is starting to behave more like an older company than a Silicon Valley upstart, as Ellison himself noted at a Credit Suisse investment conference in Santa Monica, Calif., on February 8. “Oracle is a mature software company, and the way I think you look at a mature software company [is different than a startup],” he said.
According to Wharton finance professor Vinay Nair, who has studied Oracle’s acquisition of PeopleSoft, mature companies sometimes have to go outside for opportunities. “Oracle is clearly looking externally for its growth. The company has determined that it will take too long to build up its infrastructure internally.” While it’s not clear yet how Oracle’s strategy will play out, Ellison and his team have so far dispelled a common view that technology mergers can’t work, says Nair.
Many analysts — including JMP Securities’ Patrick Walravens — say that Oracle has kept acquired customers happy by offering a broader product line and discounts. And by holding on to customers, Ellison has been able to gloat a little about his acquired properties. “Siebel made sense financially; PeopleSoft made sense financially. But [they] also made sense strategically. So we win twice,” said Ellison at the February 8 conference. “In fact, you can argue we win three times. It’s a good financial play; it’s a good strategic play in that we gain more heft and more scale in the apps business. We also get a larger opportunity to sell our middleware and database [software]. So, these acquisitions work out very well.”
The Battle for New Customers
While Ellison’s acquisitions seem to be paying off, “There’s no hard and fast rule about whether growing by acquisition is more risky,” says Nair. “Oracle’s strategy is just an alternate route to grow.” Its decision to acquire companies is most likely based on several factors, he adds. How hard will the integration be? What are the costs associated with it? What’s the rationale for the purchase? Acquisitions that are focused on cost savings are generally less risky than those purchases designed to grow revenue. Why? “You don’t control all the factors that go into revenue synergies,” says Nair, adding that the ability to increase revenue largely depends on customer perceptions.
That’s why it’s too early to call Oracle’s strategy a success. The PeopleSoft acquisition looks smart now because it is not easy to switch enterprise software once it’s installed. SAP has taken a more conservative approach to acquisitions and has marketed itself as a more stable alternative to Oracle. To Nair, the real battlefield between SAP and Oracle will be for new customers. “Perhaps new customers will go to SAP,” causing Oracle to “lose some part of the new customer market.” While Oracle is increasing its existing customer base through acquisition, SAP is trying to increase market share with internal growth, he adds.
Indeed, grabbing more customers is one of the key reasons for Oracle’s acquisition of Siebel Systems. “Siebel has a large installed services and support organization,” says Thomas Y. Lee, Wharton professor of operations and information management. “And if Oracle acquires enough customers, its business model of the future may begin to look something like IBM’s. One part of IBM develops its own database-based software tools but it also has a global services unit that is largely agnostic regarding competing software platforms.”
By acquiring multiple companies, Oracle can offer big corporate customers more choice, says Lee. “Because of Oracle’s acquisitions, the customer now gets the simplicity of a single vendor with the benefits of a larger menu of software options.”
The Open Source Market
One question for Oracle is, at what point does its spate of mergers start delivering diminishing returns? Cohen says there is no reason why Oracle can’t continue to acquire companies. “As long as you can find things to add to your product line — and with customers reluctant to buy from multiple vendors and demanding one throat to choke — why stop?” Nair suggests that, for now, Oracle is betting that the advantages of growing by acquisition are greater than the integration risks. “As long as the synergies outweigh the premium paid, it makes sense. What it will really come down to is how disciplined management is. If the acquisition doesn’t add up, can Oracle just walk away?”
So far, Oracle seems willing to spread its tentacles into as many markets as possible. Its latest acquisition of Sleepycat software entrenched it more into the open source database market, which in theory could erode the market share of Oracle’s main database product. Walravens says Oracle bought Sleepycat largely to reconcile different business models based on selling licenses to proprietary software versus pitching services around free applications. If Oracle can learn multiple business models, it should be able to find many ways to sell its software, he adds.
Wharton legal studies and business ethics professor Dan Hunter agrees. The Sleepycat deal allows Oracle to participate in the open source community — essentially a group of developers that create software for free — and ultimately find a way to profit from it. “Oracle’s databases are proprietary, but (the company) still needs to understand open source” just in case free software distribution emerges as the dominant business model, says Hunter.
While Oracle’s entrance into the open source database market may not make sense on the surface, the company will learn how to operate with developers that build applications for free. And it has already taken a step in this direction by offering an entry-level version of its own database for free. The end game: Make sure Oracle’s databases can mesh well with all alternatives and applications. “Oracle needs to get in because, in the end, the database becomes a commodity,” Hunter notes.
It makes sense, Lee agrees, to offer an open source version of Oracle that competes with open source database rivals such as MySQL and Ingres. In addition, Oracle can better integrate its applications with open source code, meaning customers have another option to stay with the company. “For example, a Siebel customer could still use its CRM system, whether it’s with an Oracle database or an open source one.”
Fusing Acquisitions Together
One of Oracle’s bigger tests, Lee adds, will be connecting its acquired product lines together into one coherent software suite. The company has shown it can keep customers by offering them lifetime support on applications they currently run. The biggest issue will be what happens when these customers have to upgrade. Will they turn to SAP or view Oracle as a long-term software provider? “The biggest challenge will be the post-sale services and building long-term relationships,” says Lee. “Oracle will also have to manage the expenses related to merging the code bases.”
Ellison and company have an answer to Lee’s concerns called Fusion, a series of applications that will be the bridge between Oracle’s old and newly acquired software. Oracle has begun developing Fusion software and is targeting 2008 as the year when its acquired software will be merged together. Cohen says the biggest risk to Oracle’s strategy is how Oracle combines its acquired products. “At some point, you have to stop merging applications and rewrite them.”
Meantime, Kendall Whitehouse, senior director of advanced technology development at Wharton, says Oracle will have to work to combine the acquired workforces into one culture to be successful in the long run. So far, Oracle has laid off employees equally from acquired companies and its own employees.
Nevertheless, Whitehouse says that the successful technology acquisitions tend to keep executives — and their management skills — from acquired companies. For instance, Adobe Systems has given Macromedia executives a number of high-level positions as the companies merged products and business functions. Microsoft acquired Groove Networks and named company founder Ray Ozzie, who created Lotus Notes, as chief technology officer.
Despite Oracle’s acquisitions, Whitehouse notes that there are few executives who would be considered logical successors to Ellison. In fact, two of Oracle’s acquisitions — Siebel and PeopleSoft — were run by former Ellison adversaries, Thomas Siebel and Craig Conway, respectively. “Look at how Adobe restructured after the Macromedia purchase,” says Whitehouse. “The products dovetailed nicely and many important positions were filled by Macromedia people. It’s about much more than just acquiring customers.”
|
||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 37 |
https://www.crmbuyer.com/story/oracle-bolsters-insurance-vertical-cred-with-skywire-buy-63521.html
|
en
|
Oracle Bolsters Insurance Vertical Cred With Skywire Buy
|
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[
"admin-ectnews"
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2008-06-23T11:19:13+00:00
|
Oracle has reached an agreement to buy Skywire, a firm that makes software for the insurance business, as the database and applications giant continues to build out its menu of industry-specific tools. The purchase of Skywire marks the second consecutive acquisition in the insurance space for the voracious Oracle, following May's purchase of Adminserver, which makes insurance policy administration software. Oracle already has a strong foothold in the insurance space, with its database products and applications used by some 1,000 companies.
|
en
|
https://www.crmbuyer.com/wp-content/themes/crmbuyer/images/cad_favicon.ico
|
CRM Buyer
|
https://www.crmbuyer.com/story/oracle-bolsters-insurance-vertical-cred-with-skywire-buy-63521.html
|
Oracle has reached an agreement to buy Skywire, a firm that makes software for the insurance business, as the database and applications giant continues to build out its menu of industry-specific tools.
The purchase of Skywire marks the second consecutive acquisition in the insurance space for the voracious Oracle, following May’s purchase of AdminServer, which makes insurance policy administration software.
Oracle already has a strong foothold in the insurance space, with its database products and applications used by some 1,000 companies, including all of the 20 largest worldwide insurers, the company said. Many of those customers came into the fold when Oracle acquired Siebel Systems.
Financial terms of the Skywire acquisition were not disclosed. Oracle expects the deal to close by the end of the year.
Complex Business Environment
Because it is regulated, the insurance industry may be especially ripe for a comprehensive suite of products that touches all aspects of a company’s data.
“Insurance is a strategic industry for Oracle, with growth focused on integrated packaged applications,” said Oracle President Charles Phillips, who added that the company’s lineup of products will enable insurers to “navigate an increasingly complex business environment.”
Oracle shares were down just a fraction of a percent in late morning trading Monday to US$22.04.
Strategic Fit
Skywire is based in Frisco, Texas, with offices across the U.S., Canada and Europe. The company has about 1,450 customers around the world, while Oracle has around 1,000 customers in the same space.
Skywire’s main products help insurers manage the life cycle of an insurance policy, with programs to help create and customize policies, rate risk and set premiums, manage interactions among brokers and agents and share information with partners.
By connecting those tools to its own database and middleware solutions, Oracle believes it can offer a comprehensive industry-specific solution to insurers.
A New Market
The purchases of AdminServer and Skywire demonstrate a commitment to the insurance sector by Oracle, said Gartner analyst Kimberly Harris-Ferrante.
“Although Oracle has been slowly building its insurance assets, it has relied mainly on intellectual property attained in the Siebel and PeopleSoft deals,” she told CRM Buyer.
The policy-management tools move Oracle into a new market, one at the core of the insurance industry, and the two purchases should complement one another and the existing products in the Oracle family.
As is often the case, Oracle’s moves may spur additional interest in the sector, in the form of either acquisitions or venture capital investments in younger startups in the space, Harris-Ferrante added.
Oracle did not specify whether it would retain Skywire’s employees or keep its offices open after the deal closes.
Big Plans
Oracle’s host of smaller acquisitions have received less attention than its blockbuster buys, which include PeopleSoft, Siebel and, most recently, BEA, which it bought earlier this year.
However, the small buys are key to Oracle’s vertical strategy, through which it plans to create customized solutions for several key industries, including financial services — which includes insurance — as well as healthcare, retail and communications.
By purchasing those smaller firms, Oracle makes it more likely the products will find traction among larger global companies, which are less likely to take a risk on a smaller software firm, Ovum analyst David Mitchell told CRM Buyer.
Setting Up a Battle
Oracle is also counting on the vertical focus to help it smooth out the peaks and valleys in its business caused by worldwide economic shifts, Mitchell said. For instance, Oracle’s most recent earnings showed signs of business weakness in the financial services sector and other key customer segments.
Like Oracle, IBM has aimed for vertical dominance in key industries, and the two are seeking to sell to many of the same sectors and customers, with many of the same types of products and services, including middleware that connects to database and storage products.
Even though the third quarter was not as strong as some earlier results, Oracle continues to perform well, said Mitchell. “With BEA on board, Oracle is taking aim at IBM, and IBM has a mirror-image strategy that involves small acquisitions to round out product portfolios. That sets up quite a battle.”
|
||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
0
| 16 |
https://www.scribd.com/document/358021799/Oracle-Corp
|
en
|
Oracle Corporation
|
https://imgv2-2-f.scribdassets.com/img/document/358021799/original/92c8f93973/1721599307?v=1
|
https://imgv2-2-f.scribdassets.com/img/document/358021799/original/92c8f93973/1721599307?v=1
|
[
"https://s-f.scribdassets.com/webpack/assets/images/shared/gr_table_reading.9f6101a1.png"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Doug"
] | null |
Oracle Corp - Free download as PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free. Oracle Corp
|
en
|
https://s-f.scribdassets.com/scribd.ico?668e60fe0?v=5
|
Scribd
|
https://www.scribd.com/document/358021799/Oracle-Corp
| |||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
2
| 5 |
https://cgit.osmocom.org/wireshark/commit/enterprises%3Fid%3D7466880e8a09aa7a9bb797b70fa44bca397881d9
|
en
|
wireshark.org protocol dissector with Osmocom additions (obsolete)
|
[
"https://cgit.osmocom.org/cgit.png"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
en
|
/favicon.ico
| null | |||||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
0
| 20 |
https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/spring-servitization-conference-2017-keynotes/72775426
|
en
|
Spring Servitization Conference 2017 - keynotes
|
[
"https://public.slidesharecdn.com/images/next/logo-slideshare-scribd-company.svg?w=128&q=75 1x, https://public.slidesharecdn.com/images/next/logo-slideshare-scribd-company.svg?w=256&q=75 2x",
"https://cdn.slidesharecdn.com/profile-photo-ShaunWest-48x48.jpg?cb=1657884677",
"https://image.slidesharecdn.com/scc2017keynotespeakers1-170303134109/85/Spring-Servitization-Conference-2017-keynotes-1-320.jpg 320w, https://image.slidesharecdn.com/scc2017keynotespeakers1-170303134109/85/Spring-Servitization-Conference-2017-keynotes-1-638.jpg 638w, https://image.slidesharecdn.com/scc2017keynotespeakers1-170303134109/75/Spring-Servitization-Conference-2017-keynotes-1-2048.jpg 2048w"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] |
2017-03-03T13:41:09+00:00
|
Spring Servitization Conference 2017 - keynotes - Download as a PDF or view online for free
|
en
|
https://public.slidesharecdn.com/_next/static/media/favicon.7bc3d920.ico
|
SlideShare
|
https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/spring-servitization-conference-2017-keynotes/72775426
|
1. Programme and Joining Instructions Spring Servitization Conference 2017 advancedservicesgroup.co.uk/ssc17 15 to 17 May Lucerne, Switzerland Bringing together the world’s eminent researchers and thought leaders Share current research findings on manufacturing companies competing through services Keynotes from academia and industry Structured debate and advancing of the research agenda in servitization
2. Dr Sherif El-Hanoui CEO, Consulting4Growth Keynote speakers Peter is based in Texas, USA. He served as a member of the Sulzer Executive Committee Sulzer Ltd, Winterthur Switzerland, from 2005 to 2016 when he took early retirement. During this period he was the President of the Turbomachinery Services Division, later renamed the Rotating Equipment Services Division. The Division provides independent turbomachinery and electrical services as well as OEM and non-OEM pump services from approximately 100 service centres in 25 countries. He was Head of Business Development of Sulzer Turbo Services from 2004 to 2005 and Director of Operations and Engineering of PT Sulzer Hickham Indonesia, Purwakarta, Indonesia from 1994 to 2004, which he co-founded in 1994. He served as Engineering Manager at Hickham Industries, Inc., La Porte, TX, USA from 1990 to 1994 and Project Engineer from 1987 to 1994. Mr. Alexander started his career as an Engineering Officer in the US Merchant Marine from 1981 to 1987. Mr. Alexander holds a B.Sc. in Marine Engineering from Texas A&M University, USA in 1981. Sherif draws on over 25 years of professional experience- including 10 years of senior management tenure in over 20 countries working with companies such as Moog, Siebel Systems, McKinsey and BT- to lead his management consulting practice. Its mission is to fill management gaps for mid-size operations aiming to grow their business, by offering strategy, marketing and business development support. He is a multi-cultural ideator, business leader, certified coach, and an expert in management and strategy. By education he is an electrical engineer, holding a Ph.D. in Telecommunications. In his career he has carried out research and teaching in academia, worked as a network designer for a world-leading telecommunication carrier, been a consultant at McKinsey and worked as a functional leader. Following his passion for Services he has developed and implemented a strategy for a businesses applying servitization using a customer- focused innovation approach. Peter Alexander Senior Advisor (retired), Sulzer Rotating Equipment Services Division advancedservicesgroup.co.uk/ssc17
3. Jürgen Hinn CEO, Testo Industrial Services Lothar Heinrich Former CIO, SKAN Prof Heiko Gebauer Group Leader, EAWAG Heiko Gebauer leads the Business Innovation for Sustainable Infrastructure Services group at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (EAWAG). This research group explores the provision of services in emerging and low-income countries. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Service Research Centre of the Karlstad University in Sweden and Linkoping Lothar was Chief Innovation Officer SKAN from December 2011 until recently, and a member of the Executive Board. He managed the Competence Centre Scientific Laboratory, Process Validation Microbiology, Biological Indicator Production and Competence Centre - International Service Organization (HQ in Allschwil, Service Hubs at SKAN US, SKAN Japan and SKAN Germany). Lothar is a medical doctor and finished his Executive MBA at University St. Gallen in 2009. Testo is one of the world market leaders in portable measuring instruments. Testo has been in the measuring instrument business for decades (60 years 2017), including the classic aftersales services.Testo Industrial Services was founded 18 years ago as a spin-off, a pure specialist for industrial, manufacturer-independent measurement technology services. Launched in 1999 with approx. 15 employees and today in this segment one of the leading suppliers in Europe with € 60 million revenues in 2016 and more than 700 employees. Since 2016, a new business model has been established in the group, offering hybrid solutions from hardware, software and services. As a result, the service share of group sales and earnings continue to rise disproportionately Tim is the leading international authority on servitization and spends much of his time working hands-on with both global and local manufacturing companies to understand servitization in practice and help to transform businesses. He spent ten years working in manufacturing businesses, beginning his career as an apprentice. His background gives him a personal understanding of the challenges faced by the industry and of the need for practical, relevant guidance on implementing change strategies. His research has included in-depth work with leading corporations such as Goodyear, Xerox, Caterpillar, Alstom and MAN Truck & Bus UK. Prof Tim Baines Professor in Operations Strategy, The Advanced Services Group, Aston Business School advancedservicesgroup.co.uk/ssc17
|
||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 40 |
https://www.unquote.com/category/deals/exits/page/333
|
en
|
Exits - Page 333
|
[
"https://www.unquote.com/images/user_icon_w_small.png"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
"deals",
"exits",
"unquote",
"private equity data",
"European private equity",
"private equity funds",
"private equity deals",
"private equity news",
"UK private equity",
"deals information",
"alternative assets news"
] | null |
[] |
2006-03-15T00:00:00
|
The latest Exits articles from Unquote - Page 333
|
en
|
https://www.unquote.com/images/favicons/32x32.ico
|
https://www.unquote.com
|
https://www.unquote.com/
|
You are currently accessing unquote.com via your Enterprise account.
If you already have an account please use the link below to sign in.
If you have any problems with your access or would like to request an individual access account please contact our customer service team.
Phone: +44 (0)203 741 1137
Email: Georgina.Lawson@acuris.com
UK - AdEPT Telecom floats on AIM
AdEPT Telecom has acheived an IPO on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange. Overall a total of 5.8 m common shares at a price of 140 pence were placed to institutional and other investors in the UK and Europe. The net proceeds...
Exits
21 February 2006
|
||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 56 |
https://ask.metafilter.com/90549/Examples-of-large-software-systems-built-with-wellknown-open-source-components
|
en
|
Examples of large software systems built with well-known open source components?
|
http://cdn.mefi.us/images/askmefi/apple-touch-icon.png
|
http://cdn.mefi.us/images/askmefi/apple-touch-icon.png
|
[] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
Can you think of examples of large or important software systems built with well-known open source components? I could use them in the introduction of a paper that I'm writing.
|
en
|
/apple-touch-icon.png
|
https://ask.metafilter.com/90549/Examples-of-large-software-systems-built-with-wellknown-open-source-components
|
About Ask MetaFilter
Ask MetaFilter is a question and answer site that covers nearly any question on earth, where members help each other solve problems. Ask MetaFilter is where thousands of life's little questions are answered.
|
|||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 57 |
https://discovery-patsnap-com.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/company/cerego/patent/
|
en
|
Cerego LLC:Patent,Patent Application,Portfolio Analysis - Discovery
|
[
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"https://discovery-static-patsnap-com.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/seo/logo/organization/entity/organization/image/logo/349c/b8cb/f5a5/38d4/349cb8cbf5a538d4.jpeg",
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"https://discovery-static-patsnap-com.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/seo/logo/organization/entity/master_entity_128/a1e3/ef83/30d1/bc58/58e3/5bd7/022a/7890/a1c3ac61773f2ab0.jpeg",
"https://discovery-static-patsnap-com.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/seo/logo/organization/entity/master_entity_128/499c/2db0/4231/bc11/f9ee/5d4c/91b9/0904/088e70f5d6911915.png",
"https://discovery-static-patsnap-com.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/seo/logo/organization/entity/organization/image/logo/c236/07ae/3c6c/d5c3/c23607ae3c6cd5c3.png",
"https://discovery-static-patsnap-com.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/seo/logo/organization/entity/master_entity_128/5381/0109/f282/3d4f/0fe1/8adb/13d0/1a97/95f7d9a93137d723.gif",
"https://discovery-static-patsnap-com.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/seo/logo/organization/entity/organization/image/logo/1653/c718/ac6c/f046/1653c718ac6cf046.gif",
"https://discovery-static-patsnap-com.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/seo/client/company/imgs/companys/banner-1-bg2.webp"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
"Cerego LLC",
"patent",
"Technical research",
"Competitor monitor",
"Market trends",
"Company profile",
"discovery",
"PatSnap"
] | null |
[] | null |
Discovery Company profile page for Cerego LLC including technical research,competitor monitor,market trends,company profile& stock symbol
|
en
|
/company/favicon.png
|
https://discovery-patsnap-com.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/company/cerego/patent/
| ||||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 16 |
https://convergedigest.com/oracle-to-acquire-metasolv-extending/
|
en
|
Oracle to Acquire MetaSolv, Extending Telecom Acquisitions
|
[
"https://eadn-wc01-8182785.nxedge.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/cropped-Converge-logo-white-transparent-1.png",
"https://eadn-wc01-8182785.nxedge.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/cropped-Converge-logo-white-transparent-1.png",
"https://dl.dropbox.com/u/11402824/CND/v13n203-oracle.jpg",
"https://eadn-wc01-8182785.nxedge.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Nokia_NI_ConvergeNetwork20Digest_Building20Wholesale20Networks20With20OTN_Byline_Figure1_HD.jpg",
"https://eadn-wc01-8182785.nxedge.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/orange-mwc17b.png",
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"https://eadn-wc01-8182785.nxedge.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Screenshot202022-12-1920at2020.21.42.png",
"https://eadn-wc01-8182785.nxedge.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/bt-sky.png",
"https://eadn-wc01-8182785.nxedge.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/eunetworks-s.png",
"https://eadn-wc01-8182785.nxedge.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Converge-logo-white-650.png"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Staff"
] |
2006-10-23T00:00:00+00:00
|
Oracle agreed to acquire MetaSolv Software, a provider of service fulfillment operations support system (OSS) solutions, for approximately $219.2 million.
|
en
|
Converge Digest
|
https://convergedigest.com/oracle-to-acquire-metasolv-extending/
|
Oracle agreed to acquire MetaSolv Software, a provider of service fulfillment operations support system (OSS) solutions, for approximately $219.2 million.
MetaSolv’s solution sets encompasses provisioning, network inventory and activation for all types of services, including next-generation IMS, VoIP, IPTV, IP VPN, broadband and mobile services, as well as traditional voice and data services.
MetaSolv’s customer base includes more than 170 global service providers — including Brasil Telecom, BT, Cable & Wireless, O2, Singtel, Sprint, Telstra, T-Mobile, UPC, Verizon Dominicana, and Vodafone. The company is based in Plano, Texas.
“By adding a leading OSS application suite, Oracle plans to offer a fully integrated, end-to-end productized solution that will help service providers streamline the ‘campaign to cash’ process, optimize asset lifecycles, and accelerate time-to-market of new products and services,” said Bhaskar Gorti, Oracle Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Communications Global Business Unit. “Conventional, customized solutions have proven inefficient, inflexible and costly. Oracle is putting service providers in control to simplify their infrastructure, deliver more services faster, and drive brand loyalty.”http://www.oracle.comhttp://www.metasolv.com
|
|||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 41 |
https://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/california/candce/3:2007cv01658/190451/1200/45.html
|
en
|
Declaration of Kevin M for Oracle Corporation et al v. SAP AG et al :: Justia Dockets & Filings
|
[
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"https://lawyers.justia.com/s/linkedin.svg",
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[
"https://cases.justia.com/static/flexpaper/?zoom=0.9&pdf=/federal/district-courts/california/candce/3:2007cv01658/190451/1200/45.pdf"
] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
en
|
https://justatic.com/v/20240717092834/branding/favicon.ico
|
Justia Dockets & Filings
|
https://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/california/candce/3:2007cv01658/190451/1200/45.html
|
Oracle Corporation et al v. SAP AG et al
Filing 1200
Declaration of Kevin M. Papay in Support of 1199 Brief Offer Of Proof Regarding Oracle's Hypothetical License Damages filed byOracle International Corporation. (Attachments: # 1 Exhibit A, # 2 Exhibit B, # 3 Exhibit C, # 4 Exhibit D, # 5 Exhibit E, # 6 Exhibit F, # 7 Exhibit G, # 8 Exhibit H, # 9 Exhibit I, # 10 Exhibit J, # 11 Exhibit K, # 12 Exhibit L, # 13 Exhibit M, # 14 Exhibit N, # 15 Exhibit O, # 16 Exhibit P, # 17 Exhibit Q, # 18 Exhibit R, # 19 Exhibit S, # 20 Exhibit T, # 21 Exhibit U, # 22 Exhibit V, # 23 Exhibit W, # 24 Exhibit X, # 25 Exhibit Y, # 26 Exhibit Z, # 27 Exhibit AA, # 28 Exhibit BB, # 29 Exhibit CC, # 30 Exhibit DD, # 31 Exhibit EE, # 32 Exhibit FF, # 33 Exhibit GG, # 34 Exhibit HH, # 35 Exhibit II, # 36 Exhibit JJ, # 37 Exhibit KK, # 38 Exhibit LL, # 39 Exhibit MM, # 40 Exhibit NN, # 41 Exhibit OO, # 42 Exhibit PP, # 43 Exhibit QQ, # 44 Exhibit RR, # 45 Exhibit SS, # 46 Exhibit TT, # 47 Exhibit UU, # 48 Exhibit VV, # 49 Exhibit WW, # 50 Exhibit XX, # 51 Exhibit YY, # 52 Exhibit ZZ, # 53 Exhibit AAA, # 54 Exhibit BBB, # 55 Exhibit CCC, # 56 Exhibit DDD, # 57 Exhibit EEE, # 58 Exhibit FFF, # 59 Exhibit GGG, # 60 Exhibit HHH, # 61 Exhibit III, # 62 Exhibit JJJ, # 63 Exhibit KKK, # 64 Exhibit LLL)(Related document(s) 1199 ) (Howard, Geoffrey) (Filed on 8/2/2012)
Disclaimer: Justia Dockets & Filings provides public litigation records from the federal appellate and district courts. These filings and docket sheets should not be considered findings of fact or liability, nor do they necessarily reflect the view of Justia.
Why Is My Information Online?
|
|||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
3
| 23 |
http://www.logico.net.cn/mobile/home.php%3Fs%3D/Index/proinfo/id/173.html
|
en
|
[] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null | null | ||||||||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
0
| 21 |
https://in.marketscreener.com/insider/KENNETH-GUSTAFSSON-A07S6Y/
|
en
|
200 OK
|
[] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null | null | |||||||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
2
| 4 |
https://www.oracle.com/communications/
|
en
|
Communications Solutions - Networks and Applications
|
[
"https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/img/rc77-comm-monet-fin.jpg",
"https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/img/rc77-comm-order-service-orch.jpg",
"https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/img/rc77-comm-hcm.jpg",
"https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/img/rc77-comm-sdwan-border-control.jpg",
"https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/img/rc77-comm-frictionless.jpg",
"https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/img/rc77-comm-scm.jpg",
"https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/img/rc77-comm-retail-leasing.jpg",
"https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/img/customerlogo-att-clr.svg",
"https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/img/customerlogo-dish-clr.svg",
"https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/img/customerlogo-rakuten-clr.svg",
"https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/img/customerlogo-vivo-clr.svg",
"https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/img/customerlogo-vodafone-clr.svg"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
Create new digital experiences with 5G and IoT business models. Let us show you how with our suite of cloud applications and network infrastructure solutions.
|
en
|
https://www.oracle.com/communications/
|
Communications
Create new digital experiences, deliver on the full potential of 5G, and easily deploy new IoT business models. With our complete suite of cloud native applications and secure network infrastructure solutions, you can evolve your network and grow revenue today.
The new Oracle Enterprise Communications Platform transforms how industries communicate.
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||||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
0
| 17 |
https://discovery.patsnap.com/company/sun-microsystems/
|
en
|
Sun Microsystems, Inc.:Company Profile & Technical Research,Competitor Monitor,Market Trends - Discovery
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[] | null |
Discovery Company profile page for Sun Microsystems, Inc. including technical research,competitor monitor,market trends,company profile& stock symbol
|
en
|
/company/favicon.png
|
https://discovery.patsnap.com/company/sun-microsystems/
|
What is Sun Microsystems's industry?
Sun Microsystems is in the industry of: Software PublishersSemiconductor and Other Electronic Component ManufacturingInternet Publishing and Broadcasting and Web Search PortalsComputer Systems Design and Related ServicesComputer and Peripheral Equipment ManufacturingComputer and Computer Peripheral Equipment and Software Merchant Wholesalers
What technical fields has Sun Microsystems researched?
Sun Microsystems has researched the technical fields related to SoftwareSemiconductorMicroprocessorPublishingDatabaseJavaOperating systemUltraSPARCResistorElectronCapacitor
What is Sun Microsystems's total number of patents?
Sun Microsystems has 17 patents in total.
What kind of company is Sun Microsystems?
Develops computer and storage systems, high-speed microprocessors and software solutions for computer networking...
What is Sun Microsystems's stock symbol?
Sun Microsystems's stock symbol is JAVA.
Where is Sun Microsystems's headquarters?
Sun Microsystems is located in CA, US.
What is Sun Microsystems's NAICS code?
Sun Microsystems's NAICS:NASDAQ.
How many offices does Sun Microsystems have?
Sun Microsystems has 1 offices.
|
|||||
correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 36 |
https://tdan.com/the-database-report-april-2006/5451
|
en
|
The Database Report – April 2006
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1997-07-23T00:00:00
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Welcome to another edition of The Database Report – where we examine the activities in the DBMS market during the past quarter. This time around we look at the first quarter of 2006, and it was an active quarter. Oracle was back on the acquisition path not only acquiring new stuff, but closing some previous […]
|
en
|
TDAN.com
|
https://tdan.com/the-database-report-april-2006/5451
|
Welcome to another edition of The Database Report – where we examine the activities in the DBMS market during the past quarter. This time around we look at the first quarter of 2006, and it was an active quarter. Oracle was back on the acquisition path not only acquiring new stuff, but closing some previous acquisitions. IBM released a free version of its distributed DB2 DBMS. And the open source database market was all in a tizzy. We’ll look at these stories, as well as several others including a look at some of the financials of the main players, in this edition of The Database Report.
Oracle Completes Acquisition of Siebel
At the very end of 2005, Siebel Systems Inc. released a statement announcing that its shareholders will vote on January 31, 2006 to approve Oracle’s $5.85 billion buyout of the company. And that vote was in the positive because on January 31st Oracle announced the completion of its acquisition of Siebel Systems, Inc. This completes another major acquisition for Oracle in the applications space and clearly places Oracle in the leadership position for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.
In terms of support, Oracle announced the extension of its Lifetime Support Policy to cover Siebel version 7.8 and the upcoming version 8 of the Siebel major product lines. Any new versions of the Siebel product line released after the acquisition is completed will fall under Oracle’s Lifetime Support Policy, as well.
Oracle plans to make the Siebel CRM software the foundation for its next-generation Fusion CRM suite. Fusion is Oracle’s long-term project for combining the best of breed functionality from its home grown Oracle applications and the applications it has acquired (PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and Siebel). The eventual success of Fusion will, of course, depend on many factors including how adept its developers will be at integrating disparate lines of code and whether or not Oracle plans any more acquisitions in the applications space. So stay tuned.
And In Other Oracle Acquisition News
Oracle continued its acquisitive ways this quarter by scooping up another open source DBMS and a telecommunications specialist. The first acquisition, of Sleepycat Software, follows on the heels of last quarter’s acquisition of Innobase. The acquisition, announced in mid-February, strengthens Oracle’s position in the embedded database space where it currently offers Oracle Lite and TimesTen (another recent acquisition). It also confirms Oracle’s stated intent to materially participate in the open source software market.
Berkeley DB is the open source, embedded database software offering of Sleepycat Software. Berkeley DB is pervasive in the open source world as it is embedded in several popular open source products including Apache web server and the OpenOffice productivity suite, among others.
The acquisition of Sleepycat also closes down some speculation that MySQL would move to replace its transaction engine (which is currently powered by Innobase) with Sleepycat technology. That move would be useless now that Oracle controls both technologies.
It will be interesting to keep an eye on Oracle’s next moves in the open source space. Many open source proponents are worried that Oracle will move to remake their recent open source acquisitions as more commercial offerings. Of course, it is possible for open source developers to fork the existing code and continue it without Oracle if the company tries such tactics. It might not be easy, but it would be possible.
Don’t immediately assume, though, that Oracle’s intentions are anything other than what they publicly state which is that they are interested in participating in the open source market and plans “business as usual” with its open source acquisitions.
And the Berkely DB product could be a lucrative one for Oracle in the long term. Most of its revenue comes from the embedded database market, which is not currently Oracle’s strength.
Then, the day after announcing the Sleepycat acquisition, Oracle announced that it would be acquiring HotSip AB, a Swedish provider of telecommunications infrastructure software. Its primary offering is a J2EE Session Initiation Protocol application server. HotSip also offers messaging, telephony and conferencing applications. This move will bolster Oracle’s middleware product line and the rumor mill is rampant that it may not be Oracle’s last acquisition in the middleware market. Many analysts and journalists are speculating that Oracle next may acquire JBoss, an open source application server. Such a move would make sense to help Oracle deliver on its Fusion project.
At any rate, Sleepycat and HotSip are Oracle’s fifteenth and sixteenth acquisitions over the past 5 quarters. If I were a betting man, I would wager that we’ll be reporting on the seventeenth next quarter!
Oracle Enterprise Manager Adds Microsoft SQL Server Support
Oracle also made some news in the world of database management tools. Typically, the major DBMS vendors supply tools to help users manage their own databases: IBM manages DB2, Microsoft manages SQL Server, and Oracle manages Oracle databases. Organizations wishing to manage multiple different types of databases had to rely on third party tool vendors like BMC Software, CA, Embarcadero Technologies, and Quest Software. But the landscape is changing.
This quarter Oracle released several plug-in modules for its Enterprise Manager tool that extend its database coverage to include Microsoft SQL Server, instead of just Oracle databases. Actually, Oracle now offers plug-ins for a wide range of Microsoft products, not just its SQL Server database. If Oracle is serious about morphing Enterprise Manager into a heterogeneous management tool it will give the traditional ISVs a run for their money. And they do seem to be serious; these plug-ins appear to be the first steps in Oracle’s making good on its August 2005 promise to provide functionality to manage other vendor’s products.
Of course, it remains to be seen how thorough the non-Oracle functionality will be as compared to the database agnostic vendors. Initial support in Oracle Enterprise Manager is for SQL Server 2000, with SQL Server 2005 support planned for release during Oracle’s next fiscal year.
In additional news on the tools front, Oracle debuted its long-awaited developer tool. Previously known by the code name Project Raptor, SQL Developer provides easy access for database developers to run SQL statements and scripts, edit and debug PL/SQL code, view and update data and browse and create database objects.
Basically, Oracle SQL Developer is the first visual development environment for developing and debugging SQL and PL/SQL code available from Oracle itself. This is another attack by Oracle on the third party DBA tools vendors. Oracle’s SQL Developer is available as a free download – so the price is right. Its functionality is similar to Quest Software’s TOAD for Oracle or CA’s SQL Station. Of course, Oracle’s SQL Developer tool only works for Oracle databases – at least for now; whereas Quest, for example, offers editions of TOAD for SQL Server and DB2.
Oracle Searches and Finds
In March Oracle announced Oracle Secure Enterprise Search 10g, an enterprise search engine for corporate use. The search engine seeks out and indexes enterprise data, including internal and external web sites, databases, file servers, document repositories, enterprise content management systems, portals, e-mail systems and business applications. And, importantly in this day and age of regulatory compliance, it is aware of corporate security policies and rules, so it won’t enable employees to dig through data they are not authorized to see.
Although the major DBMS vendors are all working on search capabilities, the gorilla in this market is Google. Google is attacking the enterprise search market as the domain expert in search engine technology, whereas the DBMS vendors are attacking the market as the domain experts in data management and information technology.
As the market for enterprise search shakes out, it will be interesting to see whether Google can monopolize that market, the way it has dominated Internet search – or will Oracle (or Microsoft or IBM) come out on top? Corporate search users do indeed have different needs than Internet searchers, so it would seem that the DBMS vendors would be better poised to capitalize on their knowledge of corporate data management. But time will tell..
Oracle Security Issues
Much ado was made about security problems in Oracle software this quarter. Even analysts at Gartner published a critical report on Oracle’s security policies that basically takes Oracle to task for not being aggressive enough in responding to known flaws. Then there were the specific news bytes?
First up, in early January news was broadcast of a malicious worm capable of attacking Oracle databases. The exploit enables a cracker to rename the Oracle log file and thereby create a new database account. Although the worm has not yet been taken advantage of, the potential for damage is extreme. If you are interested in the details of this worm information can be found here.
Later in January, David Litchfield, a well known security researcher, called attention to a flaw in the Oracle PL/SQL Gateway. Litchfield called attention to the flaw because Oracle had not created a patch three months after they were made aware of the problem. According to Litchfield attacks can be made against the software allowing access to the back-end server without a user ID or password.
Then, in late February Oracle released a critical security patch almost two months ahead of its regularly scheduled security update cycle. The patch, released for Oracle’s E-Business Suite 11i, fixed several vulnerabilities in the Oracle Diagnostics troubleshooting component.
It would seem that the company that once marketed itself as “unbreakable” has a bit of an ongoing security problem on its hands.
Oracle Wins a Lawsuit
In mid-March Oracle announced that it had won a summary judgment in a lawsuit brought by MangoSoft, Inc. The lawsuit had claimed that Oracle’s shared memory for database clustering infringed on a MangoSoft patent. MangoSoft was seeking in excess of $500 million in damages from Oracle.
At any rate, the U.S. District Court in New Hampshire ruled in Oracle’s favor affirming that it did not infringe on the MangoSoft patent. Although the proceedings against Oracle are ended, Oracle may still move forward on its claims that the MangoSoft patent is invalid and not enforceable.
Oracle’s Fiscal Third Quarter Revenue
In early February Oracle announced that it expected to earn from 13 to 14 cents per share in its fiscal third quarter – with total revenue expected to be up within the range of 17 percent to 19 percent. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company also indicated that revenue for its fiscal fourth quarter is expected to come in at 21 cents to 23 cents per share and total revenue is expected to be up 13 percent to 17 percent. So Oracle’s early revenue expectations were very rosy, indeed.
And Oracle indeed posted a higher quarterly profit when its fiscal third quarter revenue was announced on March 20th. Net income for the third quarter rose to $765 million, which is $225 million more than Oracle posted in the third quarter last year. This equates to 14 cents per share, as Oracle previously announced it expected.
Actually, after subtracting acquisition costs and other charges unrelated to ongoing operations Oracle announced earnings of 19 cents per share – a penny higher than industry financial analyst estimates.
Sales of new software licenses in the third quarter were $1.1 billion, which represents a 16 percent increase over the same period last year. But the best news came from the applications software business. New license sales for applications were up 77 percent to $269 million. However, it is hard to tell what part of this growth is simply due to the numerous acquisitions Oracle has made in the applications spaces versus true organic growth in the sector.
Oracle attributed the profitable quarter to growth for applications in Europe where the company indicated it doubled sales. This is a positive for Oracle as they compete heavily for applications business in Europe with German applications company SAP AG.
News from Oracle’s database software business was not quite as stellar. The growth rate for database and middleware software new licenses was 5 percent over the third quarter of last year. The database business grew over the same quarter last year by 16 percent in the Americas and by 1 percent in Asia Pacific region, but it shrank by 3 percent in the Europe / Middle East / Africa (EMEA) region. Oracle must ensure that it keeps growing database revenue even as it expands its application business. This clearly may be an on-going challenge for the company.
IBM Opens Its Checkbook for Data Management
Late in February IBM announced a data management initiative in which it plans to spend $1 billion over the next three years. IBM also plans to boost the number of workers in its services group who are dedicated to data management work by 65% from the current level of 15,000 to approximately 25,000.
The goal is to expand IBM’s data management software capabilities to take advantage of industry trends including increasingly powerful computers, more data intensive technologies (RFID, for example), and business’ ever increasing desire for information.
At the same time IBM unveiled a set of six solution portfolios related to managing data, as well as an upcoming data integration product to be called WebSphere Information Server.
IBM Tops Street’s Income Expectations
Early in the quarter, in the middle of January, IBM announced its fiscal fourth quarter earnings and the results were good enough to beat Wall Street expectations. Net profits rose 13 percent, even with softness in its service business. IBM’s quarterly profits came in at $3.19 billion on revenue of $24.4 billion, which translates to earnings of $1.99 per share. Analyst consensus was $1.94 per share.
It seems that the analysts who had warned about IBM’s services division having trouble closing fourth quarter deals were true. Services account for more than half of IBM’s revenue. Services revenue came in at $12 billion, which is down 5 percent from the $12.6 billion posted by the division last year. IBM’s software division posted flat revenues but would have reported a 3 percent increase if not for currency changes. The hardware business showed positive gains due to IBM’s mainframe product line (5 percent improvement) and its manufacturing of computer chips (48 percent improvement).
Overall, IBM’s quarterly profit margins were boosted by its sell off of its personal computer business along with cost cutting measures. Yearly revenue for IBM’s fiscal 2005 was $91.1 billion with profits of $7.93 billion – or $4.87 per share.
IBM Divvies Up the Services Division
In late February, possibly in reaction to the fourth quarter results from its services division, IBM divided the group into three units. The units are: Enterprise Business Services, led by Ginni Rometty; Integrated Operations, led by Bob Moffatt; and IT Services, led by Mike Daniels. All three of the business unit heads will report directly to IBM CEO Sam Palmisano.
The move makes some sense because IBM’s Global Services division was huge, being responsible for $47 billion of IBM’s $91 billion in revenue. Now each unit can concentrate on running a smaller, more easily controllable business. However, it might be confusing for customers to understand.
Hey, Buddy, Want a Free DB2?
In late January IBM released a free edition of DB2 dubbed DB2 Express-C. The offering is being marketed as a no-charge database server for use in application development and deployment. DB2 Express-C is supported for both Windows and Linux operating systems. It does come with a few restrictions over the full-blown DB2 offering, as follows: it is available on hardware with no more than 2 processors and with a maximum addressable memory of 4GB. But there is no database size limit. Additionally, some high-end features are not offered on DB2 Express-C, including database partitioning, connection concentrator, the DB2 geodetic extender, Query Patroller, and the Net Search Extender.
As far as technical support goes, users can get community support for DB2 Express-C on IBM’s developerWorks web site, or they can pay for support from IBM.
So although DB2 Express-C is not targeted for applications requiring very large databases with high availability and speed. It is possible even with these limitations for many, many important application for small to medium sized businesses to be developed and run using DB2 Express-C. And if you hit any of the limitations you can always upgrade from DB2 Express-C to any of the DB2 Universal Database editions which support larger servers or server clusters.
This is not really huge news because Microsoft (SQL Server 2005 Express) and Oracle (Database XE) already provide no-charge DBMS offerings. But if you do a little bit of investigation you’ll notice that all of the other offerings are pretty severely crippled when compared to the IBM offering. Basically, of the freebies, only with IBM’s DB2 Express-C is it possible actually to deploy applications using it.
And it is now possible to get “free” database software from all of the big guys as well as from the open source players.
On The Open Source Front
Well, even though the big open source DBMS news this quarter was Oracle’s acquisition of Sleepycat, that was not the only news. MySQL made the news several times this quarter.
First off, MySQL launched itself into the acquisition game. In late February, MySQL announced that it had acquired Netfrastructure, a privately held maker of tools and server software for Web-based application building. In so doing, MySQL picked up Jim Starkey, a well-respected database architect and former founder of Interbase Software. Starkey was Netfrastructure’s founder and president and will take on the role of senior software architect at MySQL.
Interbase Software was acquired by Borland and Borland released the Interbase code to the open-source community. That code is the basis for the Firebird open source DBMS; and Starkey was a contributor to that code.
The addition of Starkey should be a boon for MySQL, as Interbase was somewhat of a DBMS visionary. Interbase was the first DBMS to adopt some features which are now ubiquitous in database management systems. For example, Interbase pioneered the use of BLOBs and triggers. MySQL can use some of the forward thinking abilities of an architect like Starkey. One thing Starkey could start working on is a transactional engine to replace the InnoDB engine that MySQL relies and which is now owned by Oracle.
Even though it would seem that this acquisition was done to acquire human capital (MySQL also placed several other Netfrastructure employees in key positions), it also gains some nice software in the deal. The Netfrastructure products combine a Firebird-like database and an application server. It is a good bet that MySQL will work to integrate this software into its own products. And it would seem that Starkey will no longer be contributing to the Firebird project given his new role at MySQL.
In other MySQL news, the company won a five year contract with the US government’s General Services Administration. The contract enables government customers to be able to purchase and deploy MySQL through Carahsoft Technology Corp. The GSA schedule is effective December 20, 2005 through November 19, 2009 and it should boost MySQL’s presence in government projects.
Of course, MySQL was not the only open source company in the news this quarter. Ingres also made some headlines when it hired Tom Berquist as its new CFO. Berquist, a former managing director at Citigroup, rounds out Ingres’ impressive executive team, which includes several former Oracle executives.
Announced in February, Berquist did not move into his new role at Ingres until the beginning of March. His background with Citigroup included following medium to large software companies including Microsoft and Oracle, two companies that Ingres must battle for customers in the DBMS market.
Berquist is not unfamiliar with the open source market either. Prior to working at Citigroup, Berquist was managing director of Software Equity Research at Goldman Sachs where he covered Red Hat, among other technology companies.
And Up in Redmond
Given that SQL Server 2005 is still new there was not a whole lot of news on the Microsoft front this past quarter. If you are still running SQL Server 7.0 though, you might want to start thinking about upgrading. Effective December 31, 2005, support for all versions of Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 will transition from Mainstream Support to Extended Support.
Extended Support for SQL Server 7.0 will continue for at least five years, through December 2010. During Extended Support, Microsoft will continue to provide security hot fixes and paid support. Extended Support will be provided through Premier Support contracts and Essential Support contracts, per-incident telephone support, and Web support. Design change requests will not be available for SQL Server 7.0 during the Extended Support phase.
If you are still relying on SQL Server 7.0 in a production system it is really time to move up to SQL Server 2000 or SQL Server 2005.
SQL Server 2005 SP1
In mid-March Microsoft released the first Community Technology Preview of Service Pack 1 for SQL Server 2005. But what does this mean in English for those of us who do not speak techie? SP1 is the first service pack for SQL Server 2005. A service pack is a packaged group of fixes and enhancements. If you run Windows XP you are familiar with the terminology.
SQL Server 2005 SP1 will include some interesting new functionality for SQL Server users. Most important is the new data mirroring technology that Microsoft cut from SQL Server 2005 at the last minute due to quality concerns. Support for data mirroring will improve SQL Server’s disaster recovery continuity planning.
SP1 will also include SQL Server Management Studio Express. This is a graphical front-end for the Express version of Microsoft SQL Server – that is, Microsoft’s free DBMS offering that competes with DB2 Express-C and Oracle XE. The new tool should make it easier to manage and use SQL Server 2005 Express.
No More SQL Server Betas?
Also in mid-March Microsoft Watch reported that Microsoft was re-thinking its current process of releasing beta software. Instead of large beta releases Microsoft is favoring the creation more frequent test builds for some of its software. The hope is that this new technique will speed up the development process.
Paul Flessner, the vice president in charge of Microsoft’s server applications, indicated his desire to forgo beta releases in favor of the new process.
Read more about this.
Microsoft’s Quarterly Earnings
In late January Microsoft announced revenue of $11.84 billion for the quarter ended December 31, 2005. This represents a 9 percent increase over the same period of the prior year, marking the highest quarterly revenue in the company’s history. Net income for the quarter was $3.65 billion, which grew 5 percent from $3.46 billion for the same quarter of the previous year.
The revenue was well-earned as it comes from a very important quarter for Microsoft. The quarter marked the launches of Xbox 360, SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0. Server and Tools revenue grew 14 percent over the prior year and the growth of SQL Server was particularly strong with over 20 percent year over year revenue growth.
Raising the Antsy on Database
Even though we usually cover the bigger players in the DBMS space, every once in a while a piece of news from one of the smaller players is worth highlighting. An announcement from ANTs Software falls into that category this quarter. ANTs develops and markets what it calls a “universally compatible, high-performance SQL database management system.”
In early March, ANTs announced that Don Haderle, recently retired IBM fellow and leader of the technical team that created DB2, had joined ANTs’ newly created Technical Advisory Board. This is a major coup for ANTs given Haderle’s reputation in the DBMS community. Haderle worked at IBM from 1968 through 2005 and before his retirement was responsible for securing more than 50 patents and disclosures relating to database management. In addition to being an IBM Fellow he was appointed an ACM Fellow in 2000 in recognition of his impact on database technology.
So what is the big deal about ANTs database technology that would interest someone with Haderle’s background? Haderle says that “ANTs has developed a groundbreaking product with broad implications for any business seeking to reduce the cost and complexity of their database infrastructure. I look forward to working with their first-class technical and management teams to help establish ANTs as a major force in the industry.”
Key aspects of ANTs’ DBMS includes wait-free, or non-blocking technology database that can deliver better transaction throughput. Additionally, ANTs has technology that enables its DBMS to mimic other databases, such as DB2 and Oracle. This is important because one of the big barriers to entry for DBMS products is compatibility and availability of applications. If ANTs can mimic the interface of other DBMS products well enough for application code to run unchanged it might be worth keeping an eye on them. Especially with Don Haderle in their corner.
|
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correct_subsidiary_00137
|
FactBench
|
1
| 61 |
https://mainakkmandal.medium.com/design-fast-hybrid-cloud-7aa146f9d1bd%3FresponsesOpen%3Dtrue%26sortBy%3DREVERSE_CHRON
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2080
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dbpedia
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1
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https://www.wikiwand.com/en/8th_Landwehr_Division_(German_Empire)
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en
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8th Landwehr Division (German Empire)
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The 8th Landwehr Division was a unit of the Prussian/German Army. The division was formed on January 31, 1915, out of the formerly independent 56th Landwehr Inf...
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en
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https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/8th_Landwehr_Division_(German_Empire)
|
The 8th Landwehr Division (8. Landwehr-Division) was a unit of the Prussian/German Army.[1] The division was formed on January 31, 1915, out of the formerly independent 56th Landwehr Infantry Brigade, which had been dissolved on January 25, 1915. The division spent the period from its formation to early 1917 mainly involved in positional warfare in Upper Alsace, after which it occupied the trenchlines near Verdun. It remained in positional warfare in this general region until the end of the war. It participated in no major battles, but was primarily suited to quieter sectors of the line. Allied intelligence rated the division as a fourth class division, though it noted that "in the attack it did fairly well, without heavy loss."[2][3] The division was disbanded in 1919 during the demobilization of the German Army after World War I.
The 8th Landwehr Division, like the 56th Landwehr Infantry Brigade before it, was raised in the Grand Duchy of Baden. As a Landwehr division, it was primarily composed of older soldiers who had already fulfilled their regular and reserve service obligations.
|
||||||
2080
|
dbpedia
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1
| 19 |
https://www.naval-military-press.com/product/the-78th-division-in-the-final-offensive-in-italyan-account-of-the-operations-of-the-78th-infantry-division-during-the-period-9th-to-25-april-1945/
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THE 78th DIVISION IN THE FINAL OFFENSIVE IN ITALY An Account of the Operations of the 78th Infantry Division during the period 9th to 25 April 1945
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2023-07-19T11:20:33+00:00
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en
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Naval & Military Press
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https://www.naval-military-press.com/product/the-78th-division-in-the-final-offensive-in-italyan-account-of-the-operations-of-the-78th-infantry-division-during-the-period-9th-to-25-april-1945/
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Overview of the Operation.
On the night of 10/11 April, British V Corps launched Operation Impact Plain to widen and deepen its bridgehead in the Wedge: 40th (Royal Marine) Commando advanced along the raised causeway bordering the lake while, from 56th (London) Division, 169th (Queen’s) Brigade advanced on the commando’s left across the flooded margins of the lake with two battalions in LVTs. The 56th Division’s 167th Brigade advanced from the Wedge along the Reno flood banks. The commando column met stiff resistance at the bridge north east of Menate and took heavy casualties but were able to take the objective with the assistance of air support. 42nd Jaeger Division seems to have been taken by surprise by their opponents’ amphibious capacity and seemed somewhat unnerved by the LVTs emerging from the water so that by daylight on 12 April all three columns had made some 4 miles headway, linking up in the Menate-Longastrino area. 169th Brigade then pushed forward on the road towards Filo and 167th Brigade continued up the Reno, rolling up the German defences as far as the confluence with the Santerno river to link with the Italian Cremona Combat Group which had advanced from the south.
Reacting to the Allied attack, von Vietinghof ordered 29th Panzergrenadier Division south to reinforce the Argenta gap. Its 15th Panzergrenadier Regiment arrived to reinforce 42nd Jaeger Division on 12 April but the rest of the division had been north of the Po and, delayed by air damage and fuel shortages was not in position until 14 April.
Early on 13 April the 38th (Irish) Brigade, of 78th Battleaxe Division, attacked northward from Indian 8th Division’s bridgehead across the Santerno river with the objective of seizing a bridgehead across the Reno at Bastia, in the mouth of the Argenta gap. Meanwhile, to their right, 56th Infantry Division launched the second phase of its operation, Impact Royal. This involved No. 9 Commando of 2nd Commando Brigade and 24th Guards Brigade advancing up the flooded margins of Lake Comacchio in LVTs to concentrate near Chiesa del Bando, 6 miles (9.7 km) north west of Menate and develop a threat to Argenta which lay some 3 miles to the south west of this objective.[A foothold was established on the Fossa Marina, a canal running roughly east to west from Argenta to the lake and a 1 mile short of their objective but then the newly arrived 15th Panzer Grenadier Regiment blocked further progress and an attempt to take the bridge across the Fossa on 14 April was beaten back.
In the morning of 14 April forward elements of 38th Brigade had crossed the bridge over the Reno at Bastia but had been forced back by an armoured counterattack. It was decided to confine immediate activity to mopping up south of the Reno and await the approach of 167th Brigade which,advancing on both banks of the Reno, would shortly threaten the flank of the defenders north of the river in Bastia and oblige them to retire. Rather than wait for the bridge at Bastia to be cleared, V Corps commander, Lieutenant-General Charles Keightley ordered 78th Division’s 11th Infantry Brigade to use 56th Division’s bridges over the Reno in order to get forward towards Argenta without delay.
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https://alchetron.com/Battle-of-Verdun
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Battle of Verdun
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2017-08-18T08:30:48+00:00
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The Battle of Verdun (Bataille de Verdun, bataj d vd, Schlacht um Verdun, laxt m vd), fought from 21 February to 18 December 1916, was one of the largest and longest battles of the First World War on the Western Front between the German and French armies. The battle took place on th
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/favicon.ico
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Alchetron.com
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https://alchetron.com/Battle-of-Verdun
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Strategic developments
After the German invasion of France had been halted at the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914, the war of movement ended at the Battle of the Yser and the First Battle of Ypres. The Germans built field fortifications to hold the ground captured in 1914 and the French began siege warfare to break through the German defences and recover the lost territory. In late 1914 and in 1915, offensives on the Western Front had failed to gain much ground and been extremely costly in casualties. According to his memoirs written after the war, the Chief of the German General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, believed that although victory might no longer be achieved by a decisive battle, the French army could still be defeated if it suffered a sufficient number of casualties. Falkenhayn offered five corps from the strategic reserve for an offensive at Verdun at the beginning of February 1916 but only for an attack on the east bank of the Meuse. Falkenhayn considered it unlikely the French would be complacent about Verdun; he thought that they might send all their reserves there and begin a counter-offensive elsewhere or fight to hold Verdun while the British launched a relief offensive. After the war, the Kaiser and Colonel Tappen, the Operations Officer at Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL: General Headquarters), wrote that Falkenhayn believed the last possibility was most likely.
By seizing or threatening to capture Verdun, the Germans anticipated that the French would send all their reserves, which would have to attack secure German defensive positions, which were supported by a powerful artillery reserve and be destroyed. In the Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive (1 May – 19 September 1915), the German and Austro-Hungarian Armies attacked Russian defences frontally, after pulverising them with large amounts of heavy artillery. During the Second Battle of Champagne (Herbstschlacht "autumn battle") of 25 September – 6 November 1915, the French suffered "extraordinary casualties" from the German heavy artillery, which Falkenhayn considered offered a way out of the dilemma of material inferiority and the growing strength of the Allies. In the north, a British relief offensive would wear down British reserves, to no decisive effect but create the conditions for a German counter-offensive near Arras.
Hints about Falkenhayn's thinking were picked up by Dutch military intelligence and passed on to the British in December. The German strategy was to create a favourable operational situation without a mass attack, which had been costly and ineffective when it had been tried by the Franco-British, by relying on the power of heavy artillery to inflict mass losses. A limited offensive at Verdun would lead to the destruction of the French strategic reserve in fruitless counter-attacks and the defeat of British reserves in a futile relief offensive, leading to the French accepting a separate peace. If the French refused to negotiate, the second phase of the strategy would begin in which the German armies would attack terminally weakened Franco-British armies, mop up the remains of the French armies and expel the British from Europe. To fulfil this strategy, Falkenhayn needed to hold back enough of the strategic reserve for the Anglo-French relief offensives and then conduct a counter-offensive, which limited the number of divisions which could be sent to the 5th Army at Verdun, for Unternehmen Gericht (Operation Judgement).
The Fortified Region of Verdun (RFV) lay in a salient formed during the German invasion of 1914. The Commander-in-Chief of the French Army, General Joseph Joffre, had concluded from the swift capture of the Belgian fortresses at the Battle of Liège and at the Siege of Namur in 1914 that fixed defences had been made obsolete by German siege guns. In a directive of the General Staff of 5 August 1915, the RFV was to be stripped of 54 artillery batteries and 128,000 rounds of ammunition. Plans to demolish forts Douaumont and Vaux to deny them to the Germans were made and 5,000 kilograms (11,000 lb) of explosives had been laid by the time of the German offensive on 21 February. The 18 large forts and other batteries around Verdun were left with fewer than 300 guns and a small reserve of ammunition while their garrisons had been reduced to small maintenance crews. The railway line from the south into Verdun had been cut during the Battle of Flirey in 1914, with the loss of Saint-Mihiel; the line west from Verdun to Paris was cut at Aubréville in mid-July 1915 by the German 3rd Army, which had attacked southwards through the Argonne Forest for most of the year.
Région Fortifiée de Verdun
For centuries, Verdun, on the Meuse river, had played an important role in the defence of the French hinterland. Attila the Hun failed to seize the town in the fifth century and when the empire of Charlemagne was divided under the Treaty of Verdun (843), the town became part of the Holy Roman Empire; the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 awarded Verdun to France. At the heart of the city was a citadel built by Vauban in the 17th century. A double ring of 28 forts and smaller works (ouvrages) had been built around Verdun on commanding ground, at least 150 metres (490 ft) above the river valley, 2.5–8 km (1.6–5.0 mi) from the citadel. A programme had been devised by Séré de Rivières in the 1870s to build two lines of fortresses from Belfort to Épinal and from Verdun to Toul as defensive screens and to enclose towns intended to be the bases for counter-attacks. Many of the Verdun forts had been modernised and made more resistant to artillery, with a reconstruction programme begun at Douaumont in the 1880s. A sand cushion and thick, steel-reinforced concrete tops up to 2.5 metres (8.2 ft) thick, buried under 1–4 metres (3.3–13.1 ft) of earth, were added. The forts and ouvrages were sited to overlook each other for mutual support and the outer ring had a circumference of 45 km (28 mi). The outer forts had 79 guns in shell-proof turrets and more than 200 light guns and machine-guns to protect the ditches around the forts. Six forts had 155 mm guns in retractable turrets and fourteen had retractable twin 75 mm turrets.
In 1903, Douaumont was equipped with a new concrete bunker (Casemate de Bourges), containing two 75 mm field guns to cover the south-western approach and the defensive works along the ridge to Ouvrage de Froidterre. More guns were added from 1903–1913, in four retractable steel turrets. The guns could rotate for all-round defence and two smaller versions, at the north-eastern and north-western corners of the fort, housed twin Hotchkiss machine-guns. On the east side of the fort, an armoured turret with a 155 mm short-barrelled gun faced north and north-east and another housed twin 75 mm guns at the north end, to cover the intervals between forts. The fort at Douaumont formed part of a complex of the village, fort, six ouvrages, five shelters, six concrete batteries, an underground infantry shelter, two ammunition depots and several concrete infantry trenches. The Verdun forts had a network of concrete infantry shelters, armoured observation posts, batteries, concrete trenches, command posts and underground shelters between the forts. The artillery comprised c. 1,000 guns, with 250 in reserve and the forts and ouvrages were linked by telephone and telegraph, a narrow-gauge railway system and a road network; on mobilisation, the RFV had a garrison of 66,000 men and rations for six months.
German offensive preparations
Verdun was isolated on three sides and railway communications to the French rear had been cut except for a light railway; German-controlled railways lay only 24 km (15 mi) to the north of the front line. A corps was moved to the 5th Army to provide labour for the preparation of the offensive. Areas were emptied of French civilians and buildings requisitioned, thousands of kilometres of telephone cable were laid, thousands of tons of ammunition and rations were stored under cover with hundreds of guns installed and camouflaged. Ten new rail lines with twenty stations were built and vast underground shelters (Stollen) were dug 4.5–14 metres (15–46 ft) deep, each to accommodate up to 1,200 German infantry. The III Corps, VII Reserve Corps and XVIII Corps were transferred to the 5th Army, each corps being reinforced by 2,400 experienced troops and 2,000 trained recruits. V Corps was placed behind the front line, ready to advance if necessary when the assault divisions were moving up and the XV Corps, with two divisions, was in the 5th Army reserve, ready to advance to mop up as soon as the French defence collapsed.
Special arrangements were made to maintain a high rate of artillery-fire during the offensive, 331⁄2 munitions trains per day were to deliver ammunition sufficient for 2,000,000 rounds to be fired in the first six days and another 2,000,000 shells in the next twelve. Five repair shops were built close to the front to reduce delays for maintenance; factories in Germany were made ready, rapidly to refurbish artillery needing more extensive repairs. A redeployment plan for the artillery was devised, for field guns and mobile heavy artillery to be moved forward, under the covering fire of mortars and the super-heavy artillery. A total of 1,201 guns were massed on the Verdun front, two thirds of which were heavy and super-heavy artillery, which had been obtained by stripping the modern German artillery from the rest of the Western Front and substituting it with older types and captured Russian guns. The German artillery could fire into the Verdun salient from three directions, yet remain dispersed.
German plan of attack
The 5th Army divided the attack front into areas, A occupied by the VII Reserve Corps, B by the XVIII Corps, C by the III Corps and D on the Woëvre plain by the XV Corps. The preliminary artillery bombardment was to begin in the morning of 12 February. At 5:00 p.m., the infantry in areas A to C would advance in open order, supported by grenade and flame-thrower detachments. Wherever possible, the French advanced trenches were to be occupied and the second position reconnoitred, for the artillery fire on the second day. Great emphasis was placed on limiting German infantry casualties, by sending them to follow up destructive bombardments by the artillery, which was to carry the burden of the offensive in a series of large "attacks with limited objectives", to maintain a relentless pressure on the French. The initial objectives were the Meuse Heights, on a line from Froide Terre to Fort Souville and Fort Tavannes, which would provide a secure defensive position from which to repel French counter-attacks. Relentless pressure was a term added by the 5th Army staff and created ambiguity about the purpose of the offensive. Falkenhayn wanted land to be captured, from which artillery could dominate the battlefield and the 5th Army wanted a quick capture of Verdun. The confusion caused by the ambiguity was left to the corps headquarters to sort out.
Control of the artillery was centralised by an "Order for the Activities of the Artillery and Mortars", which stipulated that the corps Generals of Foot Artillery were responsible for local target selection, while co-ordination of flanking fire by neighbouring corps and the fire of certain batteries, was determined by the 5th Army headquarters. French fortifications were to be engaged by the heaviest howitzers and enfilade fire. The heavy artillery was to maintain long-range bombardment of French supply routes and assembly areas; counter-battery fire was reserved for specialist batteries firing gas shells. Co-operation between the artillery and infantry was stressed, with accuracy of the artillery being given priority over rate of fire. The opening bombardment was to build up slowly and Trommelfeuer (a rate of fire so rapid that the sound of shell-explosions merged into a rumble) would not begin until the last hour. As the infantry advanced, the artillery would increase the range of the bombardment to destroy the French second position. Artillery observers were to advance with the infantry and communicate with the guns by field telephones, flares and coloured balloons. When the offensive began, the French were to be bombarded continuously, harassing fire being maintained at night.
French defensive preparations
In 1915, 237 guns and 647 long tons (657 t) of ammunition in the forts of the RFV had been removed, leaving only the heavy guns in retractable turrets. The conversion of the RFV to a conventional linear defence, with trenches and barbed wire began but proceeded slowly, after resources were sent west from Verdun for the Second Battle of Champagne (25 September – 6 November 1915). In October 1915, building began on trench lines known as the first, second and third positions and in January 1916, an inspection by General Noël de Castelnau, Chief of Staff at French General Headquarters (GQG), reported that the new defences were satisfactory, except for small deficiencies in three areas. The fortress garrisons had been reduced to small maintenance crews and some of the forts had been readied for demolition. The maintenance garrisons were responsible to the central military bureaucracy in Paris and when the XXX Corps commander, General Chrétien, attempted to inspect Fort Douaumont in January 1916, he was refused entry.
Douaumont was the largest fort in the RFV and by February 1916, the only artillery left in the fort were the 75 mm and 155 mm turret guns and light guns covering the ditch. The fort was used as a barracks by 68 technicians under the command of Warrant-Officer Chenot, the Gardien de Batterie. One of the rotating 155 mm (6.1 in) turrets was partially manned and the other was left empty. The Hotchkiss machine-guns were stored in boxes and four 75 mm guns in the casemates had already been removed. The drawbridge had been jammed in the down position by a German shell and had not been repaired. The coffres (wall bunkers) with Hotchkiss revolver-cannons protecting the moats, were unmanned and over 5,000 kilograms (11,000 lb) of explosive charges had been placed in the fort to demolish it.
In late January 1916, French intelligence had obtained an accurate assessment of German military capacity and intentions at Verdun but Joffre considered that an attack would be a diversion, because of the lack of an obvious strategic objective. By the time of the German offensive, Joffre expected a bigger attack elsewhere but ordered the VII Corps to Verdun on 23 January, to hold the north face of the west bank. XXX Corps held the salient east of the Meuse to the north and north-east and II Corps held the eastern face of the Meuse Heights; Herr had 81⁄2 divisions in the front line, with 21⁄2 divisions in close reserve. Groupe d'armées du centre (GAC, General De Langle de Cary) had the I and XX corps with two divisions each in reserve, plus most of the 19th Division; Joffre had 25 divisions in the strategic reserve. French artillery reinforcements had brought the total at Verdun to 388 field guns and 244 heavy guns, against 1,201 German guns, two thirds of which were heavy and super heavy, including 14 in (360 mm) and 202 mortars, some being 16 in (410 mm). Eight specialist flame-thrower companies were also sent to the 5th Army.
Castelnau met De Langle de Cary on 25 February, who doubted the east bank could be held. Castelnau disagreed and ordered General Frédéric-Georges Herr the corps commander, to hold the right (east) bank of the Meuse at all costs. Herr sent a division from the west bank and ordered XXX Corps to hold a line from Bras to Douaumont, Vaux and Eix. Pétain took over command of the defence of the RFV at 11:00 p.m., with Colonel Maurice de Barescut as chief of staff and Colonel Bernard Serrigny as head of operations, only to hear that Fort Douaumont had fallen. Pétain ordered for the remaining Verdun forts to be re-garrisoned. Four groups were established, under the command of generals Guillaumat, Balfourier and Duchêne on the right bank and Bazelaire on the left bank. A "line of resistance" was established on the east bank from Souville to Thiaumont, around Fort Douaumont to Fort Vaux, Moulainville and along the ridge of the Woëvre. On the west bank, the line ran from Cumières to Mort Homme, Côte 304 and Avocourt. A "line of panic" was planned in secret as a final line of defence north of Verdun, through forts Belleville, St. Michel and Moulainville. I Corps and XX Corps arrived from 24–26 February, increasing the number of divisions in the RFV to 141⁄2. By 6 March, the arrival of the XIII, XXI, XIV and XXXIII corps had increased the total to 201⁄2 divisions.
21–26 February
Unternehmen Gericht (Operation Judgement) was due to begin on 12 February but fog, heavy rain and high winds delayed the offensive until 7:15 a.m. on 21 February, when a 10-hour artillery bombardment by 808 guns began. The German artillery fired c. 1,000,000 shells along a front about 30 km (19 mi) long by 5 km (3.1 mi) wide. The main concentration of fire was on the right (east) bank of the Meuse river. Twenty-six super-heavy, long-range guns, up to 420 mm (16.5 in), fired on the forts and the city of Verdun; a rumble could be heard 160 km (99 mi) away. The bombardment was paused at midday, as a ruse to prompt French survivors to reveal themselves and German artillery-observation aircraft were able to fly over the battlefield unmolested by French aircraft. The 3rd, 7th and 18th corps attacked at 4:00 p.m.; the Germans used flamethrowers for the first time and storm troops followed closely with rifles slung, to use hand grenades to kill the remaining defenders. This tactic had been developed by Captain Willy Rohr and Sturm-Bataillon Nr. 5 (Rohr), which battalion conducted the attack. French survivors engaged the attackers, yet the Germans suffered only c. 600 casualties.
By 22 February, German troops had advanced 5 km (3.1 mi) and captured Bois des Caures, at the edge of the village of Flabas. Two French battalions led by Colonel Émile Driant had held the bois (wood) for two days but were forced back to Samogneux, Beaumont and Ornes. Driant was killed, fighting with the 56th and 59th Bataillons de chasseurs à pied and only 118 of the Chasseurs managed to escape. Poor communications meant that only then did the French High Command realise the seriousness of the attack. The Germans managed to take the village of Haumont but French forces repulsed a German attack on the village of Bois de l'Herbebois. On 23 February, a French counter-attack at Bois des Caures was repulsed. Fighting for Bois de l'Herbebois continued until the Germans outflanked the French defenders from Bois de Wavrille. The German attackers had many casualties during their attack on Bois de Fosses and the French held on to Samogneux. German attacks continued on 24 February and the French XXX Corps was forced out of the second line of defence; XX Corps under General Balfourier arrived at the last minute and was rushed forward. That evening Castelnau advised Joffre that the Second Army, under General Pétain, should be sent to the RFV. The Germans had captured Beaumont, Bois des Fosses and Bois des Caurières and were moving up ravin Hassoule which led to Fort Douaumont.
At 3:00 p.m. on 25 February, infantry of Brandenburg Regiment 24 advanced with the II and III battalions side-by-side, each formed into two waves composed of two companies each. A delay in the arrival of orders to the regiments on the flanks, led to the III Battalion advancing without support on that flank. The Germans rushed French positions in the woods and on Côte 347, with the support of machine-gun fire from the edge of Bois Hermitage and took many prisoners, as the French on Côte 347 were outflanked on the right and withdrew to Douaumont village. The German infantry had reached their objectives in fewer than twenty minutes and pursued the French, until fired on by a machine-gun in Douaumont church. Some German troops took cover in woods and a ravine which led to the fort, when German artillery began to bombard the area, the gunners having refused to believe claims sent by field telephone, that the German infantry were within a few hundred metres of the fort. Several German parties were forced to advance to find cover from the German shelling and two parties independently made for the fort. They did not know that the French garrison was made up of only a small maintenance crew led by a warrant officer, since most of the Verdun forts had been partly disarmed, after the demolition of Belgian forts in 1914, by the German super-heavy Krupp 420 mm mortars.
The German party of c. 100 soldiers tried to signal to the artillery with flares but twilight and falling snow obscured them from view. Some of the party began to cut through the wire around the fort, while French machine-gun fire from Douaumont village ceased. The French had seen the German flares and took the Germans on the fort to be Zouaves retreating from Côte 378. The Germans were able to reach the north-east end of the fort before the French resumed firing. The German party found a way through the railings on top of the ditch and climbed down without being fired on, since the machine-gun bunkers (coffres de contrescarpe) at each corner of the ditch had been left unmanned. The German parties continued and found a way inside the fort through one of the unoccupied ditch bunkers and then reached the central Rue de Rempart. After quietly moving inside, the Germans heard voices and persuaded a French prisoner, captured in an observation post, to lead them to the lower floor, where they found Warrant Officer Chenot and about 25 French troops, most of the skeleton garrison of the fort, and took them prisoner. On 26 February, the Germans had advanced 3 km (1.9 mi) on a 10-kilometre (6.2 mi) front; French losses were 24,000 men and German losses were c. 25,000 men. A French counter-attack on Fort Douaumont failed and Pétain ordered that no more attempts were to be made; existing lines were to be consolidated and other forts were to be occupied, rearmed and supplied to withstand a siege if surrounded.
27–29 February
The German advance gained little ground on 27 February, after a thaw turned the ground into a swamp and the arrival of French reinforcements increased the effectiveness of the defence. Some German artillery became unserviceable and other batteries became stranded in the mud. German infantry began to suffer from exhaustion and unexpectedly high losses, 500 casualties being suffered in the fighting around Douaumont village. On 29 February, the German advance was contained at Douaumont by a heavy snowfall and the defence of French 33rd Infantry Regiment. Delays gave the French time to bring up 90,000 men and 23,000 short tons (21,000 t) of ammunition from the railhead at Bar-le-Duc to Verdun. The swift German advance had gone beyond the range of artillery covering fire and the muddy conditions made it very difficult to move the artillery forward as planned. The German advance southwards brought it into range of French artillery west of the Meuse, whose fire caused more German infantry casualties than in the earlier fighting, when French infantry on the east bank had fewer guns in support.
6–11 March
Before the offensive, Falkenhayn had expected that French artillery on the west bank would be suppressed by counter-battery fire but this had failed. The Germans set up an artillery task-force, to counter French artillery-fire from the west bank but this also failed to reduce German infantry casualties. The 5th Army asked for more troops in late February but Falkenhayn refused, due to the rapid advance already achieved on the east bank and because he needed the rest of the OHL reserve for an offensive elsewhere, once the attack at Verdun had attracted and consumed French reserves. The pause in the German advance on 27 February led Falkenhayn to have second thoughts to decide between terminating the offensive or reinforcing it. On 29 February, Knobelsdorf, the 5th Army Chief of Staff, prised two divisions from the OHL reserve, with the assurance that once the heights on the west bank had been occupied, the offensive on the east bank could be completed. The VI Reserve Corps was reinforced with the X Reserve Corps, to capture a line from the south of Avocourt to Côte 304 north of Esnes, Mort-Homme, Bois des Cumières and Côte 205, from which the French artillery on the west bank could be destroyed.
The artillery of the two-corps assault group on the west bank was reinforced by 25 heavy artillery batteries, artillery command was centralised under one officer and arrangements were made for the artillery on the east bank to fire in support. The attack was planned by General Heinrich von Gossler in two parts, on Mort-Homme and Côte 265 on 6 March, followed by attacks on Avocourt and Côte 304 on 9 March. The German bombardment reduced the top of Côte 304 from a height of 304 metres (997 ft) to 300 metres (980 ft); Mort-Homme sheltered batteries of French field guns, which hindered German progress towards Verdun on the right bank; the hills also provided commanding views of the left bank. After storming the Bois des Corbeaux and then losing it to a French counter-attack, the Germans launched another assault on Mort-Homme on 9 March, from the direction of Béthincourt to the north-west. Bois des Corbeaux was captured again at great cost in casualties, before the Germans took parts of Mort-Homme, Côte 304, Cumières and Chattancourt on 14 March.
11 March – 9 April
After a week, the German attack had reached the first-day objectives and then found that French guns behind Côte de Marre and Bois Borrous were still operational and continued to inflict many casualties on the east bank. German artillery moved to Côte 265, was subjected to systematic artillery-fire by the French, which left the Germans needing to implement the second part of the west bank offensive, to protect the gains of the first phase. German attacks changed from large operations on broad fronts, to narrow-front attacks with limited objectives. On 14 March a German attack captured Côte 265 at west end of Mort-Homme but the French 75th Infantry Brigade managed to hold Côte 295 at the east end. On 20 March, after a bombardment by 13,000 trench mortar rounds, the 11th Bavarian and 11th Reserve divisions attacked Bois d'Avocourt and Bois de Malancourt and reached their initial objectives easily. Gossler then paused the attack, to consolidate the captured ground and to prepare another big bombardment for the next day. On 22 March, two divisions attacked "Termite Hill" near Côte 304 but were met by a mass of artillery-fire, which also fell on assembly points and the German lines of communication, ending the German advance.
The limited German success had been costly and French artillery inflicted more casualties as the German infantry tried to dig in. By 30 March, Gossler had captured Bois de Malancourt but had lost 20,000 casualties and the Germans were still short of Côte 304. On 30 March, the XXII Reserve Corps arrived as reinforcements and General Max von Gallwitz took command of a new Angriffsgruppe West. Malancourt village was captured on 31 March, Haucourt fell on 5 April and Béthincourt on 8 April. On the east bank, German attacks near Vaux reached Bois Caillette and the Vaux–Fleury railway but were then driven back by the French 5th Division. An attack was made on a wider front along both banks by the Germans at noon on 9 April, with five divisions on the left bank but this was repulsed except at Mort-Homme, where the French 42nd Division was forced back from the north-east face. On the right bank an attack on Côte-du-Poivre failed.
In March the German attacks had no advantage of surprise and faced a determined and well-supplied adversary in superior defensive positions. German artillery could still devastate French defensive positions but could not prevent French artillery-fire from inflicting many casualties on German infantry and isolating them from their supplies. Massed artillery fire could enable German infantry to make small advances but massed French artillery-fire could do the same for French infantry when they counter-attacked, which often repulsed the German infantry and subjected them to constant losses, even when captured ground was held. The German effort on the west bank also showed that capturing a vital point was not sufficient, because it would be found to be overlooked by another terrain feature, which had to be captured to ensure the defence of the original point, which made it impossible for the Germans to terminate their attacks, unless they were willing to retire to the original front line of February 1916.
By the end of March the offensive had cost the Germans 81,607 casualties and Falkenhayn began to think of ending the offensive, lest it become another costly and indecisive engagement similar to the First Battle of Ypres in late 1914. The 5th Army staff requested more reinforcements from Falkenhayn on 31 March with an optimistic report claiming that the French were close to exhaustion and incapable of a big offensive. The 5th Army command wanted to continue the east bank offensive until a line from Ouvrage de Thiaumont, to Fleury, Fort Souville and Fort de Tavannes had been reached, while on the west bank the French would be destroyed by their own counter-attacks. On 4 April, Falkenhayn replied that the French had retained a considerable reserve and that German resources were limited and not sufficient to replace continuously men and munitions. If the resumed offensive on the east bank failed to reach the Meuse Heights, Falkenhayn was willing to accept that the offensive had failed and end it.
April
The failure of German attacks in early April by Angriffsgruppe Ost, led Knobelsdorf to take soundings from the 5th Army corps commanders, who unanimously wanted to continue. The German infantry were exposed to continuous artillery fire from the flanks and rear; communications from the rear and reserve positions were equally vulnerable, which caused a constant drain of casualties. Defensive positions were difficult to build, because existing positions were on ground which had been swept clear by German bombardments early in the offensive, leaving German infantry with very little cover. The XV Corps commander, General Berthold von Deimling also wrote that French heavy artillery and gas bombardments were undermining the morale of the German infantry, which made it necessary to keep going to reach safer defensive positions. Knobelsdorf reported these findings to Falkenhayn on 20 April, adding that if the Germans did not go forward, they must go back to the start line of 21 February.
Knobelsdorf rejected the policy of limited piecemeal attacks tried by Mudra as commander of Angriffsgruppe Ost and advocated a return to wide-front attacks with unlimited objectives, swiftly to reach the line from Ouvrage de Thiaumont to Fleury, Fort Souville and Fort de Tavannes. Falkenhayn was persuaded to agree to the change and by the end of April, 21 divisions, most of the OHL reserve, had been sent to Verdun and troops had also been transferred from the Eastern Front. The resort to large, unlimited attacks was costly for both sides but the German advance proceeded only slowly. Rather than causing devastating French casualties by heavy artillery with the infantry in secure defensive positions, which the French were compelled to attack, the Germans inflicted casualties by attacks which provoked French counter-attacks and assumed that the process inflicted five French casualties for two German losses.
In mid-March, Falkenhayn had reminded the 5th Army to use tactics intended to conserve infantry, after the corps commanders had been allowed discretion to choose between the cautious step-by-step tactics desired by Falkenhayn and maximum efforts, intended to obtain quick results. On the third day of the offensive, the 6th Division of the III Corps (General Ewald von Lochow), had ordered that Herbebois be taken regardless of loss and the 5th Division had attacked Wavrille to the accompaniment of its band. Falkenhayn urged the 5th Army to use Stoßtruppen (storm units) composed of two infantry squads and one of engineers, armed with automatic weapons, hand grenades, trench mortars and flame-throwers, to advance in front of the main infantry body. The Stoßtruppen would conceal their advance by shrewd use of terrain and capture any strong-points which remained after the artillery preparation. Strong-points which could not be taken, were to be by-passed and captured by follow-up troops. Falkenhayn ordered that the command of field and heavy artillery units was to be combined, with a commander at each corps headquarters. Common observers and communication systems would ensure that batteries in different places could bring targets under converging fire, which would be allotted systematically to support divisions.
In mid-April, Falkenhayn ordered that infantry should advance close to the barrage, to exploit the neutralising effect of the shell-fire on surviving defenders, because fresh troops at Verdun had not been trained in these methods. Knobelsdorf persisted with attempts to maintain momentum, which was incompatible with the methods of casualty conservation, which could be implemented only with limited attacks, with pauses to consolidate and prepare. Mudra and other commanders who disagreed were sacked. Falkenhayn also intervened to change German defensive tactics, advocating a dispersed defence with the second line to be held as a main line of resistance and jumping-off point for counter-attacks. Machine-guns were to be set up with overlapping fields of fire and infantry given specific areas to defend. When French infantry attacked, they were to be isolated by Sperrfeuer (barrage-fire) on their former front line, to increase French infantry casualties. The changes desired by Falkenhayn had little effect, because the main cause of German casualties was artillery-fire, just as it was for the French.
4–24 May
From 10 May German operations were limited to local attacks, either in reply to French counter-attacks on 11 April between Douaumont and Vaux and on 17 April between the Meuse and Douaumont, or local attempts to take points of tactical value. At the beginning of May, General Pétain was promoted to the command of Groupe d'armées du centre (GAC) and General Robert Nivelle took over the Second Army at Verdun. From 4–24 May, German attacks were made on the west bank around Mort-Homme and on 4 May, the north slope of Côte 304 was captured; French counter-attacks from 5–6 May were repulsed. The French defenders on the crest of Côte 304 were forced back on 7 May but German infantry were unable to occupy the ridge, because of the intensity of French artillery-fire. Cumieres and Caurettes fell on 24 May as a French counter-attack began at Fort Douaumont.
22–24 May
In May General Nivelle who had taken over the Second Army, ordered General Charles Mangin, commander of the 5th Division to plan a counter-attack on Fort Douaumont. The initial plan was for an attack on a 3-kilometre (1.9 mi) front but several minor German attacks captured Fausse-Côte and Couleuvre ravines on the south-eastern and western sides of the fort. A further attack took the ridge south of the ravin de Couleuvre, which gave the Germans better routes for counter-attacks and observation over the French lines to the south and south-west. Mangin proposed a preliminary attack to retake the area of the ravines, to obstruct the routes by which a German counter-attack on the fort could be made. More divisions were necessary but these were refused, to preserve the troops needed for the forthcoming offensive on the Somme; Mangin was limited to one division for the attack with one in reserve. Nivelle reduced the attack to an assault on Morchée Trench, Bonnet-d'Evèque, Fontaine Trench, Fort Douaumont, a machine-gun turret and Hongrois Trench, which would require an advance of 500 metres (550 yd) on a 1,150 metres (1,260 yd) front.
III Corps was to command the attack by the 5th Division and the 71st Brigade, with support from three balloon companies for artillery-observation and a fighter group. The main effort was to be conducted by two battalions of the 129th Infantry Regiment, each with a pioneer company and a machine-gun company attached. The 2nd Battalion was to attack from the south and the 1st Battalion was to move along the west side of the fort to the north end, taking Fontaine Trench and linking with the 6th Company. Two battalions of the 74th Infantry Regiment were to advance along the east and south-east sides of the fort and take a machine-gun turret on a ridge to the east. Flank support was arranged with neighbouring regiments and diversions were planned near Fort Vaux and the ravin de Dame. Preparations for the attack included the digging of 12 km (7.5 mi) of trenches and the building of large numbers of depots and stores but little progress was made due to a shortage of pioneers. French troops captured on 13 May, disclosed the plan to the Germans, who responded by subjecting the area to more artillery harassing fire, which also slowed French preparations.
The French preliminary bombardment by four 370 mm mortars and 300 heavy guns, began on 17 May and by 21 May, the French artillery commander claimed that the fort had been severely damaged. During the bombardment the German garrison in the fort experienced great strain, as French heavy shells smashed holes in the walls and concrete dust, exhaust fumes from an electricity generator and gas from disinterred corpses polluted the air. Water ran short but until 20 May, the fort remained operational, reports being passed back and reinforcements moving forward until the afternoon, when the Bourges Casemate was isolated and the wireless station in the north-western machine-gun turret burnt down. Conditions for the German infantry in the vicinity of the fort were far worse and by 18 May, the French destructive bombardment had obliterated many defensive positions, the survivors taking post in shell-holes and dips on the ground. Communication with the rear was severed and food and water ran out by the time of the French attack on 22 May. The troops of Infantry Regiment 52 in front of Fort Douaumont had been reduced to 37 men near Thiaumont Farm and German counter-barrages inflicted similar losses on French troops. French aircraft attacked eight observation balloons and the 5th Army headquarters at Stenay on 22 May. Six balloons were shot down but the German artillery fire increased and twenty minutes before zero hour, a German bombardment began, which reduced the 129th Infantry Regiment companies to about 45 men each.
The assault began at 11:50 a. m. on 22 May on a 1-kilometre (0.62 mi) front. On the left flank the 36th Infantry Regiment attack quickly captured Morchée Trench and Bonnet-d'Evèque but was costly and the regiment could advance no further. The flank guard on the right was pinned down, except for one company which disappeared and in Bois Caillette, a battalion of the 74th Infantry Regiment was unable to leave its trenches; the other battalion managed to reach its objectives at an ammunition depot, shelter DV1 at the edge of Bois Caillette and the machine-gun turret east of the fort, where the battalion found its flanks unsupported. Despite German small-arms fire, the 129th Infantry Regiment reached the fort in a few minutes and managed to get in through the west and south sides. By nightfall, about half of the fort had been recaptured and next day, the 34th Division was sent to reinforce the fort. The reinforcements were repulsed and German reserves managed to cut off the French troops in the fort and force them to surrender, 1,000 French prisoners being taken. After three days, the French had lost 5,640 casualties from the 12,000 men in the attack and German casualties in Infantry Regiment 52, Grenadier Regiment 12 and Leib-Grenadier Regiment 8 were 4,500 men.
Later in May 1916, the German attacks shifted from the left bank at Mort-Homme and Côte 304 and returned to the right bank, south of Fort Douaumont. A German offensive began to reach Fleury Ridge, the last French defensive line and take Ouvrage de Thiaumont, Fleury, Fort Souville and Fort Vaux at the north-east extremity of the French line, which had been bombarded by c. 8,000 shells a day since the beginning of the offensive. After a final assault on 1 June, by c. 10,000 German troops, the top of the fort was occupied on 2 June. Fighting went on underground until the garrison ran out of water and surrendered on 7 June. In five days the German attack had advanced 65 metres (71 yd) for a loss of 2,700 killed against 20 French casualties. When news of the loss of Fort Vaux reached Verdun, the Line of Panic was occupied and trenches were dug on the edge of the city. On the left bank, the German advanced from the line Côte 304, Mort-Homme and Cumières and threatened Chattancourt and Avocourt. Heavy rains slowed the German advance towards Fort Souville, where both sides attacked and counter-attacked for the next two months.
22–25 June
On 22 June, German artillery fired over 116,000 Diphosgene (Green Cross) gas shells at French artillery positions, which caused over 1,600 casualties and silenced much of the French artillery. Next day the German attack on a 5-kilometre (3.1 mi) front at 5:00 a.m., drove a 3-by-2-kilometre (1.9 mi × 1.2 mi) salient into the French defences unopposed until 9:00 a.m., when some French troops were able to fight a rearguard action. The Ouvrage de Thiaumont and the Ouvrage de Froidterre at the south end of the plateau were captured and the village of Fleury and Chapelle Sainte-Fine were overrun. The attack came close to Fort Souville, which since April had been hit by c. 38,000 shells, and brought the Germans to within 5 km (3.1 mi) of the Verdun citadel. Chapelle Sainte-Fine was quickly recaptured by a French counter-attack and the German advance was halted. The supply of water to the German infantry broke down, the salient was vulnerable to fire from three sides and the attack could not go on without Diphosgene ammunition. Chapelle Sainte-Fine became the furthest point reached by the German Verdun offensive and on 24 June, the Anglo-French preliminary bombardment began on the Somme. Fleury changed hands sixteen times from 23 June – 17 August. Four French divisions were diverted to Verdun from the Somme and the French artillery recovered sufficiently on 24 June, to cut off the German front line from the rear. By 25 June both sides were exhausted and Knobelsdorf suspended the attack.
Fourth phase 1 July – 17 December
By the end of May French casualties at Verdun had risen to c. 185,000 and in June German losses had reached c. 200,000 men. The opening of the Battle of the Somme on 1 July, forced the Germans to withdraw some of their artillery from Verdun, which was the first strategic success of the Anglo-French offensive.
9–15 July
Fort Souville dominated a crest 1 km (0.62 mi) south-east of Fleury and was one of the original objectives of the February offensive. The capture of the fort would give the Germans control of the heights overlooking Verdun and allow the infantry to dig in on commanding ground. A German preparatory bombardment began on 9 July, with an attempt to suppress French artillery with over 60,000 gas shells, which had little effect since the French had been equipped with an improved M2 gas mask. Fort Souville and its approaches were bombarded with more than 300,000 shells, including about 500 14 in (360 mm) shells on the fort. An attack by three German divisions began on 11 July but German infantry bunched on the path leading to Fort Souville and came under bombardment from French artillery. The surviving troops were fired on by sixty French machine-gunners, who emerged from the fort and took positions on the superstructure. Thirty soldiers of Infantry Regiment 140 managed to reach the top of the fort on 12 July, from where the Germans could see the roofs of Verdun and the spire of the cathedral. After a small French counter-attack, the survivors retreated to their start lines or surrendered. On the evening of 11 July, Crown Prince Wilhelm was ordered by Falkenhayn to go onto the defensive and on 15 July, the French conducted a larger counter-attack which gained no ground; for the rest of the month the French made only small attacks.
1 August – 17 September
On 1 August a German surprise-attack advanced 800–900 metres (870–980 yd) towards Fort Souville, which prompted French counter-attacks for two weeks, which were only able to retake a small amount of the captured ground. On 18 August, Fleury was recaptured and by September, French counter-attacks had recovered much of the ground lost in July and August. On 29 August Falkenhayn was replaced as Chief of the General Staff by Paul von Hindenburg and First Quartermaster-General Erich Ludendorff. On 3 September, an attack on both flanks at Fleury advanced the French line several hundred metres, against which German counter-attacks from 4–5 September failed. The French attacked again on 9, 13 and from 15–17 September. Losses were light except at the Tavannes railway tunnel, where 474 French troops died in a fire which began on 4 September.
20 October – 2 November
In October 1916 the French began the 1ère Bataille Offensive de Verdun (First Offensive Battle of Verdun), to recapture Fort Douaumont, an advance of more than 2 km (1.2 mi). Seven of the 22 divisions at Verdun were replaced by mid-October and French infantry platoons were reorganised to contain sections of riflemen, grenadiers and machine-gunners. In a six-day preliminary bombardment, the French artillery fired 855,264 shells, including 532,926 × 75 mm field-gun shells, 100,000 × 155 mm medium shells and 373 × 370 mm and 400 mm super-heavy shells, from more than 700 guns and howitzers. Two French Saint-Chamond railway guns, 13 km (8.1 mi) to the south-west at Baleycourt, fired the 400 mm (16 in) super-heavy shells, each weighing 1 short ton (0.91 t). The French had identified about 800 German guns on the right bank capable of supporting the 34th, 54th, 9th and 33rd Reserve divisions, with the 10th and 5th divisions in reserve. At least 20 of the super-heavy shells hit Fort Douaumont, the sixth penetrating to the lowest level and exploding in a pioneer depot, starting a fire next to 7,000 hand-grenades.
The 38th Division (General Guyot de Salins), 133rd Division (General Fenelon F.G. Passaga) and 74th Division (General Charles de Lardemelle) attacked at 11:40 a.m. The infantry advanced 50 metres (55 yd) behind a creeping field-artillery barrage, moving at a rate of 50 metres (55 yd) in two minutes, beyond which a heavy artillery barrage moved in 500–1,000 metres (550–1,090 yd) lifts, as the field artillery barrage came within 150 metres (160 yd), to force the German infantry and machine-gunners to stay under cover. The Germans had partly evacuated Douaumont, which was recaptured on 24 October by French marines and colonial infantry; more than 6,000 prisoners and fifteen guns were captured by 25 October but an attempt on Fort Vaux failed. The Haudromont quarries, Ouvrage de Thiaumont and Thiaumont Farm, Douaumont village, the northern end of Caillette Wood, Vaux pond, the eastern fringe of Bois Fumin and the Damloup battery were captured. The heaviest French artillery bombarded Fort Vaux for the next week and on 2 November, the Germans evacuated the fort, after a huge explosion caused by a 220 mm shell. French eavesdroppers overheard a German wireless message announcing the departure and a French infantry company entered the fort without firing a shot; on 5 November, the French reached the front line of 24 February and offensive operations ceased until December.
15–17 December 1916
The 2ième Bataille Offensive de Verdun (Second Offensive Battle of Verdun) was conducted by the 126th Division (General Paul J. H. Muteau), 38th (General Guyot de Salins), 37th Division (General Noël Garnier-Duplessix), 133rd Division (General Fenelon F. G. Passaga), with four more in reserve and 740 heavy guns in support. The attack was planned by Pétain and Nivelle and commanded by Mangin. The attack began at 10:00 a.m. on 15 December, after a six-day bombardment of 1,169,000 shells, fired from 827 guns. The final French bombardment was directed from artillery-observation aircraft and fell on trenches, dug-out entrances and observation posts. Five German divisions supported by 533 guns held the defensive position, which was 2,300 m (2,500 yd) deep, with 2⁄3 of the infantry in the battle zone and the remaining 1⁄3 in reserve 10–16 km (6.2–9.9 mi) back; two of the German divisions were understrength with only c. 3,000 infantry, instead of their normal establishment of c. 7,000. The French advance was preceded by a double creeping barrage, with shrapnel-fire from field artillery 64 m (70 yd) in front of the infantry and a high-explosive barrage 140 m (150 yd) ahead, which moved towards a standing shrapnel bombardment along the German second line, laid to cut off the German retreat and block the advance of reinforcements. The German defence collapsed and 13,500 men of the 21,000 in the five front divisions were lost, most having been trapped while under cover and taken prisoner when the French infantry arrived.
The French reached their objectives at Vacherauville and Louvemont which had been lost in February, along with Hardaumont and Côte du Poivre, despite attacking in very bad weather. German reserve battalions did not reach the front until the evening and two Eingreif divisions, which had been ordered forward the previous evening, were still 23 km (14 mi) away at noon. By the night of 16/17 December, the French had consolidated a new line from Bezonvaux to Côte du Poivre, 2–3 km (1.2–1.9 mi) beyond Douaumont and 1-kilometre (0.62 mi) north of Fort Vaux, before the German reserves and Eingreif units could counter-attack. The 155 mm turret at Douaumont had been repaired and fired in support of the French attack. The closest German point to Verdun had been pushed 7.5 km (4.7 mi) back and all the dominating observation points had been recaptured. The French took 11,387 prisoners and 115 guns. Some German officers complained to Mangin about their lack of comfort in captivity and he replied, We do regret it, gentlemen but then we did not expect so many of you. Lochow, the 5th Army commander and General Hans von Zwehl, commander of XIV Reserve Corps, were sacked on 16 December.
Analysis
Falkenhayn wrote in his memoir that he sent an appreciation of the strategic situation to the Kaiser in December 1915,
The string in France has reached breaking point. A mass breakthrough—which in any case is beyond our means—is unnecessary. Within our reach there are objectives for the retention of which the French General Staff would be compelled to throw in every man they have. If they do so the forces of France will bleed to death.
The German strategy in 1916 was to inflict mass casualties on the French, a goal achieved against the Russians from 1914 to 1915, to weaken the French Army to the point of collapse. The French Army had to be drawn into circumstances from which it could not escape, for reasons of strategy and prestige. The Germans planned to use a large number of heavy and super-heavy guns to inflict a greater number of casualties than French artillery, which relied mostly upon the 75 mm field gun. In 2007, Foley wrote that Falkenhayn intended an attrition battle from the beginning, contrary to the views of Krumeich, Förster and others but the lack of surviving documents had led to many interpretations of Falkenhayn's strategy. At the time, critics of Falkenhayn claimed that the battle demonstrated that he was indecisive and unfit for command; in 1937, Förster had proposed the view "forcefully". In 1994, Afflerbach questioned the authenticity of the "Christmas Memorandum" in his biography of Falkenhayn; after studying the evidence that had survived in the Kriegsgeschichtliche Forschungsanstalt des Heeres (Army Military History Research Institute) files, he concluded that the memorandum had been written after the war but that it was an accurate reflection of much of Falkenhayn's thinking in 1916.
Krumeich wrote that the Christmas Memorandum had been fabricated to justify a failed strategy and that attrition had been substituted for the capture of Verdun, only after the city was not taken quickly. Foley wrote that after the failure of the Ypres Offensive of 1914, Falkenhayn had returned to the pre-war strategic thinking of Moltke the Elder and Hans Delbrück on Ermattungsstrategie (attrition strategy), because the coalition fighting Germany was too powerful to be decisively defeated by military means. German strategy should aim to divide the Allies, by forcing at least one of the Entente powers into a negotiated peace. An attempt at attrition lay behind the offensive against Russia in 1915 but the Russians had refused to accept German peace feelers, despite the huge defeats inflicted by the Austro-Germans that summer.
With insufficient forces to break through the Western Front and to overcome the Entente reserves behind it, Falkenhayn attempted to force the French to attack instead, by threatening a sensitive point close to the front line. Falkenhayn chose Verdun as the place to force the French to begin a counter-offensive, which would be defeated with huge losses to the French, inflicted by German artillery on the dominating heights around the city. The 5th Army would begin a big offensive with limited objectives, to seize the Meuse Heights on the right bank of the river, from which German artillery could dominate the battlefield. By being forced into a counter-offensive against such formidable positions, the French Army would "bleed itself white". As the French were weakened, the British would be forced to launch a hasty relief offensive, which would also be a costly defeat. If such defeats were not enough to force negotiations on the French, a German offensive would mop up the last of the Franco-British armies and break the Entente "once and for all".
In a revised instruction to the French army of January 1916, the General Staff had stated that equipment could not be fought by men. Firepower could conserve infantry but a battle of material prolonged the war and consumed the troops which were preserved in each battle. In 1915 and early 1916, German industry quintupled the output of heavy artillery and doubled the production of super-heavy artillery. French production had also recovered since 1914 and by February 1916, the army had 3,500 heavy guns. In May 1916, Joffre implemented a plan to issue each division with two groups of 155 mm guns and each corps with four groups of long-range guns. Both sides at Verdun had the means to fire huge numbers of heavy shells to suppress defences, before risking infantry movements. At the end of May, the Germans had 1,730 heavy guns at Verdun against 548 French, which were sufficient to contain the Germans but not enough for a counter-offensive.
German infantry found that it was easier for the French to endure preparatory bombardments, since French positions tended to be on dominating ground, not always visible and sparsely occupied. As soon as German infantry attacked, the French positions "came to life" and the troops began machine-gun and rapid fire with field artillery. On 22 April, the Germans had suffered 1,000 casualties and in mid-April, the French fired 26,000 field artillery shells during an attack to the south-east of Fort Douaumont. A few days after taking over at Verdun, Pétain told the air commander, Commandant Charles Tricornot de Rose, to sweep away the German air service and to provide observation for the French artillery. German air superiority was challenged and eventually reversed, using eight-aircraft Escadrilles for artillery-observation, counter-battery and tactical support.
The fighting at Verdun was less costly to both sides than the war of movement in 1914, which cost the French c. 850,000 and the Germans c. 670,000 men from August to December. The 5th Army had a lower rate of loss than armies on the Eastern Front in 1915 and the French had a lower average rate of loss at Verdun than the rate over three weeks during the Second Battle of Champagne (September–October 1915), which were not fought as battles of attrition. German loss rates increased relative to French rates, from 2.2:1 in early 1915 to close to 1:1 by the end of the Battle of Verdun and rough parity continued during the Nivelle Offensive in 1917. The main cost of attrition tactics was indecision, because limited-objective attacks under an umbrella of massed heavy artillery-fire, could succeed but created unlimited duration.
Pétain used a "Noria" (rotation) system, to relieve French troops at Verdun after a short period, which brought most troops of the French army to the Verdun front but for shorter periods than for the German troops. French will to resist did not collapse, the symbolic importance of Verdun proved a rallying point and Falkenhayn was forced to conduct the offensive for much longer and commit far more infantry than intended. By the end of April, most of the German strategic reserve was at Verdun, suffering similar casualties to the French army. The Germans believed that they were inflicting losses at a rate of 5:2; German military intelligence thought that French casualties up to 11 March, had been 100,000 men and Falkenhayn was confident that German artillery could easily inflict another 100,000 losses. In May, Falkenhayn estimated that the French had lost 525,000 men against 250,000 German casualties and that the French strategic reserve had been reduced to 300,000 troops. Actual French losses were c. 130,000 by 1 May and the Noria system had enabled 42 divisions to be withdrawn and rested, when their casualties reached 50 percent. Of the 330 infantry battalions of the French metropolitan army, 259 (78 percent) went to Verdun, against 48 German divisions, 25 percent of the Westheer (western army). Afflerbach wrote that 85 French divisions fought at Verdun and that from February to August, the ratio of German to French losses was 1:1.1, not the third of French losses assumed by Falkenhayn. By 31 August, 5th Army losses were 281,000 and French casualties numbered 315,000 men.
In June 1916, the amount of French artillery at Verdun had been increased to 2,708 guns, including 1,138 × 75 mm field guns; the French and German armies fired c. 10,000,000 shells, with a weight of 1,350,000 long tons (1,370,000 t) from February–December. The German offensive had been contained by French reinforcements, difficulties of terrain and the weather by May, with the 5th Army infantry stuck in tactically dangerous positions, overlooked by the French on the east bank and the west bank, instead of secure on the Meuse Heights. Attrition of the French forces was inflicted by constant infantry attacks, which were vastly more costly than waiting for French counter-attacks and defeating them with artillery. The stalemate was broken by the Brusilov Offensive and the Anglo-French relief offensive on the Somme, which had been expected to lead to the collapse of the Anglo-French armies. Falkenhayn had begun to remove divisions from the armies on the Western Front in June, to rebuild the strategic reserve but only twelve divisions could be spared. Four divisions were sent to the 2nd Army on the Somme, which had dug a layered defensive system based on the experience of the Herbstschlacht. The situation before the beginning of the battle on the Somme was considered by Falkenhayn to be better than before previous offensives and a relatively easy defeat of the British offensive was anticipated. No divisions were moved from the 6th Army, which had 171⁄2 divisions and a large amount of heavy artillery, ready for a counter-offensive when the British offensive had been defeated.
The strength of the Anglo-French offensive surprised Falkenhayn and the staff officers of OHL despite the losses inflicted on the British; the loss of artillery to "overwhelming" counter-battery fire and the policy of instant counter-attack against any Anglo-French advance, led to far more German infantry casualties than at the height of the fighting at Verdun, where 25,989 casualties had been suffered in the first ten days, against 40,187 losses on the Somme. The Brusilov Offensive had recommenced as soon as Russian supplies had been replenished, which inflicted more losses on Austro-Hungarian and German troops during June and July, when the offensive was extended to the north. Falkenhayn was called on to justify his strategy to the Kaiser on 8 July and again advocated sending minimal reinforcements to the east and to continue the "decisive" battle in France, where the Somme offensive was the "last throw of the dice" for the Entente. Falkenhayn had already given up the plan for a counter-offensive near Arras, to reinforce the Russian front and the 2nd Army, with eighteen divisions moved from the reserve and the 6th Army front. By the end of August only one division remained in reserve. The 5th Army had been ordered to limit its attacks at Verdun in June but a final effort was made in July to capture Fort Souville. The effort failed and on 12 July, Falkenhayn ordered a strict defensive policy, permitting only small local attacks, to try to limit the number of troops the French took from the RFV to add to the Somme offensive.
Falkenhayn had underestimated the French, for whom victory at all costs was the only way to justify the sacrifices already made; the pressure imposed on the French army never came close to making the French collapse and triggering a premature British relief offensive. The ability of the German army to inflict disproportionate losses had also been exaggerated, in part because the 5th Army commanders had tried to capture Verdun and attacked regardless of loss; even when reconciled to Falkenhayn's attrition strategy, they continued to use the costly Vernichtungsstrategie (strategy of annihilation) and tactics of Bewegungskrieg (manoeuvre warfare). Failure to reach the Meuse Heights, forced the 5th Army to try to advance from poor tactical positions and to impose attrition by infantry attacks and counter-attacks. The unanticipated duration of the offensive made Verdun a matter of German prestige as much as it was for the French and Falkenhayn became dependent on a British relief offensive and a German counter-offensive to end the stalemate. When it came, the collapse of the southern front in Russia and the power of the Anglo-French attack on the Somme reduced the German armies to holding their positions as best they could. On 29 August, Falkenhayn was sacked and replaced by Hindenburg and Ludendorff, who ended the German offensive at Verdun on 2 September.
Casualties
In 1980, Terraine gave c. 750,000 Franco-German casualties in 299 days of battle; Dupuy and Dupuy gave 542,000 French casualties in 1993. Heer and Naumann calculated 377,231 French and 337,000 German casualties, a monthly average of 70,000 casualties in 2000. Mason wrote in 2000 that there had been 378,000 French and 337,000 German casualties. In 2003, Clayton quoted 330,000 German casualties, of whom 143,000 were killed or missing and 351,000 French losses, 56,000 killed, 100,000 missing or prisoners and 195,000 wounded. Writing in 2005, Doughty gave French casualties at Verdun, from 21 February to 20 December 1916 as 377,231 men of 579,798 losses at Verdun and the Somme; 16 percent of Verdun casualties were known to have been killed, 56 percent wounded and 28 percent missing, many of whom were eventually presumed dead. Doughty wrote that other historians had followed Churchill (1927) who gave a figure of 442,000 casualties by mistakenly including all French losses on the Western Front. (In 2014, Philpott recorded 377,000 French casualties, of whom 162,000 men had been killed, German casualties were 337,000 men and a recent estimate of casualties at Verdun from 1914 to 1918 was 1,250,000 men).
In the second edition of The World Crisis (1938), Churchill wrote that the figure of 442,000 was for other ranks and the figure of "probably" 460,000 casualties included officers. Churchill gave a figure of 278,000 German casualties of whom 72,000 were killed and expressed dismay that French casualties had exceeded German by about 3:2. Churchill also stated that an eighth needed to be deducted from his figures for both sides to account for casualties on other sectors, giving 403,000 French and 244,000 German casualties. Grant gave a figure of 434,000 German casualties in 2005. In 2005, Foley used calculations made by Wendt in 1931 to give German casualties at Verdun from 21 February to 31 August 1916 as 281,000, against 315,000 French casualties. Afflerbach used the same source in 2000 to give 336,000 German and 365,000 French casualties at Verdun, from February to December 1916.
In 2013, Jankowski wrote that since the beginning of the war, French army units had produced états numériques des pertes every five days for the Bureau of Personnel at GQG. The health service at the Ministry of War received daily counts of wounded taken in by hospitals and other services but casualty data was dispersed among regimental depots, GQG, the État Civil, which recorded deaths, the Service de Santé, which counted injuries and illnesses and the Renseignements aux Familles, which communicated with next of kin. Regimental depots were ordered to keep fiches de position to record losses continuously and the Première Bureau of GQG began to compare the five-day field reports with the records of hospital admissions. The new system was used to calculate losses since August 1914, which took several months but the system had become established by February 1916. The états numériques des pertes were used to calculate casualty figures published in the Journal Officiel, the French Official History and other publications.
The German armies compiled Verlustlisten every ten days, which were published by the Reichsarchiv in the deutsches Jahrbuch of 1924–1925. German medical units kept detailed records of medical treatment at the front and in hospital and in 1923, the Zentral Nachweiseamt published an amended edition of the lists produced during the war, incorporating medical service data not in the Verlustlisten. Monthly figures of wounded and ill servicemen that were treated were published in 1934 in the Sanitätsbericht. Using such sources for comparisons of losses during a battle is difficult, because the information recorded losses over time, rather than place. Losses calculated for particular battles could be inconsistent, as in the Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War 1914–1920 (1922). In the early 1920s, Louis Marin reported to the Chamber of Deputies but could not give figures per battle, except for some by using numerical reports from the armies, which were unreliable unless reconciled with the system established in 1916.
Some French data excluded those lightly wounded but some did not. In April 1917, GQG required that the états numériques des pertes discriminate between the lightly wounded, treated at the front over a period of 20–30 days and severely wounded evacuated to hospitals. Uncertainty over the criteria had not been resolved before the war ended, Verlustlisten excluded lightly wounded and the Zentral Nachweiseamt records included them. Churchill revised German statistics, by adding 2 percent for unrecorded wounded in The World Crisis, written in the 1920s and the British official historian added 30 percent. For the Battle of Verdun, the Sanitätsbericht contained incomplete data for the Verdun area, did not define "wounded" and the 5th Army field reports exclude them. The Marin Report and Service de Santé covered different periods but included lightly wounded. Churchill used a Reichsarchiv figure of 428,000 casualties and took a figure of 532,500 casualties from the Marin Report, for March to June and November to December 1916, for all the Western Front.
The états numériques des pertes give French losses in a range from 348,000 to 378,000 and in 1930, Wendt recorded French Second Army and German 5th Army casualties of 362,000 and 336,831 respectively, from 21 February to 20 December, not taking account of the inclusion or exclusion of lightly wounded. In 2006, McRandle and Quirk used the Sanitätsbericht to adjust the Verlustlisten by an increase of c. 11 percent, which gave a total of 373,882 German casualties, compared to the French Official History record by 20 December 1916, of 373,231 French losses. A German record from the Sanitätsbericht, which explicitly excluded lightly wounded, compared German losses at Verdun in 1916, which averaged 37.7 casualties for each 1,000 men, with the 9th Army in Poland 1914 average of 48.1 per 1,000, the 11th Army average in Galicia 1915 of 52.4 per 1,000 men, the 1st Army Somme 1916 average of 54.7 per 1,000 and the 2nd Army average on the Somme of 39.1 per 1,000 men. Jankowski estimated an equivalent figure for the French Second Army of 40.9 men per 1,000, including lightly wounded. With a c. 11 percent adjustment following McRandle and Quirk, to the German figure of 37.7 per 1,000 to include lightly wounded. The loss rate is analogous to the estimate for French casualties.
Morale
The concentration of so much fighting in such a small area devastated the land, resulting in miserable conditions for troops on both sides. Rain, combined with the constant tearing up of the ground, turned the clay of the area to a wasteland of mud full of human remains. Shell craters became filled with a liquid ooze, becoming so slippery that troops who fell into them or took cover in them could drown. Forests were reduced to tangled piles of wood by constant artillery-fire and eventually obliterated. The effect on soldiers in the battle was devastating and many broke down with shell shock. Some French soldiers attempted to desert to Spain, those caught being court-martialled and shot. On 20 March, French deserters disclosed details of the French defences to the Germans, who were able to surround 2,000 men and force them to surrender.
A French lieutenant at Verdun, who would be killed by a shell, wrote in his diary on 23 May 1916, "Humanity is mad. It must be mad to do what it is doing. What a massacre! What scenes of horror and carnage! I cannot find words to translate my impressions. Hell cannot be so terrible. Men are mad!" Discontent began to spread among French troops at Verdun during the summer of 1916. Following the promotion of General Pétain from the Second Army on 1 June and his replacement by General Nivelle, five infantry regiments were affected by episodes of "collective indiscipline". Two French Lieutenants, Henri Herduin and Pierre Millant, were summarily shot on 11 June; Nivelle then published an Order of the Day forbidding French troops to surrender. In 1926, after an inquiry into the cause célèbre, Herduin and Millant were exonerated and their military records expunged.
20–26 August 1917
An attack on 9 km (5.6 mi) fronts on both sides of the Meuse was planned, the XIII and XVI corps to attack on the left bank with two divisions each and two in reserve. Côte 304, Mort-Homme and Côte de l'Oie were to be captured in a 3 km (1.9 mi) advance and on the right bank, the XV and XXXII corps were to advance a similar distance to capture Côte de Talou, hills 344, 326 and the Bois de Caurières. About 34 km (21 mi) of road was rebuilt 6 m (6.6 yd) wide and paved for the supply of ammunition to each corps, along with a branch of the 60 cm (2.0 ft) light railway. The French artillery prepared the attack with 1,280 field guns, 1.520 heavy guns and howitzers and 80 super-heavy guns and howitzers. The Aéronautique Militaire crowded 16 fighter escadrilles into the area to escort reconnaissance aircraft and protect observation balloons. The 5th Army had spent the previous year improving their defences at Verdun, including the excavation of tunnels linking Mort-Homme with the rear, for supplies to be carried and infantry to move with impunity. On the right bank, the Germans had developed four defensive positions, the last on the French front line of early 1916.
The French had no possibility of strategic surprise; the Germans had 380 artillery batteries in the area and frequently bombarded French positions with the new Mustard gas and made several spoiling attacks to disrupt French preparations. Counter-attacks were made to regain lost ground but Fayolle eventually limited ripostes to important ground only, the rest to be retaken during the main attack. The French preliminary bombardment began on 11 August and after two days, the destructive bombardment began but weather delays led to the infantry attack being postponed until 20 August. The assembly of the 25th, 16th, Division Marocaine and 31st divisions was obstructed by German gas bombardments but their attack captured all but Hill 304, which was encircled and captured on 24 August. On the right bank, XV Corps had to cross the Côte de Talou in the middle of no man's land which was 3 km (1.9 mi) wide at this point. The attacking divisions reached their objectives except for a trench between hills 344 and 326 and Samogneux, which was taken on 23 August. XXXII Corps reached its objectives in a costly advance but the troops found themselves too close to German trenches and under the guns on high ground between Bezonvaux and Ornes. The French took 11,000 prisoners for the loss of 14,000 men, 4,470 being killed or posted missing.
7–8 September
After the success of the attack in August, Guillaumat was ordered to plan an operation to capture several trenches and a more ambitious offensive on the east bank to take the last ground from which German artillery-observers could see Verdun. Pétain questioned Guillaumat and Fayolle, who criticised the selection of objectives on the right bank and argued that the French could not remain in their present positions but must go on or go back. The Germans counter-attacked several times in September from higher ground and holding the ground captured in August proved more costly to the French than taking it. Fayolle advocated a limited advance to make German counter-attacks harder, improve conditions in the front line and deceive the Germans about French intentions. XV Corps attacked on 7 September which failed and XXXII Corps the next day which was a costly success. The attack continued and the trenches necessary for a secure defensive position were taken but not the last German observation point. Further attempts to advance were met by massed artillery-fire and counter-attacks; the French commanders ended the operation. On 25 November after a five-hour hurricane bombardment, the 128th and 37th divisions, supported by 18-field artillery, 24 heavy and 9 trench artillery groups, conducted a raid in appalling weather. The operation on a 4 km (2.5 mi) front reached a line of pillboxes which were demolished and then the infantry retired to their own positions.
Meuse–Argonne Offensive
The French Fourth Army and the American First Army attacked on a front from Moronvilliers to the Meuse on 26 September 1918 at 5:30 a.m., after a three-hour bombardment. American troops quickly captured Malancourt, Bethincourt and Forges on the left bank of the Meuse and by midday the Americans had reached Gercourt, Cuisy, the southern part of Montfaucon and Cheppy. German troops were able to repulse American attacks on Montfaucon ridge, until it was outflanked to the south and Montfaucon was surrounded. German counter-attacks from 27–28 September slowed the American advance but Ivoiry and Epinon-Tille were captured, after which Montfaucon ridge was taken along with 8,000 prisoners and 100 guns. On the right bank of the Meuse, a combined Franco-American force under American command, took Brabant, Haumont, Bois d'Haumont and Bois des Caures and then crossed the front line of February 1916. By November, c. 20,000 prisoners, c. 150 guns, c. 1,000 trench-mortars and several thousand machine-guns had been captured. A German retreat began and continued until the Armistice.
Commemoration
In April 1916, Pétain had issued an Order of the Day, "Courage! On les aura" ("Courage! We will get them") and on 23 June 1916, Nivelle ordered, "They shall not pass".
Vous ne les laisserez pas passer, mes camarades (You will not let them pass, my comrades).
Nivelle had been concerned about diminished French morale at Verdun; after his promotion to lead the Second Army in June 1916, manifestations of indiscipline occurred in five front line regiments. Défaillance reappeared in the French army mutinies that followed the Nivelle Offensive (April–May 1917).
Denizot published statistical tables including French troop movements, as well as monthly French artillery ammunition consumption by type of gun (German artillery ammunition consumption is reported in lesser detail) and period photographs show overlapping shell craters in an area of about 100 km2 (39 sq mi). Forests planted in the 1930s have grown up and hide most of the Zone rouge (Red Zone) but the battlefield remains a vast graveyard, where the mortal remains of over 100,000 missing soldiers lie, unless discovered by the French Forestry Service and laid in the Douaumont ossuary.
Pétain praised what he saw as the success of the fixed fortification system at Verdun in La Bataille de Verdun published in 1929 and in 1930, while construction of the Maginot Line (Ligne Maginot) began along the border with Germany. At Verdun, French field artillery in the open outnumbered turreted guns in the Verdun forts by at least 200:1. It was the mass of French field artillery (over 2,000 guns after May 1916) that inflicted about 70 percent of German infantry casualties. In 1935, a number of mechanised and motorised units were deployed behind the Maginot line and plans were laid to send detachments to fight a mobile defence in front of the fortifications. Verdun remained a symbol and at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu (1953–1954), General Christian de Castries said that the situation was "somewhat like Verdun". French forces at Dien Bien Phu were supplied by transport aircraft, using a landing strip in range of Viet Minh artillery; the French forces at Verdun were supplied by road and rail, beyond the reach of German artillery.
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History of the Company
Among the 17 National Guard divisions assigned to the American Expeditionary Force during World War I was the 28th Division, Pennsylvania National Guard. The 28th received its baptism of fire on July 15, 1918, during the German Army's Champagne-Marne Offensive. Four companies from the 28th were attached to a French division on the front line, while the rest of the division took up second-line defense positions. Two of the companies, L and M, were from the 109th Infantry Regiment made of the old 1st and 13th Pennsylvania Regiments. In the early hours of July 15, the German 36th Division crossed the Marne River and attacked the Allied front. When the adjacent French units fell back, L and M Companies were surrounded. Wave after wave of Germans attacked the Pennsylvanians. Despite the overwhelming odds, the two companies stubbornly held their position and inflicted heavy casualties.
At 0800 the remnants of L and M Companies withdrew and fought their way back to the front line of the 109th, five kilometers away. Of the 500 assigned officers and men only 150 remained. The brunt of the German offensive now fell on the 109 Infantry and the other units of the 28th Division. For three days, the 109th held its positions while under heavy attack. Fighting in ravines, woods and trenches, the doughboys fought like veterans. A German after-action report described the battle as "the most severe defeat of the war." For its staunch defense the 109th was nicknamed "Men of Iron" and the 28th was later dubbed the "Iron Division." Today's 103d Engineer Battalion (The Dandy First) and the 109 Infantry (Thirteenth Pennsylvania) continue the proud heritage of the "Men of Iron."
The division moved to Camp Hancock, Ga., in April 1917, and was there when the entire division was federalized on 5 August 1917. From May to 11 October 1917, the division was reorganized into the two-brigade, four regiment scheme, and thus became the 28th Division. It thus comprised the 55th Infantry Brigade (109th and 110th Infantry Regiments) and the 56th Infantry Brigade (111th and 112th Infantry Regiments). Other units included the 107th, 108th, 109th and 229th Field Artillery Battalions and the 103rd Engineer Combat Battalion.
The situation for the division at Camp Hancock was dismal. The men arrived there in summer uniforms, which were not replaced by winter ones until the winter was well along. Adequate blankets were not available until January. Training equipment was woeful. There was but one bayonet for each three men; machine guns made of wood; and there was but one 37-mm gun for the whole division.
On April 20, 1918 the 28th Division broke camp at Camp Hancock, Georgia and prepared to move to Camp Upton, On Long Island, New York, the first leg of the journey that ended with the division entering combat in France. 28th Division Troops had begun arriving at Camp Hancock to begin training in the summer of 1917, and were federalized in August.
Their training complete, by the end of April, 1918 the Division was concentrated at Camp Upton awaiting transport to France.
By May 1918 the division had arrived in Europe, and began training with the British. On 14 July, ahead of an expected German offensive, the division was moving forward, with most of it committed to the second line of defence south of the Marne River and east of Chateau-Thierry.[15] As the division took up defensive positions, the Germans commenced their attack, which became the Battle of Chateau-Thierry, with a fierce artillery bombardment. When the German assault collided with the main force of the 28th, the fighting became bitter hand-to-hand combat. The 28th repelled the German forces and decisively defeated their enemy. However, four isolated companies of the 109th and 110th Infantry stationed on the first defensive line suffered heavy losses. After the battle, General John Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force, visited the battlefield and declared that the 28th soldiers were "Men of Iron" and named the 28th ID as his "Iron Division." The 28th developed a red keystone-shaped shoulder patch, officially adopted on 27 October 1918.
During World War I it was involved in the Meuse-Argonne, Champagne-Marne, Aisne-Marne, Oise-Aisne, and Ypres-Lys (FA) operations. During the war it took a total of 14,139 casualties (2,165 killed and 11,974 wounded).
If you are interested in getting started, contact Rick Guth at rrguth@ptd.net
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Prologue: End of the Q-Ship Program Origins of Q-Ships in World War I Q-Ships in World War II Sinking of USS Atik (AK-101) by German submarine U-123 Cruises of USS Asterion (AK-100) Cruises of USS Eagle (AM-132)/USS Captor (PYC-40) Cruises of USS Big Horn (AO-45) USS Irene Forsyte (IX-93) Selected Bibliography for Further Information
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Prologue: End of the Q-Ship Program
Origins of Q-Ships in World War I
Q-Ships in World War II
Sinking of USS Atik (AK-101) by German submarine U-123
Cruises of USS Asterion (AK-100)
Cruises of USS Eagle (AM-132)/USS Captor (PYC-40)
Cruises of USS Big Horn (AO-45)
USS Irene Forsyte (IX-93)
Selected Bibliography for Further Information
Prologue: End of the Q-Ship Program
In the early morning hours of October 4, 1943, a dispatch from the three-masted schooner Irene Forsyte [IX-93] reported that she was hove to in approximately 38-00 N, 66-00 W; that many leaks had developed during the course of a heavy storms that her pumps were just able to keep ahead of water. The message further stated that the condition might become serious if the heavy weather continued; for that reason, permission was requested to proceed to Bermuda for repairs. First action was taken by Cinclant [Commander-in-Chief, US Atlantic Fleet], who immediately ordered two tugs to proceed to the scene and render assistance. Later in the day, however, the Irene Forsyte reported that no assistance was needed, that she was proceeding to Bermuda, The tugs were recalled.
On October 14, 1943; Cominch [Commander-in-Chief, United States Fleet] directed the Commander Eastern Sea Frontier to decommission the Irene Forsyte upon her return from Bermuda; to take other steps which would lead to the conclusion of all antisubmarine patrols by Eastern Sea Frontier vessels disguised as merchant vessels. This decision had been brought to a head by the failure of Eastern Sea Frontier "Queen ships" to accomplish their intended missions. The conclusion of "Queen ship" missions in the waters of the Eastern Sea Frontier offers an appropriate occasion for reviewing the essential details as to their various developments and operations from the beginning of the war to the decommissioning of Irene Forsyte (IX-93).
Origins of Q-Ships in World War I
There is nothing new or secret about the general principle of Q-ship operations. When the U-boats [German submarines] were at their worst in World War I, the British Admiralty approved and authorized the conversion of merchant vessels to heavily armed raiders which would have her guns disguised or concealed in such a way that the merchant vessels might serve as decoys which would encourage U-boats to attack them. Then, provided the disguised merchant vessel had been given sufficient buoyancy, so that one or two torpedoes would be unable to sink her, the disguise was to be thrown off, the guns brought to bear, the U-boat sunk. The entire effectiveness of the enterprise depended on the successful use of surprise, and once the U-boats were aware of the ruse, the chances of success were so greatly reduced that only a few ingenious Commanding Officers were able to conduct Q-ship campaigns throughout the remainder of World War I with any distinction.
Q-Ships in World War II
In World War II, the sudden appearance of U-boats in Atlantic coastal waters led to considerations of all possible means for meeting the emergency. Sinkings began on January 14th, and shipping losses mounted rapidly. On January 20, 1942, Cominch sent for information to Commander Eastern Sea Frontier a coded dispatch which was paraphrased as follows:
"Immediate consideration is requested as to the manning and fitting-out of Queen repeat Queen ships to be operated as an antisubmarine measure. This has been passed by hand to OpNav [Office of the Chief of Naval Operations] for action."
In answer, Commander Eastern Sea Frontier wrote a lengthy letter under the date of January 29th, pointing out that the most prevalent method of U-boat attack had been night attacks on the surface from close range; that U-boats were concentrating on tankers. For this reason it was pointed out that a tanker would best answer the purpose of inviting attack after having been fitted out as a Q-ship. It was further suggested that another type of Q-ship might be a vessel "of such a relatively insignificant appearance that upon sighting it a submarine would not submerge." This implied that a small schooner might serve the purpose.
This letter containing details as to procedure, was forwarded by Cominch to the Chief of Naval Operations on February 15, 1942, and CESF [Commander Easter Sea Frontier] was informed that the proposals had been "noted with interest" and were "under consideration." Five days later, on February 20, 1942, the Chief of Naval Operations informed Commander Eastern Sea Frontier that his proposals had been approved, that hereafter the matter would be known as "Project LQ"; that all communications on the matter would be made by word of mouth, insofar as practicable; that a responsible officer would be placed in charge of the work; that on completion, "Project LQ" would be assigned to the force of the Commander Eastern Sea Frontier.
Prior to the inception of "Project LQ," Cominch had arranged for the selection of three other vessels considered suitable for the intended purpose: a Boston trawler and two small cargo vessels of the three-island type. The beam trawler, diesel powered, had formerly operated with the fishing fleet out of Boston under the name, MS Wave. She was originally acquired. for conversion to an auxiliary minesweeper by the Commandant First Naval District. In fact, she was commissioned at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on March 5, 1942, as USS Eagle (AM-132). Her length was 133 feet, beam 26 feet, maximum speed, 10 knots. Her armament included one four-inch-fifty gun, two .50 calibre machine guns, 4 depth charge throwers, 2 Lewis .30 caliber machine guns, 5 sawed-off shotguns, 5 Colt .45 automatics and 25 hand grenades. She was also equipped with WEA echo ranging and listening equipment. Her complement was 5 officers and 42 enlisted men.
The two cargo vessels had been built at Newport News, Virginia, in 1912 and were of standard type: 3,209 gross tons, 318 feet in length, 46 foot beam. In commercial circles they were known as SS Carolyn and SS Evelyn; were owned and operated by the A. H. Bull Steamship Company in New York City. For their new assignment, they were taken over for naval use by Mr. Huntington Morse and Mr. S. H. Heimbold of the U. S. Maritime Commission. During their conversion in the Navy Yard at Portsmouth, N. H., each vessel was armed with four 4-inch-fifty caliber guns, four .50 caliber machine guns, six single depth charge throwers and a miscellaneous collection of small arms similar to those aboard USS Eagle.
The complement of each ship was six officers and 135 enlisted men. Although these three vessels were regularly commissioned by the Commandant Navy Yard, Portsmouth, N. H., by direction of the Chief of Naval Operations – SS Carolyn as USS Atik (AP-100) and SS Evelyn as USS Asterion (AP-101) – and so recorded in the Log of that Yard, the commissionings were not made a matter of record in the Navy Department. The status of USS Eagle (AM-132) remained unchanged in the department's records, since she had originally been acquired for conversion to AM and had been so designated in the records of the Department. Thereafter, all pertinent information containing these vessels was kept in a secret file in the custody of the Vice Chief of Naval Operations.
Some complicated problems of protocol were solved while the ships were still being converted. In order to preserve the highest possible degree of secrecy in operating the merchantmen and the beam trawler, $500,000 was allotted from an Emergency Fund so that expenditures would not be directly accountable through the General Accounting Office and the Treasury. On February 19, 1942, the Chief of Naval Operations (Admiral H. S. Stark, USN) opened a joint account in the Riggs National Bank, Washington, D. C. in the name of F. J. Horne and/or W. S. Farber, and deposited the sun of $500,000, with the understanding that the Chief of Naval Operations might at times request transfer of funds from this account to other names. He then requested immediate transfer of the following sums to the following accounts:
Eagle Fishing Company, L. F. Rogers, Master $50,000 Asterion Shipping Company, K. M. Beyer, Treasurer $100,000 Atik Shipping Company, E. T. Joyce, Treasurer $100,000
Such an arrangement permitted the purchase of supplies for the individual ships involved without the customary naval requisition procedure.
After many other minor details had been ironed out, the next step was the arrangement for operational directives which might be foolproof. On March 11th, the Commanding Officers of USS Eagle, USS Asterion and USS Atik (Lieut. Comdr. L. F. Rogers, USNR, Lieut. Comdr. G. W. Legwen, USN, and Lieut. Comdr. Harry L. Hicks, USN, respectively) were given personal and written instructions at Headquarters, Commander Eastern Sea Frontier. They received a preliminary Operation Order to cover a brief period of shakedown, which would start about Match 24, 1942. Since they would be departing from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, they were to report to Commander Submarine Division 101 when ready for sea; then proceed independently on widely separated courses for shakedown in areas where enemy activity had not been reported. USS Atik and USS Asterion were to navigate so that one should be approximately 480 miles to the southward of the other after five days at sea. These ships were to leave the Navy Yard, Portsmouth, in such manner that they would appear to all observers as armed vessels regularly commissioned in the Navy; then at the first opportunity, guns and depth charge throwers were to be concealed, identifying numbers removed from the bows, commission pennants hauled down, and other steps taken to have USS Atik and USS Asterion present the appearance of merchantmen; USS Eagle the appearance of a beam trawler fishing out of Boston. From the viewpoint of security, the most serious difficulty in carrying out this plan was that there had been scores of civilian workers in the Portsmouth shipyard which had known about the conversion peculiarities of structure on these vessels, and the subject of these "Q-ships" was subsequently reported (by one wife of an officer aboard USS Atik) to have been common knowledge in several Portsmouth boarding houses.
On completing shakedown, these ships were to report to Commander Eastern Sea Frontier by dispatch, and at that time the second Operation Plan would be made effective by dispatch from Commander Eastern Sea Frontier. This second Operation Plan, also issued under date of March 11, 1942, applied only to the Atik and the Asterion. Therein they were directed to operate independently in the waters off the United States Atlantic Coast, roughly 200 miles off the coast. Special instructions pointed out that the identity of these vessels must remain secret until action was joined; that action should be joined only when en enemy submarine was at sufficiently close quarters to insure its destruction by superior gunfire, followed by depth charge attacks if it succeeded in submerging before destruction. It was further pointed out that enemy submarines had been attacking during darkness; that they were rarely seen until after the vessel was struck by a torpedo. As for possible circumstances under which friendly ships or aircraft might challenge the Atik and the Asterion, they were instructed to use as identification their former names and calls, which would indicate that they were SS Carolyn and SS Evelyn, owned by the A. H. Bull Steamship Company; that if enemy ships should challenge, reply should be made in accordance with International Procedure, using the calls and identifications as follows:
Atik: SS Vill Franca, Portuguese Registry, Call CSBT
Asterion: SS Generalife, Spanish Registry, Call EAOQ
As for eventual return to port, instructions were given that notice should be sent to Commander Eastern Sea Frontier, who would inform Mr. Huntington Morse or Mr. S. F. Helmbold of the Maritime Commission at Washington, that one of these men should inform the senior Maritime Commission representative at the port of entry; that a Maritime Commission representative at the port would receive lists of requirements from the Commanding Officer after arrival and would designate an agent to furnish them; that the Commanding Officer should ascertain the total cost and should deliver a check for the amount...for the U. S. Maritime Commission.
From March 11th to March 23, 1942, final arrangements were made for the first sailing of these vessels on shakedown, They sailed at 1300 on March 23rd, and the next day one of the officers in the Navy Department wrote, "It's gone with the wind now and hoping for a windfall."
Sinking of USS Atik (AK-101) by German submarine U-123
Unfortunately, the windfall cane all too soon. Before the shakedown cruise was tour days old, USS Atik (SS Carolyn) was attacked and sunk by a U-boat. All bands were listed as "missing." The details of the battle are so sparse as to make any satisfactory reconstruction impossible. It is known that the Atik had been cruising in the general area about 300 miles east of Norfolk; that the Asterion had been cruising some 240 miles to the south of this area. At 1945 on the night of March 26th, the Duty Officer in the Joint Operations Control Room, ESF [Eastern Sea Frontier], was informed that an SOS [radio distress call] had been picked up from an unidentified ship which had been torpedoed. Nothing further.
At 2053, radio stations at Manasquan, New Jersey, and at Fire Island, New York, intercepted the following distress message from SS Carolyn: "SSS SOS Lat. 36-00 N, Long. 70-00 W, Carolyn burning forward, not bad." Two minutes later, a second distress message from SS Carolyn further amplified: "Torpedo attack, burning forward; require assistance." The position indicated that the attack was taking place some 300 miles east by south from Norfolk, and because such distress messages were regular occurrences at this time – and because all available surface craft were on patrol – the dispatch from SSCarolyn resulted in no immediate action. The Duty Officer in the Control Room had not been informed as to the secret nature of the SS Carolyn, and consequently his only action was to forward the dispatch to Cominch. Several hours later, an officer in the Cominch Operations room phoned the Duty Officer, Eastern Sea Frontier, and asked if the Commander Eastern Sea Frontier or the Chief of Staff had been notified. The answer was that they had not been notified. The Duty Officer was informed that they should be, immediately. Because CESF and his Chief of Staff were both in Norfolk on that particular night, the Duty Officer notified the Operations Officer at his home. Early the next morning, an Army bomber was sent to search the area from which the Carolyn had sent her distress message; the destroyer USS Noa [DD-343] and the tug USS Sagamore [AT-20] were sent to the assistance of the Carolyn. The Army bomber returned without having sighted anything, The tug and the destroyer encountered such heavy weather that the tug was recalled on March 25th; the Noa searched the area until fuel shortage compelled her to return to New York on March 30th. Other flights by Army and Navy planes were unsuccessful until March 30th, when two Army planes and one PBY-5A [four-engine Navy patrol bomber] out of Norfolk reported that they had sighted wreckage roughly ten miles south of the original reported position. The Asterion, which had intercepted the distress messages from the Atik, proceeded directly to the area but was unable to find any trace of her sister vessel. The Norwegian freighter SS Minerva was sighted in the vicinity, southbound for St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. On her arrival there, she was boarded and interrogation revealed that her crew had sighted no wreckage and had picked up no survivors. Twelve days later, Commander Eastern Sea Frontier reported all known details to Cominch on the "suspected sinking of the SS Carolyn," and concluded: ". . . it is believed that there is very little chance that any of her officers and crew will be recovered. It is therefore recommended that it no further information is received by April 27, they be considered lost and that next of kin be notified."
The next piece of information came from Berlin on April 9, 1942, in the form of a broadcast recorded by the Associated Press in New York. It was printed in the New York Times on the following day, April 10, 1942:
"The High Command said today that a Q-boat--a heavily armed ship disguised as an unarmed vessel--was among 13 vessels sunk off the American Atlantic coast and that it was sent to the bottom by a submarine only after a `bitter battle.' (In the last war, Q-boats accounted for many submarines which slipped up on them thinking they were easy prey. When the submarines came into range, false structures on the Q-boats were collapsed, revealing an array of guns.)"
"The Q-boat, the communiqué said, was of 3,000 tons and was sunk by a torpedo after a battle 'fought partly on the surface with artillery and partly beneath the water with bombs and torpedoes.'"
So far as United States Q-ships were concerned in World War II, this was the first and the last action with U-boats which produced any positive results. It appears from this unfortunate beginning that the Germans were well aware of Q-ship possibilities; that the element of surprise which had made this type of vessel effective against submarines in World War I had been so completely lost that the Q-ship had become something of an anachronism. Nevertheless, the plan was continued, and the general details of those later developments deserve a place in the history of the Eastern Sea Frontier.
Cruises of USS Asterion (AK-100)
The first cruise of USS Asterion (alias SS Evelyn) began with the shakedown, and continued until April 18, 1942. The incidents of importance in that cruise were many, and they included several sound contacts with U-boats, the sighting of torpedoed merchant vessels and life boats, the rescue of survivors. Furthermore, several contacts with friendly surface craft and aircraft led to awkward situations which required tact and ingenuity on the part of the Commanding Officer. Nevertheless, the first cruise was concluded without any action against enemy submarines. A copy of the formal report of this first cruise, together with "Recommendations for reduction in merchant ship losses and operation of Q-ships" is included in the Appendix to this month's war diary. It is of interest to note that officers in Headquarters, ESF, were so completely unaware of the nature of this ship's mission that they recorded her various dispatches in the Enemy Action Diary for April 4th, April 10th and April 14th, under her commercial name, SS Evelyn.
The second cruise of USS Asterion began on May 4, 1942, in Accordance with CESF'S Operation Plan 5-42, wherein it was stated that the convoy system would be inaugurated between Key West and Norfolk on May 14-15; that USS Asterion had full discretion as to movements in waters off the Atlantic Coast. It was thus indicated that the best possibilities of success would be for the vessel to proceed as an independently routed merchant ship or as a straggler from a convoy. The cruise was uneventful.
The third cruise of USS Asterion began on June 7, 1942, and because of increased submarine activities in the Gulf of Mexico, the vessel proceeded from New York down the coast, passing through the Straits of Florida on June 11th and past Dry Tortugas on June 14th; thence through Yucatan Channel; then after reversing course proceeded to the Mississippi River Delta, thence on a westerly course toward Galveston. The cruise back over a slightly different course was uneventful, and USS Asterion arrived in New York on July 6, 1942.
The fourth cruise of USS Asterion began on July 20, 1942, en route from New York to Key West, were the vessel anchored on July 27th. On the return leg of the voyage, the vessel cruised northward of the Bahamas and then proceeded to the Windward Passage area; thence to New York, arriving August 18, 1942. The only incident of importance during this cruise was that a sick man was removed from the ship by a tug off Chesapeake Light Buoy vessel on August 15th,
The fifth cruise of USS Asterion began late in August and was similar in plan to that of the fourth cruise. The vessel sailed to Key West, refueled and sailed from there on September 12, 1942, returning to New York, The sixth cruise, equally uneventful, began on November 18, 1942 and again the run was made to Key West in accordance with orders from CESF. While in Key West, on November 30th, arrangements were made and carried out for exercises and operations with a "tame" submarine. On December 2, 1942, USS Asterion got underway for Trinidad, BWI, via Old Bahama Channel, following Trinidad convoy routes, including patrols westward of Aruba, The ship was fueled at NOB Trinidad. Bearing repairs, of serious nature, resulted in the delay of sailing from Trinidad from December 12th until December 26th, when USS Asterion departed Trinidad en route for New York, arriving January 10, 1943.
For the next few months, USS Asterion was given an elaborate overhaul. Inspection after her sixth cruise raised considerable doubt as to her ability to remain afloat if hit by a single torpedo because she had three large holds. A representative of the Navy Yard, New York, conferred with the bureau of Ships, Damage Section, who confirmed the opinion that she could not successfully withstand one torpedo hit, and that such a hit would result not only in her eventual sinking but also in such a quick list that her battery would be ineffective. (Undoubtedly this weakness had been demonstrated several months earlier and was responsible for the rapid sinking of the sister vessel, USS Atik.) A conference was held in the office of the Vice Chief of Naval Operations and it was decided to increase flotation by building five transverse bulkheads. It was estimated that this would take three months and that it would cost about $200,000. The work took much longer and cost much more than had been estimated. Not until September 27th was the overhaul completed--more than eight months after the end of the Asterion's latest cruise. The overhaul had included re-subdivision by longitudinal and athwart ship bulkheads, the filling of her holds with 16,772 empty steel flotation drums. The Supervising Constructor estimated that the vessel could be completely flooded and 25% of the barrels completely crushed before her well decks would be awash. Thus it seemed probable that she had an excellent chance of remaining afloat after a U-boat had made a successful attack on her, As for equipment, she had been strengthened until she carried six K-guns, 48 hedgehog barrels arranged in pairs (24 on each side) to fire a pattern 220 feet in length and 274 feet in width, four 50-caliber machine guns, two 40-millimeter machine guns, and three four-inch guns. Her detection equipment included SMSD [Submarine Detector Ship's Magnet] , SF [Surface Search] radar, Fathometer, Listening Gear of Mark 29, and Low Frequency Direction Finder.
On October 14, 1943, Cominch informed Commander Eastern Sea Frontier that USS Asterion would discontinue her previous duties; that she would be inspected by a Board of Inspection and Survey to determine "suitability for useful service" in some other capacity. USS Asterion was subsequently converted for use as a weather-vessel in the North Atlantic.
Cruises of USS Eagle (AM-132)/USS Captor (PYC-40)
The various cruises of the beam trawler, MS Wave, commissioned USS Eagle (AM-132) were as unproductive in results as were those of USS Asterion. Her first cruise, carried out in accordance with CESF Operation Order 3-42 of March 11, 1942, was intended to permit her to operate independently as a Q-ship in the general vicinity of the beam trawler fishing fleet out of Boston, Massachusetts. It was assumed that the true identity and mission of the vessel would become known to the fishing fleet, but it was intended that this knowledge should not be further disseminated. For this reason, prompt reports were to be made to the Commandant First Naval District for appropriate action of any evidence of disloyalty or "loose talk" in the fishing fleet. But it was found that the original equipment of USS Eagle and her weak armament were unsatisfactory for her purpose. As a result, arrangements were made for a three-week overhaul and conversion before she began her first cruise. From April 24th until May 19, 1942, the vessel underwent this overhaul, and because of the new purpose of the ship, her classification and name were changed at that time from USS Eagle (AM-132) to USS Captor (PYC-40).
A new operation plan, dated May 20, 1942, was drawn up for USS Captor by CESE, with the stipulation that the mission of patrol in the area of Georges Bank would be carried out as originally planned. This first cruise began May 26, 1942, and although no events of importance occurred, USS Captorcontinued to operate in this area during the next twelve months. when U-boat activities in Frontier waters decreased, the vessel was removed from her secret status and was assigned to the First Naval District as a regular armed patrol craft.
Cruises of USS Big Horn (AO-45)
The most formidable of the Q-ships was the tanker SS Gulf Dawn, selected by Commander Eastern Sea Frontier after Cominch had approved his proposal for using a disguised tanker. Conversion was begun in March 1942 at the Bethlehem 56th Street Brooklyn Yard and was continued at the Navy Yard Boston, where the work was finally completed on July 22, 1942. Equipment included five 4-inch .50 caliber single purpose guns, two .50 caliber machine guns, five "Tommy" guns, five sawed-off shotguns, one Model JK-9 listening equipment. She was commissioned USS Big Horn (AO-45) and the Commanding Officer assigned was Commander J. A. Gainard, formerly master of the SS City of Flint, which became the center of an international incident at the beginning of the war, and was later sunk by a U-boat. USS Big Horn cleared the Boston Navy Yard on July 22, 1942 and after two days spent on the degaussing range and in calibrating compasses and radio direction finders, proceeded to Casco Bay for training under Commander Destroyers, Atlantic Fleet. This training period was followed by a shakedown cruise which was completed on August 26, 1942, at which date USS Big Horn put in again at the Navy Yard, Boston, for further alterations and repairs, At that time, the total complement of the vessel was 13 officers and 157 enlisted men.
The first cruise of USS Big Horn began on September 27, 1942, when the ship proceeded from New York with a New York-Guantanamo Convoy, taking a position which permitted the vessel to act as a straggler. The trip was made to Guantanamo without incident, and thereafter the Big Horn was semi-attached to NOB [Naval Operating Base] Trinidad, with orders to operate from that base over the Bauxite route to and from ports where that commodity was loaded. Many ships in this area had been sunk in recent weeks. Ships proceeding from Trinidad were convoyed to a designated point from which they fanned out to take various routes to their ultimate destination. It was directed that the Big Horn should proceed to that point and drop down on independent routes to and from a Bauxite port.
On October 16, 1942, the Big Horn sailed in convoy "T-19" from Trinidad to the point of separation. That same afternoon, three U-boats attacked the convoy, and at 1520 Queen in 11-00 N, 61-10 W, the British steamer SS Castle Harbor was hit on the starboard side by a torpedo and sank in less than two minutes. At almost the same time the United States steamer Winona, coal laden, was struck forward on the starboard side. Later she limped into Trinidad. Soon afterwards, lookouts on the Big Horn sighted a U-boat moving at periscope depth on the port beam, but in such a position that no action could be taken without damaging the United States troopship Mexico or the Egyptian ship Raz El Farog. At 1627, lookouts on the Big Horn again sighted a periscope and conning tower, on the port side, and her four-inch gun was trained in that direction just as a sub chaser crossed through the line of fire and dropped five depth charges. Thereafter, the cruise in these waters was continued without incident for several days and the Big Horn returned to NOB Trinidad about October 29th.
A second cruise in company with a convoy from Trinidad was begun by USS Big Horn on November 1, 1942, to a point nearly due north of Paramaribo, where the vessel left the convoy and proceeded on varying courses without incident until return to Trinidad on November 8, 1942.
On November 10, 1942, USS Big Horn sailed in convoy TAG-20, with the gunboat USS Erie [PG-50], two PC [submarine chaser] boats and a PG [patrol gunboat] acting as escorts. As a result of submarine warnings the convoy course was changed so that the approach to Curacao was made from the south and west. Because of engine difficulties, USS Big Horn dropped out of the convoy at 1530 on November 12, 1942, in company with a Venezuelan tanker, and arrived at a point about one and one-half miles off Wilhemstad harbor, where the Curacao-Aruba subsidiary convoys were joining the main convoy. At 1702, a great volume of smoke was sighted as it rose from the stern of USS Erie, about 1,000 yards on the starboard bow of the Big Horn, in 12-07 N, 68-58 W.
It developed that the Erie had been torpedoed on the starboard side aft. The crew of the Big Horn was called to General Quarters, increased speed to 11 knots and proceeded for the scene of action, but repeated orders from Wilhemstad forced the Big Horn to alter course at 1725 and proceed to Wilhemstad. It was noted that the Erie swung into the wind; that efforts were made without avail to subdue the fire. The gunboat was finally beached, officers and crew abandoning ship.
On November 21, 1942, USS Big Horn proceeded from mooring in Curacao and joined a convoy bound for New York, The convoy proceeded on a course for Guantanamo with a Dutch gunboat and four SC boats as escorts. Other vessels joined convoy at Guantanamo until on leaving that meeting point there were 45 ships and 5 escorts in company. The remainder of the cruise to New York via Caicos Passage was uneventful, and the Big Horn anchored at the Narrows, New York at 2040 on December 1, 1942. During the next few weeks, the Big Horn entered the Todd Shipyard at Hoboken, where mousetrap and hedgehog equipment were installed.
On January 27, 1943, new proposals for antisubmarine operations by the Big Horn were submitted to the Chief of Staff , ESF, by three officers: Lieutenant Commander Farley, USN, (officer in charge of the ESF Q-ship project), Lieutenant Commander R. Parmenter (ASW officer) and Lieutenant Hess (Submarine Tracking Officer). Their proposal began by reviewing the fact that antisubmarine measures within ESF had been so successful that no vessels had been sunk in Frontier waters since July 1942; but that more and more enemy submarines were operating in different areas of the Atlantic. It was therefore proposed that a task unit be formed for hunting U-boats in the central Atlantic; that three PC's [submarine chasers] proceed as escort for USS Big Horn, which would thus act as "bait," as fuel and supply ship, and as support in antisubmarine combat. The proposals were approved by Cominch and by Commander Eastern Sea Frontier. On February 19, 1942, Commander Farley was detached from duty as assistant to the Operations officer, ESF, and was directed to assume command of the newly organized Task Group consisting of the Big Horn and three 173-foot PC vessels: PC-560, PC-617 and PC-618. During the period from March 2nd to March 14th, this Task Group conducted training exercises in the New London area with the U. S. submarine Mingo [SS-261] supplied for the purpose by ComsubLant [Commander, Submarine Force, Atlantic Fleet], During the next two weeks the Task Group made a shakedown cruise.
On April 3, 1943, CESF informed Cinclant that the Big Horn and the three PC's would proceed to sea with convoy UGS-7A on April 13th, and that prior to arrival in the vicinity of the Azores the group would drop astern of the convoy and proceed as straggler-with-escorts, although the escorts would remain far enough astern so that they would not be visible to an enemy submarine sighting the Big Horn. Corroboration of this plan was made by Cominch in a letter to Cinclant dated April 7, 1943. Information as to the plan was then communicated by Cinclant to Commander Task Force 64, who was to act as Escort Commander for Convoy UGS-7A. The Task Group was designated 02.10, although it was understood that routine reports would be made via Cinclant during the time in which the Task Group was operating in Atlantic waters outside the waters of the Eastern Sea Frontier. In the organization of the Atlantic Fleet, this Task Group was designated TG 21.8, operating under ComDesDiv 21 [Commander, Destroyer Division Twenty One], riding the destroyer Livermore [DD-429].
Convoy UGS-7A sailed on the morning of April 14, 1943, and the special Task Group joined up off New York and continued in company until 0800 on April 21, when the Group left the convoy and dropped astern twenty-five miles. The cruise was uneventful during the next two weeks. After several changes of course, USS Big Horn was in 29--00 N, 28--10 W at noon of May 3, 1943. Early that morning, a surfaced vessel had been sighted on the horizon, and PC-618 sent in pursuit. At 1104, PC-618 reported a submarine on the surface, distant about 6 miles. At 1235, the Big Horn got a sound contact and delivered a hedgehog attack just after sighting a periscope on the starboard bow at 1242, followed by a heavy swirl as the U-boat dove. At 1333 a second attack was delivered and the contact was lost. At 1540 the contact was regained at 3700 yards and at 1554, speed 5 knots, the Big Horn delivered a third attack. About five of the hedgehog projectiles exploded after they struck the water, and the Big Horn continued in to drop depth charges. Considerable light oil came to the surface and continued to spread for two hours. At 0103 on May 4th an oil patch was visible over an area of 200 to 300 yards. By daylight that morning, all traces of the oil slick were gone. As none of the vessels in the Group were able to establish contact during the next 44 hours, it was presumed that one submarine had been destroyed; that the other U-boat which had been sighted by the PC-618 had moved cut of the area.
Continuing on a homeward course, the Commanding Officer of the Big Horn attempted to use the Cominch daily submarine estimates as guides for fruitful changes of course, but after several attempts had failed to produce results, the Task Group Commander recorded in his log, on May 13, 1943, "This makes three submarines we have attempted to intercept on our return trip, all of which we theoretically should have met. This experience again accents the hopelessness of trying to find submarines. The proper procedure, as originally planned, is to remain in the vicinity of convoys, to which the submarines will come. On the next trip, it is planned to stay within about 15 miles, or less, of the convoy." The Task Group arrived at Ambrose on May 17, 1943.
The next period in the life of the Big Horn was spent in the Atlantic Basin Iron Works, Brooklyn, New York, where extensive repairs and alterations were made. This overhaul was completed in July 1943.
The final cruise of the Big Horn in the capacity of a Q-ship was also her longest, Again she served as the flagship of a small Task Group which included only two other vessels: PC-618 and PC-617. In the organization of the Atlantic Fleet, this unit was designated Task Group 21.8, scheduled to sail in convoy UGS-13 from Norfolk about July 27th, 1943. Commander L. C. Farley had relieved Captain Gairiard as Commanding Officer of the Big Horn on June 24th because of the illness of the latter, The Task Group departed New York on July 20, 1943 and proceeded to Norfolk, where convoy UGS-13 made up and sailed on the morning of July 27th. On July 29th, the Big Horn straggled from the convoy and streamed her Mark 29 gear. For the next few days she trailed the convoy, distant about fifty miles. On August 4th, course was changed to enable the Task Group to intercept enemy submarines reported by Cominch to be operating in the vicinity of 38-00 N, 38-00 W. On August 6th, a submarine was sighted in 41-31 N, 36-11 W and attacked by PC-618 with mousetraps which failed to explode. Thereafter the contact was not regained. An expanding box search was carried out during the next few days without results then the group moved northward of the Azores. Planes from the "baby flat-top" [escort aircraft carrier] USS Card [CVE-11] were sighted several times during this period and it was subsequently learned that some of these planes had made definite kills of enemy U-boats during that period. The Big Horn was not so fortunate, in spite of frequent changes of course to intercept submarines reported by Cominch. The cruise continued in the general area and as far south as the latitude of Dakar, during the last weeks of August and throughout September. During the last week of September, a new search area was tried far to the north of the Azores, but again without success; then the homeward leg of the cruise was executed without event. USS Big Horn and her escorts stood up Ambrose channel on October 7, 1943.
On October 14th, Cominch directed that USS Big Horn should be retained in active service but that no alterations or extensive repairs should be made without specific authorization of Cominch.
One more uneventful cruise was made by the Big Horn in company with PC-617 and PC-618, following training exercises in the New London area with a tame sub from October 29th through November 10th. On November 11th, the Task Group returned to New York to refuel and provision; on November 15th, the Task Group departed in company and proceeded on an eastward course until they had reached the hunting ground north of the Azores by November 27th. The search tactics were carried out for the next three weeks without success, and then the Task Group set course for the United States, arriving in Cape Cod Bay on December 31, 1943.
In summarizing this cruise, the Commanding. Officer of the Big Horn wrote, "It may be noted that during the period from 27 November to 1 December, this Task Group was in the midst of a group of from 10 to 15 U-boats. Nine contacts, sightings or attacks on U-boats took place in our immediate vicinity, so that it is most unlikely that we were not seen by some U-boats. Evidently the U-boats are wary of attacking an independent tanker. If the Q-ship program has contributed to this wariness, as is suggested in several prisoner-of-war statements, many independent merchant ships may thereby have escaped attack, and the Q-ship program has thus been of value."
Apparently Cominch did not agree with such a conclusion, for subsequent orders were that the Big Horn should join the Asterion in the new assignment to North Atlantic Weather Patrol Duty in the North Atlantic, under the supervision at the Coast Guard and manned by Coast Guard officers and crew. Because her antisubmarine equipment still remained intact, this permitted her to take offensive action whenever such opportunities presented themselves.
USS Irene Forsyte (IX-93)
The fifth vessel to be converted as a Q-ship was the three-masted schooner USS Irene Forsyte mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. The original proposal for using such a vessel as a Q-ship was made by Lieutenant Commander R. Parmenter, the ASW [Anti Submarine Warfare] Officer previously mentioned. On September 30, 1942, his suggestions were submitted to CESF by the officer in charge of ESF Q-ships, Commander L. C. Farley, who suggested that a three-masted schooner could be picked up for about $12,000; that if such a plan were approved it was recommended that the Commanding Officer of the vessel should be Lieut. Comdr. Parmenter. The plan was submitted to Cominch by Commander Eastern Sea Frontier in a letter dated October 9, 1942, and was approved. Within two weeks, CESF recommended the purchase of a Canadian schooner named Irene Myrtle, which was owned by T. Antle in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia. On October 31, 1942, the Vice Chief of Naval Operations directed the Chief of Bureau of Ships to arrange for purchasing the vessel and for delivering it to the Port Director, Boston. He further directed that it should be turned over to the Commanding Officer, Submarine Base, New London, Connecticut. These orders were carried out, and on December 17, 1942, the Chief of Naval Operations directed the Commandant Third Naval District to place the Irene Myrtle in full commission as USS Irene Forsyte (IX-93) upon receipt of sufficient personnel and as soon as the vessel was habitable. Conversion was made at the Thames Shipyard at New London, and as soon as the hull had been overhauled and repaired the vessel was lavishly equipped with a considerable variety of antisubmarine gear.
The original plan was for using the vessel off the "Trinidad corner" where U-boats had congregated and where several schooners had been attacked. On March 16th, however, CESF proposed to Cominch that the vessel might be of more value if she were assigned patrol areas in waters adjacent to the Azores. On April 5, 1943, Cominch replied that "in view of the considerable length of time before the subject vessel will be completed it is not possible to state definitely where she will be employed when ready. It is the present plan, however, that she will operate in the South Atlantic." The reference to the "length of time" was quite pertinent. On August 11th, Commander Eastern Sea Frontier informed Cinclant that the Irene Forsyte would be completed some time between August 15-20, 1943; that she would require about two weeks for shakedown; that at the end of that time CESF would order her to report to Cinclant for assignment. On August 13, 1943, Cinclant replied that when the Irene Forsyte reported to him she would be sailed for the South Atlantic, and that operational control of the vessel would pass to Commander Fourth Fleet, with Headquarters at Recife, as soon as she crossed 10° North latitude. The Commanding Officer of the Irene Forsyte did report to Cinclant for duty on September 24, 1943, and was then instructed to sail on or about September 26th for Recife along the Maury Track.
On the first leg of this cruise, the Irene Forsyte ran into heavy weather which opened up her seams and caused such serious leakage that there was temporary fear that the vessel would founder before she could put in at Bermuda. Immediately questions were raised as to why the vessel had been permitted to go to sea in such obviously unseaworthy condition. The upshot of the matter was the appointment of a Board of Investigation to ascertain responsibility for materiel failure of the vessel. In commenting on the report of the Naval Inspector General, Cominch wrote as follows:
"The conversion of USS Irene Forsyte is an instance of misguided conception and misdirected zeal, which, coupled with inefficiency resulting from lack of supervision by competent authority; has cost the government nearly half a million dollars in money and a serious waste of effort. In addition, much valuable material that can ultimately be used has been frozen for the better part of one year. The facts and circumstances responsible therefor are set forth in detail in the enclosures.
"I recognize that the actions of the officers were, in general, motivated by a desire to assist in the war effort. However, it appears to be a fact that some of the officers concerned took advantage of the broad authority that was granted in the interests of secrecy to obtain equipment that did not contribute to the military value of the vessel. Furthermore, the failure to ascertain, prior to or during conversion, that the vessel was unseaworthy is an indication of professional incompetence on the part of the officers concerned. The Commander, Eastern Sea Frontiers and the Commandant, Third Naval District after such further investigation as they may deem necessary, will take appropriate corrective and disciplinary action. Disposal of the vessel has been provided for in other correspondence.
"The practice of granting to Frontier Commanders and District Commandants uncontrolled authority to implement projects of this nature has been discontinued."
Thus ended the use of Q-ships in the Eastern Sea Frontier during World War II.
Selected Bibliography For further information:
Beyer, Kenneth M. Q Ships Versus U-Boats: America's Secret Project. Annapolis MD: Naval Institute Press, 1999. [appendices contain crew lists for USS Atik and USS Asterion. Captain Beyer, USN (Ret.) served as an officer on USS Asterion.]
Blair, Clay. Hitler's U-Boat War: The Hunters, 1939-1942. New York: Random House, 1996. [see index for individual ship names.].
Chatterton, E. Keble. Q Ships and Their Story. Annapolis MD: Naval institute Press, 1972.
Farago, Ladislas. The Tenth Fleet. New York: I. Obolensky, 1962. [see ch.7, pp.85-89].
Gannon, Michael. Operation Drumbeat: The Dramatic True Story of Germany's First U-Boat Attacks Along the American Coast in World War II. New York: Harper and Row, 1990. [see index for "Q-ships"]
Grenfell, E.W. "Discussions, Comments, Notes: A Japanese Q-Ship." US Naval Institute Proceedings 79, no.8 (Aug. 1953): 899-900. [1942 incident involving USS Gudgeon (SS-211) and an armed Japanese steamer].
McElroy, John W. "Discussions, Comments, Notes: The Loss of an American Q-Ship in World War II." US Naval Institute Proceedings 81, no.2 (Feb. 1953): 215. [loss of USS Atik].
Morison, Samuel Eliot. The Battle of the Atlantic, September 1939-May 1943. vol.1 of History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. Boston MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1947. [see ch.11, "Amateurs and Auxiliaries: Mystery Ships," pp.281-286. Morison observes that 148 personnel, 1/4 of all personnel involved in the program, died, making it the most hazardous branch of the Navy.].
Sanderson, James Dean. Giants in War. New York: D.Van Nostrand Co., 1962. [See ch.7 "The Q-Ship Killers," pp.141-174.].
Smith, Richard W. The Q-Ship - Cause and Effect. US Naval Institute Proceedings 79, no.5 (May 1953): 532-541. [Q-Ships in World War I].
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The Hdq. Co. 103rd Infantry Honor Roll
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2008-06-22T15:32:24+00:00
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During the time of its deployment overseas from October, 1917 until the Armistice in November, 1918 the 26th Infantry Division suffered a total of 13,664 casualties including 1,587 KIA (killed in action) and 12,077 WIA (wounded in action). Counted separately were 2,113 men hospitalized for being gassed (burned and/or poisoned) by chemical munitions. The following are notes made in Sam's…
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https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/3fa4090c65548a0d6d5fec11cbbdd82cc80a427a1cfa9e88aa83abe15ad77466?s=32
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Soldiers' Mail
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https://worldwar1letters.wordpress.com/the-adventure-unfolds/over-there-1918-1919/103rd-infantry-honor-roll/
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https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/56th_Infantry_Division_(German_Empire)
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56th Infantry Division (German Empire)
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2024-07-29T22:27:06+00:00
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The 56th Infantry Division (56. Infanterie-Division) was a division of the Imperial German Army. It was formed during World War I and dissolved with the demobilization of the German Army in 1919. The 56th Infantry Division was formed on March 5, 1915 and began organizing itself over the next two...
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/skins-ucp/mw139/common/favicon.ico
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Military Wiki
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https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/56th_Infantry_Division_(German_Empire)
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56th Infantry Division (56. Infanterie-Division)Active 1915-1919Country GermanyBranch ArmyType InfantrySize Approx. 15,000Engagements World War I: Gorlice-Tarnów Offensive, Lemberg (1915), 2nd Champagne, Verdun, Somme, Arras
The 56th Infantry Division (56. Infanterie-Division) was a division of the Imperial German Army. It was formed during World War I and dissolved with the demobilization of the German Army in 1919.
Formation and organization[]
The 56th Infantry Division was formed on March 5, 1915 and began organizing itself over the next two months. It received the 35th Fusilier Regiment (Füsilier-Regiment Prinz Heinrich von Preußen (Brandenburgisches) Nr. 35) from the 6th Infantry Division, the 88th Infantry Regiment (2. Nassauisches Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 88) from the 21st Infantry Division, and the 118th Infantry Regiment (Infanterie-Regiment Prinz Carl (4. Großherzogl. Hessisches) Nr. 118) from the 25th Infantry Division.[1] The 35th Fusiliers was a Prussian regiment from Brandenburg, the 88th Infantry was a Prussian regiment from the former Duchy of Nassau, and the 118th Infantry was from the Grand Duchy of Hesse. The 56th Infantry Division's order of battle on March 7, 1915 was as follows:[1]
112.Infanterie-Brigade:
Infanterie-Regiment Nr.35
Infanterie-Regiment Nr.88
Infanterie-Regiment Nr.118
Radfahr-Kompanie Nr. 56
4.Eskadron/Braunschweigisches Husaren-Regiment Nr. 17
56.Feldartillerie-Brigade:
Feldartillerie-Regiment Nr.111
Feldartillerie-Regiment Nr.112
Fußartillerie-Bataillon Nr.56
Pionier-Kompanie Nr.111
Pionier-Kompanie Nr.112.
Combat chronicle[]
After organizing and training in the Champagne region of France, the division was transported to the Eastern Front. It participated in the Gorlice-Tarnów Offensive of 1915, and the Battle of Lemberg. At the end of June 1915, the division was transported back to the Western Front.[1]
The division saw action from September through November 1915 in the Second Battle of Champagne. After a period in the trenchlines and then rest in the army reserve, in May 1915, the division entered the Battle of Verdun, fighting in the struggle for the Dead Man's Hill. The division joined the Battle of the Somme at the end of August 1916. In October 1916, the division received the 47th Ersatz Infantry Brigade as reinforcement, and returned to the final phase of the Battle of the Somme in November. The 47th Ersatz Infantry Brigade was transferred from the division in January 1917. The division remained in positional warfare along the Somme and in Flanders in early 1917. It faced the British offensive at Arras in April and May, and then after more time in the trenchlines, it returned to Verdun in August. The division remained at Verdun into early 1918, and then returned to the Flanders region. It ended the war in battle before the Antwerp-Maas defensive line.[1]
Allied intelligence rated the division as a second class division, mainly due to the heavy fighting it had seen and the losses it had taken.[2]
Late-war organization[]
Given its late formation, the division underwent fewer structural changes than other divisions by late-war. It became more Hessian in nature, losing the 35th Brandenburg Fusiliers to the 228th Infantry Division and receiving the 186th Infantry Regiment (Infanterie-Regiment Nr.186), a regiment formed from the Grand Duchy of Hesse and the Prussian Province of Hesse-Nassau. The division's order of battle on October 19, 1918 was as follows:[1]
112.Infanterie-Brigade:
Infanterie-Regiment Nr.88
Infanterie-Regiment Nr.118
Infanterie-Regiment Nr.186
4.Eskadron/Braunschweigisches Husaren-Regiment Nr. 17
Artillerie-Kommandeur Nr. 56:
Feldartillerie-Regiment Nr.112
Fußartillerie-Bataillon Nr.56
Pionier-Bataillon Nr.139
Divisions-Nachrichten-Kommandeur Nr. 56
References[]
56.Infanterie-Division at 1914-18.info
Hermann Cron, Geschichte des deutschen Heeres im Weltkriege 1914-1918 (Berlin, 1937)
Histories of Two Hundred and Fifty-One Divisions of the German Army which Participated in the War (1914-1918), compiled from records of Intelligence section of the General Staff, American Expeditionary Forces, at General Headquarters, Chaumont, France 1919, (1920)
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WW2 US Medical Research Centre
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https://www.med-dept.com/unit-histories/56th-evacuation-hospital/
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Introduction & Activation:
When the Board of Trustees of the Baylor University College of Medicine, Dallas, Texas, received a telegram from the Surgeon General James C. Magee, that an Executive Committee be appointed to organize an Army medical unit to be designated the 56th Evacuation Hospital, it was time to act.
In August of 1940, Dr. Henry M. Winans, MD, Professor of Medicine, was appointed to organize the new Hospital. The Physicians and Surgeons who had volunteered as members of the 56th Evacuation Hospital were given their commissions in the Army of the United States in February 1941. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Lt. Colonel H. M. Winans’ work of organizing the new Hospital was greatly accelerated. Nurses and additional Medical and Surgical Officers volunteered their services. On March 17, 1942, all Commissioned Officers and Nurses were ordered to report for duty at Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio, Texas (Military Reservation; total acreage 23,592; troop capacity 719 Officers & 25,825 Enlisted Men –ed), and Lieutenant Colonel Henry M. Winans, MC, became the Commanding Officer. General Order No. 12, Headquarters, Eighth Corps Area, dated March 29, 1942, activated the 56th Evacuation Hospital. As expected, 30 new Officers reported for duty at Fort Sam Houston, April 10, 1942, and along with 94 Enlisted Men and 2 additional Officers, a Training Program was begun. During the months of April – May – June – and July of 1942, many new Officers, Nurses, and EM joined the organization. Colonel Henry S. Blessé, MC, joined the 750-bed 56th Evacuation Hospital on May 4, 1942, as the new Commanding Officer. Following the Louisiana Maneuvers, the new organization now consisted of 48 Officers – 49 Nurses – and 315 Enlisted Men.
Training and Maneuvers:
At the start of the Training Program, bets were already organized, stating that “the fighting 56th” would be overseas in from six to eight weeks! Meanwhile the training was well received, interest was high, friendships were formed, rumors abounded, and there was a growing feeling of unity, comradeship, and power within the organization – the 56th Evacuation Hospital was no longer just a name, but a UNIT!
To the general disappointment, as everyone was eager to move overseas, orders were received on July 23, 1942, to proceed to Mansfield, Louisiana, for participation in US Army Maneuvers. The Officers and Enlisted personnel moved by truck convoy to Mansfield, covering 300 plus miles, with a first bivouac at Houston Memorial Park, Texas, where both Officers and Enlisted Men had to pitch their pup tents. The ANC Officers had meanwhile reached Mansfield by train along with most of the Hospital’s equipment on July 25, 1942. Upon arrival, the Nurses were taken to the Mansfield High School where they were billeted in the gymnasium.
The 56th opened July 29, 1942, after five bewildering days of backbreaking work, to prepare everything. No sooner was the Hospital declared “operational” than Lieutenant General Walter Krueger ordered the Red and Blue Forces to start the battle. The three weeks of operation at Mansfield were in fact more of an “exploratory” phase, during which time some 50 patients a day were received for treatment. A rumored move, possibly to a Port of Embarkation, materialized when an advance party left to prepare a hospital site in a deserted CCC camp near Fort Jessup, Louisiana. The advance detail embarked for their destination, only to find empty buildings full of rubble, trash, an dirt. Newly-assigned EM joined the detail on August 17, to help clean up the mess, and prepare the hospital area. The many big and small but important details were being ironed out, weaknesses discovered, and a smooth functioning organization was slowly but surely asserting itself. While located near Mansfield, the unit issued a mimeographed newspaper “The Latrine Journal.” For recreation, there was football, and trips and passes to Natchitoches, New Orleans, and Shreveport.
On October 12, 1942, the Hospital moved with the victorious Red Forces to Jasper, Texas. Maneuver problems were gradually approached more seriously and were carried out efficiently. While at Jasper, the 56th was established at the Fair Grounds. The local citizens displayed a great interest in the operation and many visitors came to the area on Sunday afternoons to watch the various activities. Local newspapers devoted some columns to the Hospital, its functions, and key personnel, and morale was high. Maneuvers ended November 8, 1942.
The main body of the 56th Evacuation Hospital returned to Fort Sam Houston on a bitterly cold morning, it was November 11, 1942. One of the first activities was the exchange of summer cotton uniforms for woolen ODs. It was good to be back from the “war”, with all the regular conveniences, such as telephones, wooden floors, furnaces, toilets, glass windows, and a PX. Furloughs and leaves were granted during fall and the early winter months. Many Enlisted Men were sent to OCS, while others left for Special Schools. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year dinners were splendid feasts, and everything was done to provide staff and personnel a maximum of good food, entertainment, and recreation. The men were aware of the battles in North Africa, and although the outcome was still to be determined, they were eager to receive orders to move overseas.
Preparation for Overseas Movement:
On February 19, 1943, shortly after the third Training Program was started, the organization received its Alert Orders. During the subsequent Officer briefing at Brooke General Hospital Colonel H. Blessé briefly and calmly issued the necessary instructions: “Equipment ready for February 27 – Personnel ready for March 13.”
Packing crates, stenciling shipping numbers (unit designated by code 5290G –ed), drafting inventory lists, allotments, powers of attorney, insurance policies, physical check-ups, articles of war, and last wills, followed each other. B bags, personal baggage, mosquito bars, individual equipment, each had its place in the days preceding final departure from Fort Sam Houston.
The train with Pullman and baggage cars arrived on the morning of March 30, 1943 and were soon made ready for the 56th Evac. Kitchens were installed, seating plans checked, supplies inventoried, and everything prepared for the trip. All personnel boarded the train at 1230 hours, March 31, 1943 which then promptly began to move out, causing the necessary relief and excitement among the passengers. It was a very warm day in spring and rumors were that after clearing the yards at San Antonio, the next stop would be at some Staging Area near New York. During the journey, there were at least two exercise halts for some calisthenics.
The organization arrived at Camp Shanks, Orangeburg, New York (Staging Area for New York Port of Embarkation; total acreage 2,009; troop capacity 2,545 Officers & 46,367 Enlisted Men –ed), at 2200 hours, April 3, 1943. The men were the first troops to occupy Area Number One. Officers, Nurses, and Enlisted Men were all billeted in different buildings. Area Number One had a very large mess hall capable of feeding 7,000 men at one meal. There was a very luxurious and well-equipped Post Exchange, supplemented by a counter where sandwiches, pastry, and coffee were sold. The very last passes for New York City were issued April 4, before the men were kept inside until departure. On April 15, 1943, the 56th left Camp Shanks, after going through final preparations involving last minute packing, washing clothes, physical check-ups, issue of gas-proof clothing, immunization shots, last censored letters home, and rehearsals on how to board ship. Then the troop train left Orangeburg for the Weehawken Ferry building.
The ship was the S/S Mariposa, a former Matson luxury liner and a fast ship that would sail alone and not in convoy. Rumors were rife at night as to the ship’s final destination, and the next morning, this was April 16, 1943, while at breakfast, the engines began to vibrate and the ship set sail. Instructions followed; “Wear your life belt” – “Don’t throw anything overboard” – “Observe boat drill – “Lights out” – “Port holes closed” – “General quarters.” The Mariposa was well loaded. There were a number of other medical units on board, including the 95th Evacuation Hospital, and some Army Air Force Squadrons, among which the colored 51st Fighter Wing commanded by Lt. Colonel Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. Only one or two days from eventual destination, the men learned that they would leave ship at Casablanca, French Morocco.
On April 24, 1943, eight days after leaving Staten Island, it was time to leave the Mariposa – reveille on board was at 0400, breakfast at 0530, and at approximately 0730 a grayish haze appeared on the horizon, and upon approaching the coastline, spires and minarets, mosques and modern buildings, low green hills, and patrolling Allied aircraft, looked very comforting. Small ships escorted the troop ship slowly toward shore and the harbor. By 1000 hours in the morning, the 56th was ready to debark, with helmets, gas masks, pup tents, field pack, and individual gear, and impregnated gas-proof clothing. A band played a hearty number of American tunes. Lunch came and passed on, and finally, at 1430, the orders came to move out. The 56th Evacuation Hospital had arrived overseas, in Casablanca, French Morocco, North Africa.
French Morocco:
Following debarkation, the Nurses entrucked for Casablanca where quarters had been provided for them in the “Ecole Primaire – Internat.” Officers and Enlisted Men formed two columns for the 3-mile march to Camp Don B. Passage. Marching in the hot sun, with helmets, woolen clothing, and haversack on the back, wasn’t easy. Finally, Camp Don B. Passage with its low unfinished buildings and rows of pyramidal tents came in sight.
It was Easter morning, April 25, 1943, when the first bugle notes called reveille. There was quite some work to be done in camp, even though it was Easter Sunday. Some supplies had already arrived from the docks the previous afternoon, and the remainder would be forthcoming. Reveille, roll call, breakfast, all followed the daily routine, then it went quickly; pitching ward tents in which to store medical supplies. Some of the men under command of an NCO had stayed aboard the Mariposa overnight to guard Afrika Korps PWs who were being sent to the ZI with the ship. Religious services were arranged for and celebrated by Chaplain (Captain) George C. Griffith, ChC. Then the first day began to slip away. At first the newcomers were restricted to the camp area; but even so, a certain amount of interest was developed in and around the camp, especially with regard to the local population. Quite a number of locals were employed in the construction of Camp Don B. Passage, and it was interesting to watch them at work. The men gradually learned their habits, the way they walked and talked, but also witnessed the filth and poverty of the lower classes. It was sometimes wondered how Arab women could carry such heavy burdens on their head. On the other hand, it was necessary to watch one’s belongings, as many tended to disappear. Bargaining with the local population became a daily habit. There were eggs, tomatoes, dates, figs, walnuts, and leather objects to buy, and these were available in quantity. Naturally, the Arabs would take the money, but some of the American commodities were more desirable, and in the end the CO was forced to post a notice on the bulletin board prohibiting the disposal or barter of Government property, such as mattress covers, clothing, blankets, cigarettes, chocolate bars, etc.
Atabrine tablets were served for the first time, and the results within the next twenty-four hours were disastrous. Both staff and personnel were continually going to the latrines. Early May, the first passes were issued and the men then piled in trucks for a twenty-minute ride to the American Red Cross post in Casablanca. From there on it was sightseeing either in a donkey-drawn cart, an open carriage, a taxi, or on foot. The streets were very busy with a great variety of traffic, including GI trucks and carriages, carts, bicycles, camels, and pedestrians. Eventually more recreation was introduced, such as dances, sightseeing excursions, and swimming parties.
Life at Casablanca however was not all play. A good number of EM of the 56th Evac were called on each day to help with the manual labor to keep supply lines open. Places like the gas dump, the signal warehouse, the pipeline dump, and the docks were always crying for hands to lighten the practically insurmountable tasks. The Officers also worked, being required to patrol the streets of Casablanca for the purpose of enforcing military courtesy among the Army personnel.
Colonel H. Blessé, MC, inaugurated a new training program for all Officers. He ordered a 5-mile road march with full field pack; the first day of training; with hikes of 10 – 12 – and 15 miles the following days. These exercises were repeated each week!
On May 12, 1943, victory over the German Afrika Korps was announced, and the question became: “Where does the 56th go from here?” A great celebration took place in Casablanca, with long lines of Allied aircraft flying overhead and Allied troops parading down the city’s broad avenues.
Stations in French Morocco – 56th Evacuation Hospital
Camp Don B. Passage – May 8, 1943 > June 4, 1943 (more training, only brief operation )
Before final orders arrived, the men began to talk about Bizerte, Tunis, or even Sicily as a possible destination… Memorial Day was celebrated and finally the days of the unit’s stay in Casablanca drew to a close. Alert orders were received and instructions followed ordering everyone to pack for a move by motor convoy to Bizerte, in Tunisia. This represented a distance of 1,300 miles! Since the 56th Evac only had about 20 experienced truck drivers, volunteers were called for, with Medical Officers being assigned. In the final count, enough drivers were selected for 112 vehicles. Then on June 4, 1943, the Hospital swung into action, starting the first lap of its North African journey.
Motor Convoy Journey from French Morocco to Bizerte – 56th Evacuation Hospital
(Camp Don B. Passage) Casablanca, French Morocco > Meknès – June 4, 1943
Meknès, French Morocco > Guercif – June 5, 1943
Guercif, French Morocco > Tlemcen – June 6, 1943
Tlemcen, Algeria > Orléansville – June 7, 1943
Orléansville, Algeria > L’Arba – June 8, 1943
L’Arba, Algeria > Sétif – June 9, 1943
Sétif, Algeria > Souk Ahras – June 10, 1943
Souk Ahras, Algeria > Bizerte, Tunisia – June 11, 1943
Each truck was provided with a driver and his assistant. The trailers were heavily loaded with supplies. A few empty trucks were reserved for carrying the Nurses and their equipment. The convoy itself, was divided into 4 serials of about 30 trucks each. A briefing was given by Captain Clarence E. Soper, QMC, ending with a pep talk. The first destination was to be Meknès, via Rabat. The group consisted of 46 Officers – 47 Nurses – and 315 Enlisted Men. Stops were arranged underway for meals during which the men and women ate C-rations. After reaching Meknès, the convoy had to bivouac several miles east of the city in a broad flat valley. The site had been prepared by an advance detail who had pitched ward tents provided with cots and blankets. Following arrival the trucks were first replenished with gasoline, water, and oil. Local inhabitants appeared from nearby farms offering onions, eggs, tomatoes, and oranges. Everyone went to bed early as reveille was set for 0530 the next morning.
Several hundred miles had been driven when the convoy rumbled into Tlemcen late in the afternoon on June 6. A race track served as a bivouac that night. The neighbors were part of the 36th Infantry Division. The good news was, that following arrival, there was time for a real bath that night. It was a concrete reservoir fed by a clear and cold mountain stream. The journey then continued in mountainous country with magnificent views of the surroundings.
Reaching Orléansville proved the longest lap of the trip. It was already 2130 before all the trucks were ready to roll again and safely grouped in the bivouac area, an ancient olive grove. Bugle call came at 0500 the next morning following a tiring journey and a short night. The greater part of the trip was now made over tortuous roads up the sides and down the slopes of steep mountains; a dangerous experience. Another bivouac was set up at L’Arba in Algeria where the men witnessed the extensive vineyards and orange groves. Limited bathing facilities were discovered in the form of an ice-cold irrigation ditch. The 56th Evac convoy bivouacked a few miles beyond Sétif in open country. In this region were many cattle, sheep, and horses.
Thursday morning, another long drive was under preparation. This one would take the trucks to Souk Ahras, also in Algeria, by way of Constantine. Just beyond the city, a very large company of German Prisoners of War was met, surprisingly guarded by only a few British soldiers. Soon after the PWs were passed, the convoy stopped for lunch. After driving into high mountains once more, the end of the day was reached, with the 56th setting up a bivouac in an exquisitely beautiful high mountain scenery.
Friday, June 11, 1943, was the last day of this long journey. While the trucks were warming up, a shower of rain over the high mountain peaks brought forth a brilliant rainbow. Then, a flight of American fighter aircraft came into view through a bank of clouds. The road in the mountains grew rougher every mile. On the way, the 56th convoy met truckloads of German and Italian PWs coming from the front in Tunisia, and there were more and more signs of war. As the trucks continued eastwards, battle scars became more conspicuous in the form of wrecked tanks, half-burned aircraft, and battered trucks. Mateur came in sight at 1630 hours, and the men passed a hill where some heavy fighting involving armor had taken place. Some Arabs were busy digging up mines along the road, and isolated American, German, and Italian graves were not infrequent. The rough road eventually turned into a highway beyond Mateur, Tunisia. Then the convoy entered the outskirts of Bizerte, one of the worst bombed cities in North Africa.
The 56th finally crawled through the many debris of war that was once Bizerte at 1800 hours that same day, beginning the ascent up the winding road to Camp Nador, on a hilltop, 6 miles northwest of the city and originally a French garrison post. The numerous white stucco buildings appeared well-suited for the purposes of a hospital and had therefore been selected.
Tunisia:
During the first week spent at Camp Nador, an Ambulance Company cleaned up one building and set up showers so the men could enjoy a hot bath in camp. After that the 56th undertook the task of cleaning up the whole place. Officers and Enlisted personnel worked every day for a week on the buildings and adjacent grounds until the filth left behind by the Germans showed some signs of being disposed of. The 175th Engineer General Service Regiment lent them a hand in the process until Camp Nador finally began to take on some aspects of an American hospital. During this clean-up campaign, the men kept their eyes peeled for souvenirs to send home. Many a German helmet, a gas mask, flour sacks marked with the German eagle and swastika, bayonets, and handguns were collected. Nothing was overlooked. Fortunately no booby-traps had been left in the place.
The ANC Officers meanwhile enjoyed the privileges of a rest from the long trip and were taken swimming at the beach by the 175th Engineers. They were also driven around by them to visit the ruins of Bizerte, the ancient ruins of Carthage, and the city of Tunis.
At last the day came to move into the cleaned quarters. Officers and Nurses had gained permission to bring up some furniture from Bizerte, so that in a short time the rooms began to look as homelike and hospitable as could be. Enlisted Men, not to be outdone, provided themselves with a great variety of furniture contrived from miscellaneous crates and boxes. Then came the day that the CO decided that everything had to be more GI and a great public bonfire soon reduced the EM to the bare necessities of Army life, in other words – a folding cot, two Army blankets, a mosquito net, and a barracks bag.
The wards were set in order and the 56th Evacuation Hospital was officially opened on June 20, 1943. The same day, Ward # 24 received its first patient: Private Nick J. Gergulas, the “Greek”, victim of sandfly fever, a tropical disease the Doctors had never met in the ZI. More patients soon began to arrive, and the Medical Service was crowded to overflowing. The Hospital had finally begun to fulfill its mission! A PA system was installed by Technician 5th Grade Joseph S. Polecki and his electricians. Music also became available. V-Mail started to arrive with plenty of letters from home, boosting morale. On July 10, 1943, a first news program was presented via the own Public Address system with help from Private First Class Samuel Ennis and Corporal Earl Kenney. Later Corporal George Walton joined the news staff. The program enjoyed genuine prosperity and became the most awaited time in the day.
Stations in Tunisia – 56th Evacuation Hospital
(Camp Nador) Bizerte – June 20, 143 > September 17, 1943 (750-bed unit)
By mid-July big white Hospital Ships and troop transports steamed into Bizerte harbor; and ambulances began to roll uphill bringing in patients from the Sicily Campaign. Americans predominated, but now and then, Germans, Italians, and British patients were received.
On July 6, 1943, shortly after 0300 in the early morning a great air raid took place, filling the night with bright flares, powerful searchlight beams, ack-ack fire, colorful tracers, and falling bombs. It was time to adjust a steel helmet. The whole raid lasted over an hour, and the onlookers’ enthusiasm subsided when they saw the long lines of ambulances streaming into the facility bearing mangled human bodies. Sometime later a USO show was on, and as it was too dangerous to stay in Bizerte, the group composed of Bob Hope, Frances Langford, Jack Pepper, and Tony Romano, spent five nights at the Hospital. They really made the 56th their headquarters, visiting other units in the area.
About mid-August, the Enlisted Men were favored with a dance or two under the direction of Special Service Officer, Second Lieutenant Lucas J. Baird, MAC, and everybody had a swell time. The Officers and Nurses also enjoyed several evenings of dances in the EM’s mess hall. Bands and choral groups came to perform on several occasions. Swimming almost took place every day, trips, visits, tours, and meetings with British AAA crews and French troops were organized, and outdoor movies shown.
When the Sicily Campaign ended, and Salerno was assaulted, the organization knew that it would soon leave North Africa. Rumors were plentiful, and mentioned the United Kingdom, Burma, or just plain San Antonio, Texas, but the Army thoughtfully had the 56th Evac scheduled for Italy.
On September 8, 1943, General Dwight D. Eisenhower publicly announced the surrender of Italy to the Allies. With Benito Mussolini deposed from power and the collapse of the Fascist Government in the country, Marshal Pietro Badoglio had begun secretly negotiating with the Allies finally approving the conditional surrender of Italy (signed September 3, 1943, at Cassibile, Sicily), allowing Allied Forces to land in southern Italy and begin beating the Germans back up the peninsula. From September 28, 1943, the Italians fought as co-belligerents with the Allies.
The 24th General Hospital arrived to take over the buildings at Camp Nador, and on September 17, 1943, the Hospital moved under canvas in the original bivouac area. On September 24, 1943, the 56th Evac received alert orders; it was time to move.
Supplies had been crated, inventories checked and the site policed and on the same day the unit was off to the ships awaiting in the Port of Bizerte. Officers an d Enlisted Men were to sail on three different LSTs, while the Nurses would board LCT # 238. After having spent the whole night aboard ship in the harbor, the group was relieved when the convoy set sail in the afternoon of September 25, 1944. When night came on, many were sleeping on deck among the vehicles and supplies, while only a few were fortunate enough to have obtained bunks. The crew told the men that they were headed for Paestum, Italy, some thirty miles below Salerno.
Italy:
By Sunday mid-afternoon, September 26, 1943, the mountain-lined shores of Italy came in sight and villages could be seen. Also the first signs of ancient ruins became more distinct. British barrage balloons hinted at the great number of ships at anchor in the bay. When the convoy came in, LSTs were busy debarking troops and supplies along the sandy beaches. This was the unit’s first amphibious landing. The first shipload went ashore the same evening at sundown and hiked to a bivouac south of Paestum, where they spent the night sleeping on the ground. The area was already occupied by the 93d Evacuation Hospital which had started receiving patients as early as September 16, 1943. The other ships beached the following day. The ANC Officers waded ashore from their LCT following marked paths leading through some mined terrain up to the main road. Upon arrival, they were welcomed by personnel pertaining to the 95th Evacuation Hospital who provided them with hot coffee and food, and since beds were scarce, with two blankets to have some night’s rest on the ground. Alerts had been sounded at frequent intervals all day, and it was good to be on land. By the evening, this was September 27, the various groups of the 56th had been assembled at the bivouac area just a few miles from Paestum. Supplies had been unloaded, and ward tents provided for the Nurses. Foxholes were hastily dug in anticipation of enemy raids. The weather was sunny, warm, and beautiful, and sleeping under the stars looked attractive to many.
Then the rains came! That same night, around 2200 hours, a storm descended upon the area. Blinding lightning, deafening thunder, violent wind, and driving rain, came down. Some people found shelter in an old barn, others crawled under tarpaulins, and a few stuck with the beached ship until the storm subsided. The next morning, mud-soaked bedding, destroyed mosquito bars, and miscellaneous clothing were strewn all over the place. The 38th Evacuation Hospital, situated nearby, had fared no better with much of their equipment having been blown away or destroyed by the storm. While in bivouac, the 38th Evac borrowed some equipment from the 56th still inactive to set up its hospital which opened September 29.
On October 1, 1943, Naples was captured by the Allies, and rumors flourished relative to the Hospital’s next move. Friendly peasants in nearby farms had meanwhile accepted the newcomers, offering wine, pasta, and to wash the clothes. There were plenty of tomatoes and potatoes to be had near the bivouac and many enjoyed fresh vegetables. When traveling around, there were always crowds of war refugees pouring southward and away from the fighting and German-controlled territory. French words and vocabulary now underwent some changes, as Italian was to become the norm.
On October 2, 1943, a small detail had been selected to visit Avellino, a city some thirty miles inland from Naples. They were tasked with cleaning the buildings of an Italian Military Academy for the Hospital. On October 6, the 56th Evac was once again enroute in a long convoy of trucks, supplies, and personnel. The journey which involved traveling forty miles of winding mountain roads, traversed one of the most scenic and colorful country in Italy. As it was harvest time, the farmers were generously providing the group with plenty of fruit along the way.
Stations in Italy – 56th Evacuation Hospital
Paestum – September 26-27, 1943 > October 6, 1943 (bivouac)
Avellino – October 7, 1943 > October 11, 1943 (1100-bed unit)
Dragoni – November 4, 1943 > January 19, 1944
Caivano – January 20, 1944 > January 24, 1944 (staging area)
Anzio – January 25-28, 1944 > April 9, 1944 (beachhead)
Nocelleto – April 12, 1944 > May 26, 1944
Fondi – June 1, 1944 > June 6, 1944
Rome – June 6, 1944 > June 27, 1944
Piombino – June 29, 1944 > August 3, 1944
Peccioli – August 5, 1944 > September 23, 1944
Scarperia – September 24, 1944 > April 21, 1945
Bologna – April 25, 1945 > May 19, 1945
Udine – May 29, 1945 > August 4, 1945 (last patient received)
Montecatini – August 6, 1945 > (sent home to the ZI for inactivation in October 1945)
The Hospital was billeted in the “Scuola Allievi Ufficiali”, on the edge of the city of Avellino. By midnight October 7, the Receiving Department had already admitted close to 300 patients. During the next day, the 56th expanded from 750 to 1100 beds, and tents had to be pitched to supplement the lack of space in the bomb-damaged buildings. Then the fall rains began to come down in earnest. The buildings leaked, the weather was cold and damp, and the C-rations tasted bad. Fortunately, a water buffalo was purchased and slaughtered. The meat was no good, but far better than the tiresome C-rations! Some of the medical wards were now filled with several hundred malaria patients, and surgery was working night and day on the steady stream of incoming wounded soldiers.
The 93d Evacuation Hospital had meanwhile arrived in Avellino on October 11, 1943, from where it moved further to Piana di Caiazzo.
Avellino also had a large supply dump, established early October, which was operated by the 12th Medical Supply Depot Company. They controlled stores representing 50 tons of medical supplies.
Recreation and passes were provided and after first visiting Naples, tours to ancient Pompeii and Herculaneum, as well as Mount Vesuvius, became part of sightseeing. Gradually, the front moved further ahead, and patients practically ceased to arrive at the Hospital. Other hospitals, being much closer to the fighting were taking over, so it was time to be on the way again. An advance party was sent to Caserta to prepare a further move. The battle line was moving rapidly to the north and reservations at Caserta were consequently cancelled. The 56th Evac was ordered ahead, beyond Caserta, across the Volturno River, up to the village of Dragoni, where it was to set up under canvas.
Following the move to its new location at Dragoni November 2, the organization had three beautiful days to set up. The new site was a field with only a few shell craters, nearby was a deserted farmhouse, with a knocked-out enemy tank. The village was a mere cluster of stone houses a few hundred yards away. The hospital site was a flat valley through which the Volturno River ran its winding course, surrounded on all sides by steep and rugged ranges of the Apennines. The Hospital started receiving patients on November 4, 1943 rapidly filling the different wards. As a result, surgical personnel worked around the clock.
The front lines were not far away, and artillery flashes were visible in the hills ahead, while the rumble of big guns was to become a customary sound at night. Bombing and strafing was sometimes watched by off-duty personnel and patients. Then the weather changed, and with it came rain, mud, and cold. On November 5, the 56th had hardly begun to function, the first rains were intermittent, but as the days went by, they settled in an almost steady downpour. There was about a single nice day out of every ten. The hospital area slowly became transformed into one vast quagmire. An improvised access road for ambulances and supply trucks ran through the center of the hospital complex; churned by thousands of tires and trampled by hundreds of feet, it gradually became a deep bog dotted with lakes of liquid mud! The EM spent many back-breaking hours hauling gravel to make paths, only to see the gravel sink out of sight in the deep mud. The Engineers were called in to help but it still it rained, washing everything away. Torrents came down forming rivulets that broke over trenches, ran through tents, and even carried personal items out of the men’s canvas homes. Litter hauls were long and slippery. Since there were no overshoes, dubbing was applied repeatedly to shoes, but proved ineffective. It was cold too, and keeping warm became a problem. Stoves were available but fuel was often scarce, and firewood had to be scrounged. Anything that burned was retrieved from the farmhouse, but it was limited.
During this period, ambulances in steady streams were constantly bringing wounded and sick soldiers from the front. They were weary-eyed, muddy, unshaven, soldiers who had come from a nightmarish experience of rain, cold, mud, sleet, snow, and enemy fire. A new illness made its appearance: trench foot, of which numerous cases would be treated before the war ended. The long dreary days and nights dragged on and to forget about the adverse weather, a library and reading room were constructed. Resources of books were pooled, and ammo cases and packing crates were rapidly converted into shelves, tables, and chairs. When Thanksgiving Day arrived, the rain ceased for a while, and when dinner came, the cooks had prepared a royal feast of turkey, cranberry sauce, potatoes, and even mince pie. Christmas packages from home began to arrive as well as mail. Despite the rain, many men hitch-hiked to Caserta, Santa Maria, Avellino, and Naples. Because of the high patient census, one Clearing Platoon pertaining to the 162d Medical Battalion was attached to the 56th Evac from November 6 until December 21, 1943.
On December 7, 1943, a first overseas wedding was announced. The bride was Second Lieutenant Ruth G. Grifford, ANC, who married a First Lieutenant Evans of the Army Air Forces. When Christmas drew nigh, it was still raining, and there was little real Christmas spirit. Everyone was thinking about home. Nevertheless, parties were planned and Nurses and Enlisted Men cheered up the wards with gaily decorated fir branches. Carols were even sung on Christmas Eve and open house was held in the EM’s day tent, while the Officers and Nurses organized an informal dance. Christmas Day, December 25, 1943, was not cheerful at all, even though the sun broke through the rain clouds. Dinner was wonderful, yet when night fell, everyone seemed glad the day was over.
January 1, 1944 was ushered in by a strong wind, rain and hail, a storm which blew down the 15th Evacuation and 38th Evacuation Hospitals not far away. Damage was less at the 56th site although some of the equipment was also blown down and destroyed. The month of January brought a decrease in the number of incoming patients. Rumors sprang up indicating that the days at Dragoni were numbered. When mid-January arrived, it was time to leave the place, and start striking the tents and pack the equipment.
Anzio
Medical planning for the Anzio landings (Operation “Shingle”, January 22, 1944 –ed) followed the tactical plans, making full use of combat experience gained in North Africa, Sicily and on the Salerno (Operation “Avalanche“, September 9, 1943 –ed) beaches. The operation was to be carried out by VI Army Corps, under command of Major General John P. Lucas. The assault troops were to be the British 1st Infantry Division (assigned from Eighth British Army –ed), and the 3d Infantry Division, with the 45th Infantry and 1st Armored Divisions in reserve. The landing force was also to include two British Commando and three Ranger Battalions, the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, and the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion. In addition to the normal medical detachments and organic medical battalions, medical support for VI Corps was to be supplied by the 52d Medical Battalion; the 93d – 95th – and 56th Evacuation Hospitals; the 33d Field Hospital, with the British 12th Field Transfusion Unit attached; the British 2d Casualty Clearing Station; the 549th Ambulance Company (Motorized); and a Detachment of the 2d Auxiliary Surgical Group.
Medical planning for the Anzio operation was directed by Fifth Army Surgeon, Brigadier General Joseph I. Martin, and Colonel Jarrett M. Huddleston, who had been VI Corps Surgeon since Salerno. Colonel J. M. Huddleston also directed medical services on the beachhead until he was killed by artillery fire while emerging from Corps Headquarters on February 9, 1944. He was succeeded by Colonel Rollin L. Bauchspies, Commanding Officer of the 16th Evacuation Hospital.
All medical units were to be combat-loaded for greater speed in establishing themselves ashore. Aid Stations were to go in with the landing waves, to be followed as quickly as possible by the installations of the Beach Group, under initial control of the 540th Engineer Shore Regiment. In the latter category, the 52d Medical Battalion was to set up a Collecting-Clearing Station to receive casualties from the Aid Stations and evacuate them to the ships, while the 33d Field Hospital (two Platoons –ed) was to establish an adjacent unit to care for non-transportable patients. The Collecting Companies of the 3d Medical Battalion (organic unit 3d Infantry Division) were to land at H plus 6 and move inland to assume their normal functions, with the 3d Infantry Division Clearing Station following two hours later. The two 400-bed Evacuation Hospitals, the 93d and 95th, were also to go ashore on D-Day. The 56th Evacuation Hospital would join the other Hospitals at Anzio on January 28, 1944.
The 56th Evac started moving January 19, 1944, leaving Dragoni, Italy, and on their way to their Staging Area at Caivano, near Naples. Personnel and equipment moved by motor convoy consisting of 110 trucks and 20 trailers. While in bivouac, Allied Forces landed at Anzio-Nettuno, Italy, on January 22, 1944, some 30 miles south of Rome, and situated behind enemy lines. On January 24, alert orders were received and last minute preparations were started. Readiness hour was set for 1900 when trucks would arrive for transportation to the Port of Naples. At 2200 hours the unit entrucked and made for Pozzuoli (Naples port area –ed) under blackout conditions.
An advance party, carrying 1 Officer and 24 EM with supplies and equipment had left Pozzuoli at 0600 hours on January 23, traveling aboard LCT # 581, reached Anzio at 1700, January 25, 1944. LCT # 617 loaded with vehicles and drivers was ready on January 23, but on account of the rough weather returned to port. Her cargo was transferred to LCT # 548 January 25, which only set sail for Anzio two days later, where she arrived January 28, 1944. LST # 11 with another 11 Enlisted Men and supplies left Pozzuoli January 24, and only reached Anzio on January 28, 1944. LCI # 111, with 2 Officers and 135 EM left Pozzuoli at 2200, January 24, but due to the terrible storm at sea, they were only able to dock after the storm subsided disembarking their load around 1400 hours the next day!
LCI # 174, carrying 2 Officers and 132 Enlisted personnel set sail at 0800 hours on January 25, and after suffering an engine breakdown had to return to port. Men and supplies were transferred to another British-crewed LCI, but as she also developed problems, they too returned to port for another transfer, this time to an American-crewed LCI, which carried them to Anzio without incident, where they landed on January 28, 1944. LCI # 316 with some Officers and the ANC complement sailed at 0800, January 25, also undergoing the stormy weather. With many Nurses turning violently sick, the skipper transferred them on to an approaching LST. Twenty-six (26) Nurses were transferred to the larger and more comfortable vessel, leaving their equipment aboard the LCI which continued her route to Anzio. LCI # 316 however could not dock or weigh anchor at Anzio because of the weather and the strong surf, and returned to Pozzuoli. It would take another day before she arrived at Anzio. Meanwhile the LST (with the Nurses) was waiting in the harbor for landing orders, when an air raid took place. During the next thirty-six hours, 14 enemy air raids were experienced, with everyone fearing for the worst, as the LST was carrying ammunition and gasoline. At noon the ship finally docked, allowing the Nurses to land on January 27, 1944.
Staff and personnel pertaining to the 56th Evac traveled on board LCTs and LCIs (6-ship convoy) which upon reaching the open waters were met in a turmoil of huge rolling waves bouncing against the ships. The crossing proved miserable. There was no heat, there were no blankets, crowded vessels offered little comfort, and to add to the misery, many members became seasick. Although meals were served, very few men enjoyed them.
The initial site for the 56th Evacuation Hospital was a former TBC Sanitarium which was to be shared with the 95th Evacuation Hospital. It was however learned that the building was a military objective bombed almost on a daily basis, and therefore decided to establish the Hospital at another site some 3 miles east of Nettuno. News of the arrival of Army Nurses on the Beachhead spread like wildfire. Reporters and photographers besieged the ladies of the 56th Evac and within 24 hours a story appeared in the ZI newspapers. It is during their stay on the Anzio Beachhead that the personnel of the 56th made the acquaintance of the “Anzio Express” which fired continuously at the harbor installations. It was later discovered that there were 2 of these large guns that fired. It must be said that the dreaded rushing sound of incoming shells cost the organization much valuable equipment, loss of life, and shattered nerves as well as an intense feeling of insecurity during the 76 days the 56th spent at Anzio.
On January 28, 1944, all the personnel and most of the Hospital’s equipment had been unloaded and transported to the installation site, while under frequent shelling and bombing. Many of the surgical supplies had not yet arrived, and everything had to be re-sterilized before usage because of water contamination.
On January 30, the Hospital was almost ready for opening, and the Luftwaffe decided to launch an air raid against shipping in the harbor and offshore. The enemy used glide bombs for that purpose, and one of them landed causing terrific concussion less than 150 yards from the hospital site, causing a large crater. Another of these special bombs hit an ammo ship which exploded, while several other ships suffered bomb damage and fires. Gradually other hospitals moved into the Beachhead, bringing in more ANC personnel.
The FIRST patient was received on January 30, 1944, quickly followed by others. In merely 36 hours, the 56th had admitted 1129 patients, all battle casualties. The problem however was that part of the surgical equipment was still at the docks (it eventually arrived on February 2, 1944 –ed) which affected work. It was therefore decided to submit priority lists per ward, which were then rushed to surgery first. Unfortunately a serious backlog was created, which gradually grew greater. Part of the solution was to evacuate minor casualties by ship to the Port of Naples for treatment.
Because of the dangerous situation foxholes were dug deeper, additional sand bags were installed, and wooden canopies built over the canvas tents (called flak shacks –ed). On February 4, 1944, enemy shells landed in the 33d Field Hospital area; tents burned and equipment was damaged, but no casualties occurred. There was much shelling of the shore installations and supply ships in the harbor, and because the hospitals were in the direct line of enemy fire, the situation remained precarious. Gradually, the medical personnel on the Beachhead became accustomed to the frequent bombings and shellings and less affected emotionally during work. When however the shells dropped short, they inevitably fell in the Hospital area! Some of the EM, such as Technician 4th Grade Cecil B. Baney, Private First Class Chester P. Bujarski, Technician 5th Grade Benjamin L. Hawkins, Private First Class Clarence J. Riley and other drivers made frequent daily trips down “Purple Heart Highway” to bring in water, rations, and mail to the unit.
By February 2, 1944, Fifth United States Army controlled 4 operating hospitals with an aggregate T/O bed strength of 1750.
On February 7, 1944, it was late afternoon, a friendly fighter was hot on the trail of an enemy plane which jettisoned its bombs while trying to escape. Five bombs fell on the site occupied by the 95th Evacuation Hospital wrecking the large GC Red Cross marker, the Receiving Section and the Pharmacy, and destroying 29 ward tents. Immediately aid arrived to help recover the bodies of 16 dead and nearly 70 wounded from the debris. Later more casualties died from their wounds, bringing the dead toll to 26 (including 2 ANC Officers and 1 ARC worker). The wounded were brought to the 56th Evac for care. Major General Joseph I. Martin, after reviewing the situation with his Beachhead Deputy, Colonel Henry S. Blessé, ordered the 95th Evac Hosp replaced, as the personnel losses and damage to equipment were too great to overcome. The unit was later replaced by the 15th Evacuation Hospital.
Although equipped for 750 beds, the Hospital was stretched to a 1200-bed capacity, thus requiring additional supplies and personnel. Because of the continuous air raids and shelling, an air raid shelter was constructed for the Nurses. Expansion of the Hospital took place quietly as daily work progressed, with new tents being added to meet the growing needs.
At 1700 hours, February 10, 1944, both the 56th Evacuation Hospital and the 33d Field Hospital were shelled by German artillery (presumably 88mm –ed), with three shells hitting the 56th area and three more landing at the 33d site instantly killing 2 Nurses and 1 Enlisted Man. Another shell hit their generator starting a fire. Again the 56th Evac acted as rescue station, sending teams to the scene. The injured were treated and cared for by the unit. On February 12, it was 1900 hours, the enemy unleashed the heaviest air raid over Anzio. It lasted 1½ hours. One anti-personnel bomb landed in the Officers’ area, seriously wounding Second Lieutenant Ellen G. Ainsworth, ANC. Unfortunately, the best surgical and nursing care were of no avail, and four days later she died (she was buried in the military cemetery at Nettuno –ed). Several personnel suffered light injuries. It was necessary to salvage 33 small wall tents and 3 pyramidal tents and much equipment and personal luggage was damaged or destroyed. Following this last raid, a message was sent to the German Command giving the exact coordinates of the area containing the hospitals, hoping that this would induce the enemy to refrain from further shelling of this particular area. A German counter-attack was meanwhile in the making. While defensive structures and shelters were improved, many high-ranking Officers visited the hospital area to show their concern and improve morale. There was now a shortage of water, with showers available only once a week, and helmet-washing becoming the norm. A $ 25.00 fine was imposed on those found without a steel helmet! Tragic days and restless nights followed each other, accompanied by severe rains, and innumerable enemy sorties over Anzio Beachhead.
On February 21, 1944, Major General John P. Lucas, CG VI Army Corps, awarded 3 Silver Stars to Army Nurses. The first citation included that of a 56th Evacuation Hospital ANC Officer; First Lieutenant Mary L. Roberts. Food was never enough, and diets of spaghetti, meatballs, Vienna sausages, spam, and fruit cocktail were becoming monotonous. Mess halls were deserted as many preferred to take chow to their foxholes.
March 22, 1944, meant disaster for the 15th Evacuation Hospital. This Hospital was shelled at 0400 hours in the morning. The explosions were walking over the area, toward the 56th, then over and in the direction of Anzio. Approximately forty shells had landed in the hospital area, or its immediate vicinity, the majority hitting the 15th Evac, where many shells exploded in the Officers’ and Nurses’ areas. One ward received a direct hit, killing 7 patients and wounding many. Tents were riddled with shrapnel. One incoming shell entered the 56th Receiving Section, wounding Captain William W. Brown, Jr.
Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark, CG Fifth United States Army, visited the 56th Evacuation Hospital starting his tour at 1530 hours, March 29, 1944. While visiting the area, there was an enemy air raid. Passing overhead the aircraft dropped bombs which began to fall in the 93d Evacuation Hospital area to the east, stringing across the 56th area, and ending in the Clearing Station of the 3d Infantry Division on the west flank. Three bombs landed outside Surgical Ward No. 8 and another near Ward No. 26, while the third one hit the Officers’ area. They were fragmentation and incendiary bombs. After the raid, damage was assessed, and 4 patients were found dead, and 19 wounded; while own personnel losses numbered 20 wounded, including 2 Nurses. Forty-two (42) tents were completely lost. After the raid, the 39th Engineer Combat Regiment came to the rescue to “dig in” the Hospitals. Earth revetments were constructed (three feet of dirt were excavated in the large tents –ed), reinforced iron posts were dug in, chicken wire strung over the revetments, and more sand bags brought in to reinforce everything. Thick wooden flak shafts were built over the Officers and Nurses tents for added protection.
On April 1, 1944, Private Nick J. Gergulas, died as a result of wounds sustained in the air raid of March 29. On April 3, 1944, some men were enjoying a ball game at the rest camp, when enemy shells began to land. The first hit the Patients’ Mess Kitchen, blowing away stoves, dishes, kettles, pots and pans, and dirt. Private Harvin C. Estes was killed instantly! Tragedies were now happening too frequently and anxiety and fear were now beginning to be manifest on the men’s faces. Then on April 6, 1944, the enemy landed more shells in the 56th area, destroying the Post Exchange, Surgical Ward No. 8 again, and the Enlisted Men’s Tents. This time, Technician 5th Grade Peter P. Betley was the victim, who lost both of his legs.
Enemy air raids and long-range artillery shelling caused physical exhaustion and mental breakdown, and a number of the organization’s personnel turned in to the Hospital. At about this time, Lieutenant Colonel Philip W. Mallory, MC, the 56th Evac Hosp Executive Officer, received orders to return to the ZI.
The 56th Evac stopped receiving patients at 1900 hours, April 7, 1944. The unit was to be relieved which was unexpected news. On Easter Sunday, April 9, 1944, the 38th Evacuation Hospital arrived to take over the equipment and the Hospital received orders to move to Nocelleto, Italy. Transfer was completed at 1000 hours the same day, after which the organization entrucked for “Purple Heart Highway” and the shipping lane. The staff and personnel quickly boarded the waiting LCT which pulled away from Anzio’s battered pier, accompanied by another shelling from the “Anzio Express”. A transfer on to a waiting LST was arranged offshore. The trip was rough and through dangerous waters, with high waves, and lots of rain, but remained uneventful. When docking at Pozzuoli the next morning, the sun was shining, and spring looked magnificent. The men were weary but happy to be back!
A new hospital complex was opened at Nocelleto on April 12, 1944 at one of the nicest sites the 56th Evac ever had. The men had planted flowers and shrubs throughout the new site and the fruit trees were in full bloom. The first big event at the new site was to celebrate the organization’s first anniversary overseas, and April 24, became a gala. In the afternoon several sports events took place, highlighted by a softball game between the Nurses and the ANC Officers of the 95th Evacuation Hospital. There was a crowd of approximately a thousand spectators, and the 56th team won easily. Many visitors turned up on that day: celebrities, VIPs, Anzio friends, and neighbors. In the evening, supper was served picnic style on the grass to the entire Hospital personnel. The Officers’ and Nurses’ mess tent was transformed into a kind of palm garden with potted shrubs and numerous flowers. There was a dance on a wooden board floor with music provided by the 175th Engineer General Service Regiment band, old friends of the Bizerte days.
The day would have been complete had there not been so many missing because of illness and transfer. Most notable among these was Lieutenant Colonel Henry M. Winans, MC, Chief Medical Service, who had been forced to leave the unit during the last days at Anzio, because of illness (previous CO of the 56th Evac –ed). He had been replaced by Major Edwin L. Rippy, MC, who took over the responsibility for the remainder of the unit’s overseas period. During their stay at Nocelleto, the Nurses were exceptionally granted short rest periods in Naples, at the “Turistico Hotel”, which was very much appreciated by the ladies.
Early in May 1944, the 56th celebrated its second and fanciest overseas wedding when First Lieutenant Marguerite I. Martin, ANC, married First Lieutenant Paul Donnelly, 175th Engineers. Chaplain (Captain) Andrew M. Pronobis, ChC celebrated the wedding ceremony, while Colonel Henry S. Blessé, MC gave the bride away. During this period, patient census was under control. Quite a number of French Colonial troops were treated at the Hospital. For recreation, outdoor movies were shown frequently, baseball games were organized, and USO troupes visited the 56th, including stars such as Marlene Dietrich, Irving Berlin, Danny Thomas, and the Andrew Sisters.
The morning of May 15, 1944, Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark attended the 56th Evac’s formal review and presented 18 Bronze Star Medals to staff and personnel for heroic achievements at Anzio, Italy. The Hospital also received a Commendation. It was a memorable occasion.
As the front moved and the Anzio Beachhead forces met the Monte Cassino forces, it left the Hospital far behind the lines, and it was time to leave the gracious valley site. The 56th was due to move again and on May 29, 1944 the organization was on its way by land to Fondi. The journey would take them through devastated villages and small and dusty roads.
The new location was just outside Fondi in a weed patch squeezed between Highway 7 and a war-torn orange grove. It couldn’t be worse. Engineers with bulldozers came to the rescue and leveled the area. The locals, who had taken refuge in the hills during the past five months slowly returned to their homes. They were suffering from starvation, and one of the cooks who spoke Italian was designated to divide the left-overs equally among the families who regularly lined the fences begging for food. Fondi captured by the Allies May 20, 1944, had been heavily bombed the night of May 23-24, seriously damaging vehicles of two Collecting Companies set up by the 313th Medical Battalion (organic unit, 88th Infantry Division –ed). A Clearing Station of the 85th Infantry Division was located five miles west of Fondi during end of May.
For fear of booby-traps, everyone kept out of town. Some men found a small ice cold mill stream that came down from the mountain side. There was also a small cemetery nearby with a lot of German headstones. As usual the front was moving fast and the 56th staff was expecting to be ordered to move soon. Meanwhile, there was good news; Rome, the Eternal City, had been entered by Fifth United States Army troops on June 4.
The Hospital left for Rome departing Fondi June 6 via Highway 7 which was littered with destroyed equipment, signs of severe tank battles, decaying bodies of enemy soldiers and horses, and destroyed farms and houses. The motor convoy first went from Fondi southwest to Terracina, from which it switched onto Highway 7, passing through deserted farmland, the flooded and ruined Pontine Marshes, devastated Cisterna and Velletri, the Alban Hills, and finally reaching Rome.
The 56th Evacuation Hospital had at last arrived in Rome, one of the first Axis capital cities to fall to the Allies.
The new site was “special”, the “Buon Pastore” Institute, a many-spired building, which was to be shared with the 94th Evacuation Hospital. The place had been used by the Germans, who because of their hurried departure took no pains to leave behind a clean and policed area. Meals were left untouched, medical supplies such as pills, bandages, and sterilizers were left behind, and two bodies of dead German soldiers were found in the morgue. After settling down, everybody had but one wish; to obtain passes to Rome. The staff and personnel were given 6-hour passes, with separate transportation being provided for Officers, Nurses, and Enlisted Men. All wanted to visit Vatican City as well. Pope Pius XII held audiences for Allied troops. Apart from the many exclusive places to visit, a great deal of shopping was done. It was noted that starvation had apparently not touched Rome; moreover the people looked well dressed and the city was clean.
Other US Army Hospitals Operating in Rome
6th General Hospital – June 30, 1944 > December 22, 1944
12th General Hospital – June 22, 1944 > November 12, 1944
15th Evacuation Hospital – June 10, 1944 > June 23, 1944
33d General Hospital – June 21, 1944 > September 24, 1944
38th Evacuation Hospital – June 9, 1944 > July 2, 1944
73d Station Hospital – July 5, 1944 > June 18, 1945
94th Evacuation Hospital – June 6, 1944 > June 15, 1944
114th Station Hospital – July 5, 1944 > September 28, 1944
Once more, the Hospital was losing contact with the rapidly moving front, so it was back to packing and awaiting orders for the next move. After packing and waiting, the 56th still waited while wondering if the 6th General Hospital would throw them out.
On June 27, 1944, orders to move arrived and the first trucks made their appearance around 2100. The EM stayed up all night, loading the organization’s equipment, with much difficulty and confusion, due to the use of a single entrance and exit. The motor convoy followed Highway 1 over gentle rolling plains to Civitavecchia, where the captured “Anzio Express” long-range gun was being dismantled for shipment to the Zone of Interior. There was a lot of traffic. At last, the drivers were happy to reach destination, a site near the village of Riotorto, only a few miles southeast of the harbor city of Piombino.
The new bivouac site reached June 29, 1944, was a combination of wheat stubble patches and rows of grapevines. The Hospital, almost immediately swamped with numerous casualties, most of them arriving at night, reminded the personnel of the busy days spent at Avellino, Dragoni, and Anzio.
Fortunately, some recreation was found as the beach was only a 25-minutes walk away. From the beach the Isles of Elba and Monte Cristo could be seen. Outdoor movies were available, and some few were lucky enough to go the Fifth US Army Rest Camp for medical personnel established in Castiglioncello (opened August 3, 1944, only 15 miles south of Leghorn, with capacity for 50 Officers, 25 Nurses, and 100 Enlisted Men –ed). Many of the Medical Corps and ANC Officers started hitch-hiking on cargo and ambulance planes with the intention to do more sightseeing. The war was however not forgotten. Several times, practice air raid alerts were staged around the harbor.
Rumors circulated about plans for an amphibious operation in Southern France, and many members of the command were sure the 56th would be called to participate because of their experience. Late July 1944, a new Officer joined the unit; Major John J. Chizik, MC who became the new Executive Officer. Alert orders came in, and the packing was started. On August 3, 1944 moving orders were received ordering the Hospital to move upward and inland to the village of Peccioli. The convoy experienced some of the worst and dustiest roads yet encountered in Italy.
The new site selected for the Hospital near Peccioli was very secluded. Starting August 5, 1944 the men discovered a field with combined plots of grape vines, apple trees, and cypresses. One of the first patients was a local farmer who had driven his oxen over a landmine. The organization was so isolated that it gradually developed into a little village of its own. Life was full of surprises, as the personnel received a beer ration for the first time, and with it toasted to the Invasion of Southern France, the Liberation of Paris, and General Eisenhower’s prediction that the War in Europe would be over by end 1944! It was here that the 56th received patients of another new organization; the 92d Infantry Division, and one morning Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark appeared to award Purple Hearts to the wounded.
Heavy rains raised much havoc by washing out bridges near the camp, which at times caused the Hospital to become isolated from the only water point, ration dump, and post office. The two Chaplains secluded their quarters and chapel in a shady ravine kept cool by numerous tall poplar trees. Joe Louis, the heavyweight boxing champion visited the organization entertaining a large crowd of patients and personnel. There was also time for recreation, dances, sightseeing trips, and even some shopping for souvenirs.
One day the men were startled by an explosion followed by lots of screaming and wailing. An Italian boy was killed and 7 children injured when a German rifle grenade, with which the child was playing, went off. After Florence had fallen passes were furnished to those who wanted to visit this art center. There were rumors that the 56th Evac would soon be on the move again, and indeed, September 23, 1944 found the command on the road to Scarperia, another village, noted for the manufacture of cutlery, situated about twenty miles north of Florence. The trip brought the Hospital through Pontedera to Empoli; then along the Arno River to Florence; and northward through mountain country to Scarperia, which was reached September 24.
Once more the 56th Evac ended up in a grape orchard, but this time the grapes were ripe! The unit’s kitchen was placed on a potato patch furnishing several good meals. On the first Sunday, ice cream was served much to the delight of everyone. Some concern developed due to the installation of heavy artillery in the neighborhood, however, after several days of fire, the big guns moved out. At first a short stay was expected but the Germans fought fanatically defending Bologna against Allied attacks assisted by the rugged terrain, the Apennines, and the rain, mud, fog, sleet, and finally snow in this mountain range. Battle lines now had only one main route to use for supplies; Highway 65. Patients coming in for treatment now consisted of personnel pertaining to the 34th, 85th, 88th, and 91st Infantry Divisions. As winter gradually approached, it was feared that frontlines would again become stationary.
The Luftwaffe surprised the Hospital complex one moonlit night by giving the nearby Highway a thorough strafing and bombing. The light antiaircraft guns had been moved forward and the raiding enemy realized that this was an occasion that couldn’t be missed. The planes flew quite low, strafing and bombing at will the Highway area that ran by the Hospital, neighboring ammo and supply dumps and convoys. They continued the attack all night and at 0430 in the morning put a 20mm shell in the Enlisted Men’s area that mortally wounded Private First Class Hulon V. Lofton who died at 0800 in the morning. After the attack, the EM moved their quarters away from the Highway to the creek east of the main camp. Just after the tents were pitched, it started to rain, and soon the mud in the area was almost a foot deep!
Plays and shows were available in Florence, and the command distributed passes to go shopping and sightseeing. Several of the organization’s personnel acquired dogs for pets. Officers and Nurses enjoyed the services of Italian waiters in their mess. The continuous rains necessitated work details to gravel the area and install larger culverts to handle all of the water. It then began to get cold and since GI stoves could only be obtained for the wards, the men started building oil burners. Fraternization with the local population was carried out to the fullest, and many would remember the invitations to dinner. The 56th’s second Thanksgiving Day was celebrated in real American fashion, with turkey and all the trimmings served as it should.
Snow was soon expected in the valley, with the hills around the Hospital area already blanketed. The installations were winterized, with the aid of Engineers, who boarded the tent sides and fitted them with doors. The 56th w as all decked out during the Christmas holidays in true Yuletide fashion. The ANC Officers spent a lot of time decorating the wards, and finally snow arrived in time to complete the picture. The EM were given a Christmas party by the Nurses, which included a banquet, a huge tree, a stage show, and presents for all. The following night they organized one for the Officers. Christmas arrived and found everyone full of good spirits, and it should be noted that the season spent at Scarperia was far more cheerful than the dreary holiday period the personnel experienced the previous winter in muddy Dragoni.
Unfortunately, the year 1944 did NOT see the end of the war in the European Theater as many had expected! In fact, as 1944 ended and 1945 dawned, the optimism had changed to the grim realization that Germany was by no means defeated.
Wind, rain, snow and sleet had negligible effect on the 56th Evacuation Hospital during winter as the installations had been made as comfortable as possible. Work was fairly light because the patient census rarely exceeded 400, and only a small proportion of these were seriously wounded or very ill. This allowed the Officers’ and Nurses’ rest hotels and the Enlisted Men’s Rest Camp in Florence to be well attended.
An important event was to be celebrated as on March 4, 1945, Colonel Henry S. Blessé, MC, the Commanding Officer, received War Department orders to return to the United States. These orders were received with regret by the entire organization. Colonel Blessé had assumed command in May 1942 and run the Hospital through its training days, through maneuvers, and through overseas duty. He left devoted friends and admirers in the 56th Evac and would not be forgotten.
The CO’s departure naturally gave rise to many rumors concerning the unit’s possible future. Transfer to the CBI Theater, return to the ZI, etc. The day after Colonel H. S. Blessé left, the organization’s First Sergeant Billy V. Philips, was discharged and received his commission as Second Lieutenant, MAC.
On the morning of March 18, 1945, the new Commanding Officer, Colonel Kenneth F. Ernst, MC, joined the unit after having been CO of the 2d Medical Laboratory, and the CO of the 15th Evacuation Hospital.
Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945, was considerably different from the one in 1944. Steel helmets were forgotten, as it was a bright day in spring. Moreover, everyone felt that possibly this could be the last Easter the organization would spend fighting a war. On April 12 the sudden death of President D. Roosevelt, the Commander-in-Chief came as a stunning blow. Thirty (30) days of official mourning started immediately. Due to this sad news, the celebration of the unit’s second anniversary overseas, planned for April 16 1945, was postponed.
On April 16, 1945, Field Marshal Sir Harold R. Alexander broadcast the following message: “The moment now has come for us to take the field for the last battle, which will end the war in Europe.”
Four days later, the great Allied Offensive started through the Gothic Line, and American and British Forces entered Bologna. On April 16, word was received that the city had fallen and that the 56th Evac was to be ready to move out the following day. Dismantling the Hospital was immediately started, and some were convinced that this could well be the unit’s last tactical move … of course, the Po River was still considered a barrier, and there were the Alps. By sundown, the organization was ready to move to Bologna. Staff and personnel were up at 0500 the next morning. A first serial of trucks had arrived and after breakfast equipment was loaded for the move. The motor convoy drove through Futa Pass on Highway 65, which impressed everyone with its scenery. The small villages along the route were in ruins, and some were nothing but masses of rubble. Certain hillsides were so densely pock-marked with shell craters that it looked impossible to find a single square foot of soil that had not been hit by shell fire. The personnel felt a great inner sadness at this view, especially for those of the command who had cared for the soldiers who had so gallantly attempted to break through to Bologna. The war for those men had indeed been hell on earth, and now the men of the 56th Evac were seeing the reasons why.
The 56th motor convoy was one among countless other vehicles of all types stretched along the winding road to Bologna. A few miles south of the city the devastation from the intense bombing and shelling became clear. The vehicles crept on at a snail’s pace to the southern parts of the city around sundown. The Hospital was to be set up in one of Mussolini’s stadiums. By darkness the men had eaten their c-rations, unloaded the trucks, piled the equipment, pitched their tents, unrolled their blankets, washed their faces, and flopped into bed.
About 2130 hours, the familiar hum of an enemy plane could be heard in the distance. There were large troop and vehicle concentrations in the vicinity of the stadium, and the GC Red Cross marker had not yet been placed, but everyone believed that this would not have any consequences. However, from this hour until almost dawn the next day a number of German planes appeared and strafed and bombed the roads and troop areas near the stadium. Fortunately none of the Hospital personnel were injured. Nevertheless jangled nerves and a sleepless night were bad enough.
On April 25, 1945 the 56th Evac was ready to operate and the first patients were admitted for treatment. Surprisingly, American casualties were exceptionally light. By April, the tactical situation was moving rapidly as forward elements had already crossed the Po River, while the city of Milan was threatened from two sides by Italian Partisans from within. Following the fighting, enemy patients were admitted to the organization by the hundreds. Some days, scores of unguarded Wehrmacht ambulances drove in the Hospital area, disgorging their patients, and then turned themselves in at the motor pool. This was unbelievable. Soon captured German Medical Officers and Sanitäter worked beside the American personnel in caring for the German sick and wounded!
There was little time for sightseeing in and around Bologna; besides the town had been declared off limits to Allied military personnel. On the Highway back of the hospital site large 10-ton vans loaded with enemy PWs moved southward in an endless stream passing through liberated Bologna. Rumors indicated that Milan would probably be the next stopping place.
On April 30 the unit already received orders to start evacuating all patients and be ready to move. On May 1, 1945, packing was almost complete but patients continued to arrive at the Hospital. Meanwhile, strong wind and rain held up the evacuation of patients by air, and everyone had to wait, wondering whether the move to Milan was going to take place. Orders to pack, move, and unpack and wait were issued, and cancelled, indicating the confusion and excitement at Fifteenth Army Group Headquarters. Verona and Bolzano had been captured and the Brenner Pass blocked. It was now a question of mopping up the torn and tattered remains of the once proud and powerful German and Italian Armies.
April 30, 1945, Lieutenant General M. W. Clark announced the big Allied victory to the troops:
Troops of the 15th Army Group have so smashed the German Armies in Italy that they have been virtually eliminated as a military force. This destruction has been accomplished in the offensive which is now 22 days old for the British Eighth Army, and 15 days old for the major part of the Fifth United States Army.
Twenty-five German Divisions, some of the best in the German Army, have been torn to pieces and can no longer effectively resist our Armies. Thousands of vehicles, tremendous quantities of arms and equipment, and over 120,000 prisoners have been captured and many more are being corralled.
The military power of Nazi Germany in Italy has practically ceased, even though scattered fighting may continue as remnants of the German Armies are being mopped up.
A great day arrived when at 0700 hours, May 2, 1945 the radio reported that the war in Italy was over. The collapse of German Armed Forces in northwest Germany, Holland and Denmark, the fall of Berlin, the rumors around Adolf Hitler’s death, and the final “unconditional surrender” of Nazi Germany followed in such rapid succession that it was hard to believe that the war was over! The events of the week from May 2 to May 9, 1945, were so staggering in their impact and importance that President Harry Truman’s historic proclamation before Congress that hostilities in Europe had ceased was received with much relief by all personnel. One job was finished, but a fierce fanatical Japan remained.
By May 12, 1945, the Personnel Section was snowed under with the problem of determining and reporting individual points and scores (ASR, Adjusted Service Rating –ed). The word “Redeployment” was to assume great importance in the days to follow and the Point System was well received by the command.
Immediately following the German surrender in Italy (signed May 2, 1945, at Caserta, Italy), elements of Fifth United States Army moved out to the different borders, primarily for the purpose of rounding up enemy prisoners and preserving order. US Divisions advanced to the French border, patrolled the Swiss frontier, while other units reached the Austrian border. British Eight Army moved to the Yugoslav border to back up their occupation of Trieste. Each of the Divisions were supported by their own organic Medical Battalions and by one or more mobile Army Hospital unit.
On May 17, the CO received word that the 56th Evac would be moving north to Udine, north of the city of Trieste. Sadly, most men had anticipated going into a rest bivouac near some beautiful Italian lake. Udine was north, all right, but this was certainly not a trip to rest and recreation by any means. It was discovered by the command that relations between Italy, the Allies, and Yugoslavia had become severely strained. Trieste and some other small Italian towns had been occupied by Yugoslav Partisans claiming the territory as their own. Consequently, Allied troops were being rushed to the sector, and should fighting ensue, the 56th would serve as the nearby hospital. Needless to say, everybody was discouraged, upset, and angry to think that the organization might be involved in another war…
The major part of the organization’s personnel and equipment arrived at the new hospital site located about three miles east of Udine on May 20, 1945. The 225-mile trip from Bologna was long and tiring. The Hospital was established on a spacious gently rolling plain covering approximately forty acres, beautifully situated. Upon arrival red-scarved (Communist Party members –ed) Italian and Yugoslav Partisans were parading through the streets and countryside, heavily armed. The situation was very tense and rumors varied from peaceful talks and agreements to reports of armed clashes and artillery duels. Because of this, Allied troops started pouring in with aircraft and armor. Every possible effort was made to impress Tito’s Government that the Allies meant business and that the Trieste incident should be settled peacefully. Since the patient load was not too heavy, personnel were invited to take trips to the various rest centers in the country. Although quotas were limited, the lucky few managed to visit Cannes, Alassio, Nice, Lago Maggiore, or Venice, and if time permtted, it was possible to travel to Austria as well. Charming Venice, only two hours drive from Udine, was seen by all members of the command, as the CO had made provisions for daily transportation to this unique city where streets were mostly replaced by canals.
On June 5, 1945, the 56th got proof that the Point System worked with Private First Class Joe E. Frederick being the first man to start home under the “Redeployment Plan”. Many more were to follow. On June 13, tragedy struck the organization, when two of the unit’s favorite Enlisted Men; Technician 5th Grade William A. Hoffer and Private First Class William Milanowitz were killed and Technician 5th Grade Carl A. Moon seriously injured in a truck accident. “Blackie” Hoffer had been the organization’s baker, and had been with the 56th from the day it was activated. “Bill” Milanowitz was one of the cooks, and both men deserved praise for the fine meals they always prepared. Moreover, their work had contributed so much to improve morale and organizational spirit.
As the days passed more of the unit’s men left Udine to return home. Twelve (12) men left in one group on June 15, and on June 26, all men who had reached 85 points or more were transferred to other organizations.
The 16th Evacuation Hospital relieved the 56th at Udine on August 4, the last day for admitting patients. In 25 months of continuous foreign service the 56th Evacuation Hospital had admitted and cared for 73,052 patients, a record which was unsurpassed by any Evacuation Hospital in either the Mediterranean or European Theaters of Operations.
During the final days of the stay at Udine, Lieutenant Colonel Christopher B. Carter, MC, Chief of Surgical Service, received WD orders to return to the ZI.
By September 1, 1945, all Fifth US Army units had been assigned to the Peninsular Base Section (PBS) and starting September 9, Fifth Army became non-operational and was finally inactivated October 2, 1945.
The 56th Evac, initially planned to become a Pacific Theater reserve unit, had now arrived at the Montecatini Redeployment and Training Area on August 6, 1945. After a short period of training covering the aspects of Pacific and jungle warfare, the unit was to prepare for departure. The command had high hopes that final destination would be the United States. The last days at Montecatini passed rapidly, with lectures, athletics, formal retreats, rifle practice, enemy tactics, physical tests, training films, filariasis and dengue fever, It was an “old familiar tune” to many in the command. During the latter part of their stay in this pleasant center and resort town, the 56th Evac was given a Citation for superior performance of duty during the final Po Valley offensive. Before an impressive formation, Fifth United States Army Surgeon, Colonel Charles O. Bruce, MC, presented Colonel Kenneth F. Ernst, MC, the Meritorious Service Unit Plaque.
The 56th Evac was finally sent home to the ZI for inactivation early in October 1945. The ANC complement left Naples aboard the S/S Vulcania, a former Italian luxury liner, leaving on September 25, 1945 for the United States.
Personnel Roster:
Officers
ADAMS, George, Capt., MC KELLY, John J., 1st Lt., MAC ALESSANDRA, Samuel A., Capt., MC KINZER, Hazel M., 2d Lt., ANC ALLMAND, Eugenia, 1st Lt., ANC KRAUTKRAMER, Valerie, ARC AINSWORTH, Ellen G.,, 2d Lt., ANC La DUE, Charles N., Capt., MC ALLSUP, Gwen L., 1st Lt., ANC LEBERMANN, Lowell H., Maj. MC ARMSTRONG, Madge K., 1st Lt., ANC LEE, Lonette M., 2d Lt., ANC ARNOLD, Hugh F., Capt., MC LYKINS, Farrel M., 1st Lt., ANC ARONS, Leonard A., Capt., MC LYON, Mary J., 1st Lt., ANC BAIRD, Lucas J., 2d Lt., MAC MALLORY, Philip W., Lt. Col., MC (first Executive Officer) BALTZER, Catherine L., 1st Lt., ANC MARTIN, Marguerite I., 1st Lt., ANC BASS, Loretta W., 1st Lt., ANC MARTINAK, Richard E., Capt., MC BEIDLEMAN, Ada, 2d Lt., ANC MAXFIELD, Doris, 2d Lt., ANC BELL, Weldon E. Maj., DC McCAULEY, Morris D., Maj., MC BERTRAND, Lucille B., 2d Lt., ANC McCLEARY, Gordon S., Capt., MAC BLESSE, Henry S., Col., MC (second Commanding Officer) McCLUNG, Hugh L., Capt., MC BOLES, William M., Maj., MC McCULLOUGH, Helen A., 1st Lt., ANC BOND, John P., Capt., MC McMAHON, Lillian, 2d Lt., ANC BOSWELL, Helen F., 2d Lt., HD MEADORS, Dorothy F., Capt., ANC (second Chief Nurse) BOWYER, Mack F., Capt., MC MECHAM, Jack L., 1st Lt., MAC BRAKE, Ira F., Capt., MC MERRICK, Benjamin A., Capt., MC BRASELTON, Vernie, 1st Lt., ANC MESSIER, Eveline T., 2d Lt., ANC BROWN, William W., Jr., Capt., MC MOORE, Elsie L., 1st Lt., ANC BUSSEY, Charles D., Maj., MC MOSELEY, Sybil M., 2d Lt., ANC CARNISH, Dorothy L., 2d Lt., ANC NAHL, Maryles, ARC CARPENTER, Myrtle, 1st Lt., ANC NEUFELD, Vilma R., 1st Lt., ANC CARTER, Christopher B, Lt. Col., MC PETERSON, Carl A., Capt., MC CHIZIK, John J., Lt. Col., MC (second Executive Officer) PFEIFFER, Helen F., 1st Lt., ANC COCHICK, Madeleine D., 1st Lt., ANC PHILIPS, Billy V., 2d Lt., MAC COLLINS, Lawrence D., Capt., MC PINTO, Joseph A., Capt., MC COMBITES, Inez R., 1st Lt., ANC POWERS, Frances E., 1st Lt., ANC COOKE, Eunice A., 1st Lt., ANC PRONOBIS, Andrew M., Capt., ChC CRAIG, Rose C., 1st Lt., ANC RABE, Meta M., 1st Lt., ANC CRAVEN, Jack C., Capt., MAC RAYMOND, Frances V., 1st Lt., ANC CRONIN, Julia A., 2d Lt., ANC REA, Marguerite T., Capt., ANC (first Chief Nurse) DAGIT, Avis L., 1st Lt., ANC RICHEY, Jean M., 1st Lt., ANC DAHL, Clenora B., 1st Lt., ANC RINGO, Alice C., 1st Lt., ANC DEAVERS, Doris L., 1st Lt., ANC RIPPY, Edwin L., Lt. Col., MC DENNIS, Thelma, 1st Lt., ANC ROBERTS, Kenneth V., 1st Lt., MAC DEVEREUX, William P., Maj., MC ROBERTS, Mary L., 1st Lt., ANC DOHERTY, Edward W., 1st Lt., MC ROSALES, Genevieve,1st Lt., ANC DORSEY, Mary Ann, 1st Lt., ANC ROSEN, Samuel R., Capt., MC DUNLAP, Hudson J., Maj., MC ROWE, Robert J., Capt., MC Du PONT, Isabelle H., 1st Lt., ANC SANDERS, Mary H., 1st Lt., ANC ERNEST, Kenneth F., Col., MC (third Commanding Officer) SEBASTIAN, Festus J., Maj. MC FISHER, Rowan E., Capt., MC SCHAKELFORD, Rich T., Lt. Col., MC FORD, Sylvester, Capt., MC SHAW, Martha C., 1st Lt., ANC FRASER, Amy C., 2d Lt., ANC SKILES, William V., Capt., MC FRIED, Hattie L., 1st Lt., ANC SKROH, Victoria M., 1st Lt., ANC GADBERRY, Ruby, 1st Lt., ANC SMALL, Andrew B., Maj., MC GALT, Jabez, Capt., MC SNYDER, Mary F., 1st Lt., ANC GALT, Sidney, Maj., MC SOPER, Clarence E., Maj., QMC GORDON, Daniel F., Capt., DC SPILLMAN, Anna M., 1st Lt., ANC GRAVES, Anna E., 1st Lt., ANC SPRINGER, Frances L., 1st Lt., ANC GRAY, Marjorie E., 1st Lt., ANC STUTHEIT, Eliz J., 1st Lt., HD GRIFFITH, George C., Capt., ChC TATE, Martha N., 1st Lt., ANC GRIFFORD, Ruth G., 2d Lt., ANC TEAGUE, Madge M., Capt. ANC GRUSSING, Lena, 1st Lt., ANC THOMAS, Hattie M., 1st Lt., ANC HAHN, William B., Capt., MC THOMPSON, Jo P., 1st Lt., ANC HARDY, Winifred G., 1st Lt., ANC TURNBOW, William R., Capt., MC HAYNES, Frances, 2d Lt., ANC WALKER, Herman A., Maj., MAC HENEHAN, Mary C., 1st Lt., ANC WALSH, William R., Capt., MAC HEWLING, Frances, 2d Lt., ANC WARDEN, Sheba B., 1st Lt., ANC HICKS, C. J. Jr., Maj. DC WATSON, Eula A., 2d Lt., ANC HILLIARD, George L., Lt. Col., MC WELLS, Gideon R., Capt., MC HUGHES, Helen L., 1st Lt., ANC WHITE, Byrd E. Jr., Capt., MC HUNGERFORD, Ruth C., 1st Lt., ANC WILLIAMS, Sue, ARC HURD, Donald L., 1st Lt., MC WILLIS, Raymond S., Maj., MC JEFFERSON, Nancy, 1st Lt., ANC WINANS, Henry M., Col., MC (first Commanding Officer) JOHNSON, Robert H., Capt., MC YOUNG, Tennie, 1st Lt., ANC JONES, Elmer K., Capt., MC ZURNEY, Mary L., 2d Lt., ANC JONES, Marshall L., Lt. Col., DC
Enlisted Men
ALEXANDER, Morton, T/5 KAHLER, Theodore, T/5 ALLEN, John T., Pfc KEETON, Sam E., T/5 ALM, Norman O., T/5 KELLY, Charles M., T/5 ALMEIDA, Tomas F., T/5 KENNEDY, Faye H., Pfc ALVES, Lee, T/4 KENNEY, Earl E. Jr., T/4 AMOS, Charles E., Pfc KENNON, Travis H., Pfc ANDERSON, Louis A., T/3 KEPLEY, Kenneth L., Pfc ANGELL, Robert H., T/Sgt KESERICH, John, T/Sgt APKING, Earl A., T/4 KESZEY, George P., T/5 ATTEBERRY, Marion F., M/Sgt KEYS, Robert G., Pfc AVILA, Anthony P., Pfc KING, Chester B., Pfc BAKKEN, Howard K., Cpl KING, Gerald A., Pfc BALLARD, Bernard L., Sgt KIRCHNER, Carl J., Pfc BALDERAS, Andrew C., Pfc KLEINSCHMIDT, William F., T/5 BANEY, Cecil B., T/4 KNEBLIK, Nickola A., T/4 BARBER, Harry C., WOJG KOHLSTEDT, Eldon E., Pfc BARKER, Delbert E., T/3 KOON, Chalmer A., Sgt BATES, Frank, Pfc KOSTELNY, Martyn, Pfc BENSON, Marvin D., Pfc KOTOWSKI, frank J., Cpl BERGER, Thomas C. Jr., T/4 KOUBA, Albert, Cpl BERGMAN, Floyd F., T/4 KOVALECZ, Walter L., T/4 BERNARD, Raymond, Pvt KRAMER, Eugene J., Sgt BERRY, Donivan R., T/4 KRAUSE, Robert E., Pfc BETLEY, Peter P., T/5 KREIMAN, Carl M. Pfc BIEL, Casimir I., Sgt KRIKORIAN, Leo S., T/5 BIRCHARD, Robert M., T/3 KRUMMENACHER, Ralph K., Pfc BISULKO, Joseph J., Cpl KUBUS, Joseph T. Jr., T/3 BITNER, Herman A., T/5 KUHN, Alfonso N., Sgt BLACK, Homer A., S/Sgt KUYKENDALL, Hulet C., T/4 BODIN, George L., Pfc LADZINSKI, Alex A. Pfc BOLEN, Aaron C., T/4 LALONDE, Daniel D., Pfc BORSVOLD, Leonard A., T/5 LAMB, Walter C., T/4 BOTLEY, Charles T., Pfc LAMBERT, Robert G., T/3 BRADSHAW, Norman E., Pfc LANDSLAW, Earl H., T/5 BRANSOM, Dalton E., T/3 LASKEWICH, Nick, Cpl BRENNER, LaVaine E., Pfc LAWRENCE, Orval R., Cpl BRETZ, Gerald C., T/4 LEDFORD, Quinton L., Pfc BREWER, Clinton K., S/Sgt LEE, Olford A. Jr., Pfc BREWER, William M., T/4 LEFEVERS, Sam P., T/4 BROOKS, Henry D., Pfc LENHART, Harold F., Cpl BROWN, Floyd J., Pfc LEONARD, Leo, Pfc BRUNNER, William A., T/5 LEWIS, Ernest H., T/4 BUCK, Bernice W., Sgt LIERMANN, Henry C., Pfc BUHL, John L., T/5 LIGGETT, Virgil T., T/4 BUJARSKI, Chester J., Pfc LINDHOLM, Wesley K., T/4 BUKOVAC, John, Pfc LINDQUIST, Charles A., T/5 BURKE, Edward F., Pfc LINDSTROM, Clyde H., T/5 BURT, Paul D., Cpl LINGER, Dana H., Pfc BUSH, Francis W., T/Sgt LINKUGAL, Robert J., Pfc BUSHY, Kenneth E., T/5 LIPSKY, Abraham H., Pfc BYE, Arthur R., T/3 LISTON, Wilbert J., S/Sgt CAMPOS, Francis H., T/5 LOFTON, Hulon V., Pfc CANNARELLA, Jack, Cpl LONG, James C., T/3 CARAPELLATTI, Edward J., Pfc LOPER, Eugene S., Pfc CARBAUGH, Clarence E., T/4 LUCAS, Robert C., T/4 CARLSON, Harry W., T/5 MAKOSKI, Casmer, T/4 CARNES, Wilbur L., Pfc MAKOVSKY, Leo T., Pfc CATOZZI, Raymond E., T/4 MANCUSO, John Jr., T/5 CEBULA, John T., Pfc MANLEY, Wayne A., Pfc CHAMBLISS, Troy C., T/4 MAPEL, Charles T., Pfc CHAPA, Abelardo, Pfc MARK, Leo B., T/5 CHAPMAN, John R. F., Sgt MARKSTROM, Earl W., T/3 CHARLES, Sam, S/Sgt MARRINER, Richard M., T/Sgt CHRISTIE, Anthony G., Pfc MARTIN, Dewey R., T/3 CICHUCKI, Alphonse A., Pfc MARTIN, Milton A., T/4 CLAUSSEN, Duane C., Pfc MAXWELL, Floyd L., Pfc CLEATON, Lee Roy W., S/Sgt MAXWELL, Loyd E., Pfc COBBLE, Grady L., Sgt MAY, Cyril P., T/3 COLLINSWORTH, William H., T/5 McCAFFETY, Thomas W., T/5 CONKLIN, James E., Pfc McCORMICK, James P., Sgt CONROY, Arthur T., Pfc McDONALD, Wayne L., T/5 CORSON, Charles J. Jr., Pfc McMURTERY, Blair, Pfc COURTNEY, Clement F., T/Sgt MIELKE, Harold V., Cpl COWAN, Myron L., T/5 MIHALIK, Paul B., Pfc COX, Jackson R., Pfc MILANOWITZ, William, Pfc CROSSWHITE, Caleb L., S/Sgt MILLER, Walter L. A., Cpl CRUMP, Jack, T/3 MILLOTTE, John A., T/5 DALTON, Charles G., Sgt MITCHELL, Billie T., T/5 DAVENPORT, Albert C., Pvt MITCHELL, Veyne P., T/4 DAVIDSON, Albert E., T/4 MITERKO, Peter R., T/5 DAVIS, Jack, Cpl MODA, Louis A., Pfc DAVIS, John C., T/Sgt MOON, Carl A., T/5 DeBAGGIS, Vincent J., Pfc MOORE, James E., Pfc DIAZ, Ricardo J., Pfc MORGAN, Morton M., Pfc DIXON, Herman T., Pfc MURPHY, William J., T/4 DODD, William H., Pfc NELSON, John D. Jr., T/5 DOMINICK, Mike., Pfc NOLAN, Thomas J., T/4 DONALD, James F., Pfc NORDWALL, Richard, T/4 DOUBLET, Anthony A. Jr., Pfc NORIEGA, Agapito M., Pfc DROBECK, Edward T., Pvt NOSEK, Robert J., Pfc DUNHAM, Orval E., Sgt NULL, Kenneth E., Pfc DUNTON, Arthur D., Cpl OBST, Arthur, Pfc EINECKE, Wilfred E., T/3 OGDAHL, George T., Cpl ENGELMAN, Frank E., S/Sgt OLIVAS, Manuel R., Pfc EPTON, James J., T/5 OROSZ, Frank J., Cpl ESTES, Harvin C., Pvt OSBORNE, John J., Pfc EVANS, Kenneth L., Pfc OZMUN, Cloyd J., T/5 EVANS, Vernon D., T/5 PADULA, Anthony, T/5 FARRAR, David J., Pfc PAGE, Andrew J., Pfc FILTER, Elmer C., T/3 PARKER, Earl E., Pfc FISCUS, Lester S., T/Sgt PARSON, Floyd M., Pfc FORESTER, Virgil C., Pfc PAXTON, Charles A., T/3 FORTENBERRY, Willis, T/4 PAYNE, Charles G., Cpl FOWLER, Dale C., Pfc PECK, William D., Pfc
FOX, Jack, T/5 PEERY, Sebron A., T/4 FRANCIS, Robert E., T/5 PEREZ, Gregorio, Pvt FREDERICK, Joe E., Pfc PHILLIPS, Hallos A., Pfc FREEMAN, Alex H., Pfc PHILLIPS, Robert R., Pvt FREEMAN, Bonnie J., T/4 POLECKI, Joseph S., T/5 FRYE, Bernard L., Pfc POLLY, Audie M., T/5 FULTON, Raymond R., Pfc POTTER, Curtis F., T/4 FURR, Truman A., T/4 PRASEK, Louis J., T/5 GAINOR, Russell E., Pfc PRESLEY, Marvin A., T/5 GARCIA, Marcos, Pfc PRITCHETT, Herman E., Pfc GARDNER, Robert H., T/5 PROSCH, Harry C., T/5 GATLIN, Lloyd M., S/Sgt PRUITT, John H., T/3 GERGULAS, Nick J., Pvt PUFF, Raymond V., T/4 GEYER, Frederick S., T/5 PUGH, Lloyd, Pfc GIBBS, Chester F., Sgt PULASKI, Carl A., T/4 GIBSON, Claude A., Pfc RANUS, John Jr., Pvt GILMOUR, John C., T/5 RATYNSKI, John S., Pfc GOMEZ, Clifford C., T/4 RICONO, Peter L., Pfc GONZALEZ, Rene J., T/5 RILEY, Clarence J., Pfc GRIFFITH, Eldon E., T/4 RIZZUTO, Ernest, T/5 GRISNIK, Paul J., T/4 ROBB, William H., S/Sgt GRISSOM, Max W., Pfc ROBINSON, Harry L., Pfc GROMMES, John B. Jr., T/5 RODRIGUEZ, Nick V., Pfc GROVES, Elbert D., T/Sgt ROMERO, Carl A., T/3 GUERIN, Robert B., T/5 ROTMAN, Leroy M., T/5 GUIDRY, George D., Cpl ROY, Henry S., T/3 GUINTHER, Floyd D., T/4 SANDERS, Jazy W., Pfc HAAS, Melvin R., Pfc SCHOENFELDER, Wilfred H., Pfc HAHN, John H., T/4 SELESKI, John J., T/4 HALBROOKS, Neillie J., Pfc SHATTUCK, George M., Pvt HALE, Orville L., T/4 SHEELEY, Fred, T/5 HALL, Ollie R., Pfc SHERBACH, Stanley W., Pfc HALL, William O., Pfc SHERMAN, Harry, Pvt HAMEL, Arthur, Pfc SIDORAK, Andy Jr., Cpl HAMILTON, Charles M., T/Sgt SILK, Willis L., T/5 HAMILTON, Raymond H., Pfc SILVERMAN, Samuel M., T/5 HANNIGAN, Edgar D., Pfc SIMONTON, George H., Pfc HANSING, Marlyn D., Pfc SIMPSON, Warren L., Pfc HANSON, Coy, Pfc SKUMURSKI, Edward R., T/3 HARTSOG, Edward R. Jr., T/5 SLAVING, Ernest E., T/4 HAWKINS, Benjamin L., T/5 SNIDER, James N., Pfc HEATH, Everett R., T/5 SOBIESKI, Henry L., T/3 HEIMER, Hubert L., T/Sgt SOKOL, Joseph, Pvt HELSLEY, Robert M., T/4 SPENCE, Kenneth E., Pvt HIGHT, Robert L., Pvt SPERENZA, James A., Cpl HIGHTOWER, Lloyd A. H., Pfc SPILLMAN, William H., Cpl HILL, William O., Pfc SPRAY, Claude, Pfc HJELT, Arvid J., T/5 SPRENG, Charles A., T/5 HOBAN, Edgar F., T/4 STAYNER, Laurence E., Pfc HOCK, William M., Pfc STEELE, Alton E., T/4 HOFFER, Elias J., Pfc STUTSMAN, Donald J., T/3 HOFF, William M., T/5 SUTCLIFFE, Glenn L., Cpl HOFFER, William A., T/5 SWEGZDA, John L., T/3 HOHLFELD, Otto A., Pfc TAYLOR, Johnnie D., Pfc HOLCOMB, Jack M., Sgt TEAGUE, Bascom R., T/5 HOLDER, Eugene E., Pvt TURNER, Clifford R., Pfc HOLTRY, William H., Cpl TWIDALE, Malcolm E., Pvt HOPPER, James N., Pfc VANOY, Luther C., Pfc HORLYK, Emil, Pfc VERDOORN, Emery A., T/4 HORN, Jack, S/Sgt VERTIN, Kenneth F., Pfc HORNE, Sylvester L., T/4 VILLANI, Henry, Pfc HUELF, James M., T/5 VOORHEES, Wright V., F/Sgt INCE, Theodore E., Pfc VOSS, Victor J., T/5 INSKEEP, Charles M., T/4 WALKER, Elbert L., Pfc IRVIN, Harold J., T/4 WALTON, George, T/5 JACKSON, Oliver V., T/5 WEST, Wallace L., T/5 KACKSON, Wilbur, Pfc WHEELEHAN, Joseph P., Cpl JADWINSKI, Frank, Pfc WHEELER, Leo F., T/5 JARAMILLO, Ray, Pvt WHITAKER, Clarence O., Pfc JARESH, Billy H., Sgt WHITAKER, Wilford, Pfc JARVIS, Genole J., T/5 WILSON, Lafayette A., T/4 JEAN, Floyd C., Cpl WIRE, Curtis H., Pvt JIMMIE, Bernardo T., Pfc WONG, Jim Y., T/5 JOHNSON, Gerhard F., Pfc YATES, Hubert, Pfc JOHNSON, Hilbert E., Pfc ZANDERHOLM, Edwin R., Pfc JOHNSON, J. T., Pfc ZARNOTH, Albert W., Pfc JOHNSON, Morris E., T/4 ZIEMNIK, John H., T/5 JONES, Harold F., T/5 ZIMMERMAN, James L., Pfc KACZMARSKI, Paul J., Pfc
Commanding Officers – 56th Evacuation Hospital
Lt. Colonel Henry M. WINANS, MC (August 1, 1940 > May 1, 1942)
Colonel Henry S. BLESSE, MC (May 4, 1942 > March 4, 1945)
Colonel Kenneth F. ERNST, MC (March 18, 1945 > September 20, 1945)
Meritorious Service Unit Plaque – 56th Evacuation Hospital
Fifth United States Army, dated July 5, 1945, presented at the Montecatini Redeployment & Training Area
Official Campaign Credits – 56th Evacuation Hospital
Naples-Foggia
Anzio
Rome-Arno
North Apennines
Po Valley
Personnel Losses – 56th Evacuation Hospital
Second Lieutenant Ellen G. Ainsworth, ANC (Anzio, Italy, February 16, 1944)
Technician 5th Grade William A. Hoffer (Udine, Italy, June 15, 1945)
Private First Class Hulon V. Lofton (Scarperia, Italy, October 4, 1944)
Private First Class William Milanowitz (Udine, Italy, June 13, 1945)
Private Harvin C. Estes (Anzio, Italy, April 3, 1944)
Private Nick J. Gergulas (Anzio, Italy, April 1, 1944)
Units Served – 56th Evacuation Hospital
Fifth United States Army
Seventh United States Army
Fifteenth Army Group
II Army Corps
IV Army Corps
VI Army Corps
82d Airborne Division
1st Armored Division
First Special Service Force
2d Armored Division
1st Infantry Division
3d Infantry Division
9th Infantry Division
34th Infantry Division
36th Infantry Division
45th Infantry Division
85th Infantry Division
86th Infantry Division
88th Infantry Division
91st Infantry Division
92d Infantry Division
10th Mountain Division
442d Infantry Regiment (Nisei) (Separate)
3d Ranger Battalion
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https://www.britannica.com/topic/Italian-Campaign
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Italian Campaign | Summary, Map, Significance, Date, & World War II
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Italian Campaign, (July 9, 1943–May 2, 1945), during World War II, the Allied invasion and conquest of Italy. With the success of operations in North Africa (June 1940–May 13, 1943) and Sicily (July 9–August 17, 1943), the next logical step for the Allies in the Mediterranean was a move against
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Encyclopedia Britannica
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https://www.britannica.com/topic/Italian-Campaign
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Italian Campaign
World War II
Italian Campaign, (July 9, 1943–May 2, 1945), during World War II, the Allied invasion and conquest of Italy.
With the success of operations in North Africa (June 1940–May 13, 1943) and Sicily (July 9–August 17, 1943), the next logical step for the Allies in the Mediterranean was a move against mainland Italy. The result was an almost immediate Italian capitulation. German forces in Italy resisted the Allied advance, however, and they were led by Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, one of Adolf Hitler’s ablest commanders. More than a year and a half of heavy fighting would ensue between the initial amphibious landings in September 1943 and the final surrender of German forces in May 1945.
The strategic case for invading Italy
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An attack on Italy offered tempting fruits. The collapse of one of the signatories of the Pact of Steel would have a staggering morale effect on satellite Axis powers such as Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. Italian air bases, particularly those in the Foggia region, could be put to excellent use by Allied air commanders. The Allies could also render more substantial support to Partisans in Yugoslavia and could seriously threaten Axis positions within the Balkans.
The risks of such an undertaking were evident, however. The Allies still had to maintain supply lines to North Africa, and it was expected that the first Allied invasion of the European mainland would be met with a fierce Axis response. The inevitable drain on Allied shipping and personnel had to be reckoned with, and the lengthening lines of supply and communication entailed a larger commitment of troops to administrative and logistics work. The political struggles that had beset Italy could easily impede the conduct of military operations and the functioning of any occupation government.
Italy’s terrain was not at all favourable for offensive warfare. The towering masses and narrow defiles of the Apennines; the countless streams—flooded in winter—flowing from them; and the marshlands along the coast offered a series of natural defensive positions. Against these geographic challenges, it would be difficult to fully exploit the anticipated Allied superiority in artillery and armour. During the winter, communications and supply could be hampered by heavy snowfall. Nevertheless, the exposure of the Axis flanks to amphibious attacks was a weakness to which German commanders were keenly aware. On June 5, 1943, the Anglo-American Fifteenth Army Group (initially composed of the British Eighth Army and the U.S. Seventh Army, although the latter would be replaced by the U.S. Fifth Army) was directed to prepare plans for an assault across the Strait of Messina. Allied forces were to capture the ports of Reggio di Calabria and Villa San Giovanni before moving northeast to seize the airfield at Crotone.
The availability of landing craft presented an acute problem for the Allies. No replacements from the United Kingdom or the United States could be expected. In fact, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower had been directed to send to the United Kingdom and India a large portion of the craft that had been already allotted to him. From the invasion of Sicily to the conclusion of the Italian Campaign, operations in the Mediterranean would be conditioned by the chronic shortage of landing craft.
The conquest of Sicily and the Allied air campaign against Italy
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The Allies’ rapid success during the invasion of Sicily (July 9–August 17, 1943) undermined Benito Mussolini’s eroding Fascist regime and established an advanced base to carry out operations against mainland Italy. Even before the conclusion of the Sicilian campaign, Allied aircraft were attacking harbours, Luftwaffe airfields, and Italian railways. Allied strategic bombers struck cities in north and central Italy, while the tactical air forces destroyed ammunition dumps, Axis troop concentrations, rolling stock, and oil depots in the “boot” of Italy. On July 19, 1943, more than 500 U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) bombers hit targets throughout Rome, in what was the first major air attack on the Italian capital since the outbreak of war. Nearly 1,500 Italian civilians were killed in strikes on the San Lorenzo rail yards, a target that was just four miles (six kilometres) from the Vatican.
Days after the Allied bombing of Rome, Mussolini revealed to the Fascist Grand Council that the Germans were considering the evacuation of the southern half of Italy. After a vigorous debate, the council voted 19 to 8 in favour of restoring “the prerogatives of the King and parliament.” On July 25 King Victor Emmanuel III, ordered the arrest of Mussolini and entrusted Marshal Pietro Badoglio with the formation of a new government. Italy wanted peace, but to break the alliance with Hitler might provoke a German attack and condemn Italy to prolonged fighting. Badoglio walked a dangerous tightrope, feigning continued loyalty to Germany while making overtures to the Allies.
With the collapse of the Mussolini regime, new military prospects opened. An early assault on the Naples area now offered reasonable chances of success. However, a direct attack on the city would certainly meet stiff opposition since the Germans could be counted upon to hold this strongpoint to cover the withdrawal of their forces from southern Italy. The plain to the north of Naples was beyond the range of Allied fighter aircraft, and its beaches were unsuitable for landings. To the south lay the Gulf of Salerno, which possessed a 20-mile (32-km) stretch of ideal landing beach; passage to the north, however, was barred by high mountains, and the most direct routes to Naples were through a series of narrow valleys. Allied planners calculated that—if all available fighters with detachable fuel tanks were used—a continuous daylight patrol of 36 aircraft could be maintained over this area until an airfield could be captured. Gen. Mark Clark was therefore ordered to prepare plans for a landing in the Gulf of Salerno with a target date of September 7, 1943. The amphibious assault from Sicily across the Strait of Messina would be made several days before the Salerno operation to release landing craft for the latter assault.
The invasion of Italy and the Italian surrender
Following heavy air preparation against Axis airfields, artillery batteries, and logistics hubs in the “toe” of Italy, the British XIII Corps (Canadian 1st Infantry Division and British 5th Infantry Division) swarmed ashore at 4:30 am on September 3, 1943. Negligible resistance was encountered, and the Strait of Messina was opened to Allied shipping on September 6. The airfields at Crotone were in Allied hands by September 12.
Badoglio had established contact with Eisenhower on August 19 in an effort to negotiate a surrender without the knowledge of the Germans. The combined chiefs instructed Eisenhower to accept the unconditional surrender of Italy (which was signed at Cassibile in Sicily on September 3) and to obtain the maximum military advantage from this development. Responding to Badoglio’s plea that the capital be seized to prevent the capture of the king and government, Eisenhower offered to fly an airborne division into Rome, on the condition that the Italians seize the necessary airfields and silence antiaircraft batteries. The 82nd Airborne Division was tasked with this mission (dubbed Operation Giant II), but the plan was dismissed as unfeasible after a pair of senior U.S. commanders undertook an audacious intelligence-gathering operation in Rome.
On September 7 U.S. Gen. Maxwell Taylor and Col. William T. Gardiner slipped through enemy lines to consult with the Italian leadership. They learned that the Germans had massively reinforced their position in Rome, and that the Italians, who were no longer receiving supplies of fuel or ammunition from the Germans, could put up a token resistance at best. Badoglio reported that he would be unable to secure any of the relevant objectives ahead of an Allied airborne operation in the capital area. On September 8 the unconditional surrender of Italy was announced. The airborne assault on Rome was scrubbed, but it was now too late to retask the 82nd Airborne with its original objective: securing the northern Allied flank of the Salerno landings at the Volturno River.
Meanwhile, Allied air forces had intensified their blows against Axis marshaling yards, airfields, gun positions, military installations, and communications facilities. Pisa, Benevento, Salerno, Foggia, and the Brenner Pass were among the many places subjected to air attack. Field Marshal Albert Kesselring’s headquarters at Frascati, south of Rome, was destroyed, as was much of the surrounding town. Resistance from Axis fighter aircraft progressively decreased.
The Salerno beachhead
At 3:30 am on September 9, Clark’s U.S. Fifth Army landed on the beaches at Salerno. The northern force which had sailed from Sicily and Bizerte, Tunisia, under the command of Commodore Geoffrey Oliver consisted of the British X Corps with the 46th and 56th divisions undertaking the assault. The southern force, which had been convoyed by Rear Adm. John L. Hall, Jr., from Oran, Algeria, consisted of the U.S. VI Corps with the 36th Division in the assault, followed by the 45th Division. U.S. Rangers and British commandos landed on the Sorrento peninsula; the former were to seize the passes leading through to the Naples plain, the latter to capture Salerno. Having suspected that the Allies might undertake an amphibious operation against Naples, the Germans’ reaction was swift and vigorous. Withstanding several German counterattacks, both corps had established a beachhead 4 miles (6.4 km) deep by nightfall, although a dangerous 5-mile (8-km) gap at the Sele River separated them.
Eisenhower and his ground force commander, Gen. Harold Alexander, estimated that eight German divisions were available to oppose the landing. Two were in the Rome area, two were in Naples, and four were in the south. The Axis forces initially held an advantage in armour, as a shortage in shipping prevented the Allies from putting their own tanks ashore. The Allies would not field a significant tank force in Italy until the landing of the British 7th Armoured Division (the so-called “Desert Rats”) on September 15.
On September 10 the two Allied corps made contact at the Sele River, but the intensity of German counterattacks increased. Every available Allied aircraft was dedicated to preventing Axis resupply and reinforcement, and heavy naval gunfire lent its support. By September 12 an airstrip was operational in the beachhead; in the preceding three days, some 3,000 fighter sorties had been flown from bases in Sicily and from aircraft carriers. On the night of September 13 and 14 airborne troops were flown to critical points in the defense, and by September 15 the crisis had passed.
Progress up the peninsula and Mussolini’s rescue
The Italian battle fleet vacated Taranto on September 9 and the port was immediately occupied by the British fleet carrying the British 1st Airborne Division. Two days later, the British paratroopers captured Brindisi. Elsewhere in the Mediterranean on September 9, 3 Italian battleships, 6 cruisers, and 13 destroyers from La Spezia and Genoa, steaming southward to surrender, were bombed by German aircraft. The Italian battleship Roma was sunk, and more than 1,200 sailors and officers were lost. The remainder of the Italian fleet escaped to the Balearic Islands and Annaba, Algeria. From Annaba, the fleet moved on to Malta, where it was joined by other surrendering elements. Only a small proportion of the Italian air force—some 320 planes—complied with the surrender terms by flying over to the Allies. The Italian army made apathetic resistance to the Germans.
On September 12 Capri and other islands in the Bay of Naples surrendered. Four days later patrols from the Fifth and Eighth armies met 40 miles (64 km) southeast of Salerno, uniting Alexander’s Fifteenth Army Group into a single front. On September 18 Axis forces evacuated Sardinia to the French, and on October 6 Corsica followed suit.
While combat raged in southern Italy, Hitler conspired to free Mussolini from captivity. Imprisoned first on the island of Ponza, then on an island off the coast of Sardinia, the Italian dictator was eventually transported to the Hotel Campo Imperatore, high in the Gran Sasso d’Italia. The Italians believed that the inaccessibility of site ruled out any possibility of a German rescue attempt. Nevertheless, on September 12, 1943, a team of German commandos led by Waffen-SS officer Otto Skorzeny crash-landed a glider force on the slopes behind the hotel. Skorzeny and his team spirited Mussolini to Munich and Hitler restored him as ruler of the “Italian Social Republic,” a last-ditch puppet Fascist regime based in Salò on Lake Garda.
The Fifth and Eighth armies now moved forward abreast. Bari fell on September 13. On September 28 the Eighth Army occupied the Foggia airfields, and on October 1 the Fifth occupied Naples and its harbour. Repairs to the demolished port structures were immediately begun. On October 14 unloading ceased over the Salerno beaches, where, during the period September 9–26, a total of 108,000 tons of supplies, 30,000 motor vehicles, and 189,000 troops had been landed.
Capture of the Foggia airfields confirmed the Allied hold on the mainland. Large numbers of fighters could now be based relatively close to the battle area. Heavy bombers could easily strike at the passes across the Alps, add their attacks to those of the Eighth and Ninth air forces against Germany, and disrupt industry and transportation in the Balkans to the benefit of the Red Army. German resistance, however, began to stiffen. To avoid a costly frontal attack on the port of Termoli, the British made an amphibious landing north of the city, but Axis forces delayed its capture until October 6. At 4:00 pm on October 13, Italy declared war on Germany. One outstanding advantage brought by this cobelligerency was to obviate the need for the Allies to establish military government of occupation.
New divisions arrived to join the Allied forces, while the Germans hastily reinforced their own defenses. On the night of October 12–13, the U.S. II and VI corps forced a crossing of the Volturno River in hard fighting. Destroying every bridge and culvert en route, the Germans withdrew to their winter line athwart the peninsula which they had been preparing since the Allied landings on the mainland. This deep position, dubbed the Gustav Line, followed generally the course of the Garigliano and Sangro rivers. The Fifth Army’s efforts to gain control of the lower Garigliano began on November 6; the Eighth Army crossed the Sangro two weeks later. Communications were almost nonexistent, winter was coming on, and heavy rains and snows added to the handicaps. To deal with German defenses, Allied artillery was bolstered by batteries of the heaviest field pieces produced in the United States; 240-mm howitzers and 8-inch guns were rushed to Italy. The Fifth Army continued to dislodge Axis troops from the succession of mountains which still barred the Cassino corridor to Rome and finally, in December, arrived before its entrance. In the same month the first of eight French infantry and armoured divisions which the United States had agreed to equip arrived in Italy. In late December Canadian troops defeated a garrison of elite German Fallschirmjäger (paratroops) in a sanguinary battle at Ortona, thus allowing the Allies to continue progressing up the Adriatic coast.
The buildup of Allied ground forces was delayed by the necessity of balancing military needs with those of Italy’s civilian population. Allied armies had to import not only the huge quantities of equipment, supplies, and personnel to establish and staff the air bases but also the foodstuffs to keep the populace from starvation. A setback was suffered on December 2 when a German air attack sank 17 Allied ships in the harbour at Bari. Some 1,000 British and American sailors and merchant mariners were killed and hundreds were wounded. Among the vessels hit by German bombs was the SS John Harvey, a Liberty ship that was carrying a secret cargo of mustard gas. The bombs were intended to be used if the Germans, in desperation, initiated a chemical warfare campaign against the Allies. Although much of the chemical agent was dispersed out to sea, hundreds were sickened by mustard gas exposure and dozens were killed. By this time Adriatic ports were unloading 70,000 tons and Naples 80,000 tons weekly.
On December 5, 1943, the combined chiefs of staff vested in Eisenhower responsibility for all operations in the Mediterranean other than strategic bombing. On December 10 he was appointed supreme allied commander for the cross-channel invasion, and on January 8, 1944, Gen. Henry Maitland Wilson succeeded him as supreme commander in the Mediterranean. Lieut. Gen. Jacob L. Devers became Wilson’s deputy. Gen. Bernard L. Montgomery and Air Chief Marshal Arthur W. Tedder followed Eisenhower to England, Lieut. Gen. Oliver W.H. Leese succeeding Montgomery in command of the Eighth Army. Gen. Carl Spaatz was designated to command the U.S. strategic air force with headquarters in London. Gen. James Doolittle replaced Gen. Ira C. Eaker in command of the Eighth Air Force, and Eaker assumed command of the Mediterranean air forces. Early in January Gen. Alphonse Juin’s French corps took over the right sector of the Fifth Army from the U.S. VI Corps, which was withdrawn to prepare for the Anzio landing.
The Anzio landings and the Battle of Cassino
In order to disrupt communications in the rear of the German forces in the Cassino area, the VI Corps landed on the beaches near Anzio on January 22; its troops included the U.S. 3rd Division, British 1st Division, and U.S. Rangers. To divert the attention of the local Axis forces from this operation the Fifth Army had mounted a series of local operations. The British X Corps on January 17 gained a bridgehead over the Garigliano but made no further progress. The U.S. II Corps (36th Division) on January 20–21 unsuccessfully attempted to force the Rapido. East of Cassino the French corps made considerable gains.
The Germans reacted swiftly to the landings, and by the end of January the VI Corps had been sealed in. The Germans were able to deliver persistent and accurate artillery fire throughout the flat beachhead—18 miles (29 km) long by 9 miles (14.5 km) deep—and against ships offshore. Axis counterattacks reached the peak of their intensity on February 17, but the beachhead was held. During the four months of its existence, the beachhead was reinforced by the U.S. 1st Armoured, 34th, 36th, and 45th divisions and by the British 5th and 56th—the last being later withdrawn.
Farther south the Fifth Army offensive had been halted before the strong defenses of Cassino, where raged some of the bitterest fighting of the war. On February 15 the Allies bombed and demolished the Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino, erroneously believing that the Germans had occupied and fortified it. In fact, the Germans were able to remove both the monks and the treasures of the abbey. After the bombardment ceased, the Germans occupied and fortified the ruins. A month later Allied aircraft dropped 1,400 tons of bombs on Cassino, leaving the town so heaped with rubble that tanks could not operate until bulldozers cleared paths for them. Once again, the Germans constructed strongpoints and pillboxes in the bomb-shattered debris, further slowing the Allied advance.
The capture of Rome and the pursuit north
As spring approached, the Allied air forces systematically destroyed all the important Axis rail yards south of Florence. After failing to score a breakthrough at Anzio and Cassino, Alexander regrouped his forces for a new drive. On May 11 the Allies launched a sharp offensive between the Tyrrhenian coast and Cassino. Americans crossed the Garigliano near the coast while British, Indian, and Polish troops drove on Cassino. On May 18 Cassino fell to a Polish corps of the Eighth Army, and to the west, U.S. Fifth Army troops ejected the Germans from Formia. The fall of these two citadels unhinged the western anchor of the Gustav Line. Concentrating most of their punch on the western coast of Italy, four Allied spears drove into the Hitler Line, a new German defensive system that began in Terracina and rejoined the Gustav Line east of Cassino.
As the Allies pounded a wedge into the German lines along the coast, the quiescent Anzio front flared into action. On May 23 the Allies struck out against the investing Germans (whose strength had been diminished in order to reinforce the Gustav Line). The battle was now in progress all along the Italian peninsula from the Tyrrhenian to the Adriatic. On May 25 U.S. troops broke out of the Anzio beachhead and joined the main body of U.S. forces in the Pontine Marshes. When the Eighth Army’s Canadian Corps penetrated the last German defenses in the Liri Valley, the whole Gustav Line began to collapse. American armoured forces and infantry broke through the wavering German lines, and on June 5, 1944, elements of Clark’s U.S. Fifth Army entered Rome.
Both the Fifth and Eighth armies took off in pursuit Kesselring’s forces. Although the loss of Rome was a blow to Axis morale, the Germans retired in order to the line of the Arno River. In mid-June a French amphibious force recaptured Elba. The U.S. Fifth Army captured Livorno on July 19, and among the troops there were the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and 100th Battalion, a pair of units composed mainly of Nisei (second-generation) Japanese American volunteers. The valour of these soldiers, many of whom left behind family members in internment camps, was renowned, and the 442nd would become the most-decorated unit in United States military history for its size and length of service. On July 20, 1944, the Allied force headquarters relocated from Algiers to Caserta.
Florence, 160 miles (almost 260 km) north of Rome, did not fall to the Allies until August 13. By that time the Germans had made ready yet another chain of defenses, the Gothic Line, running from the Tyrrhenian coast midway between Pisa and La Spezia, over the Apennines in a reversed S curve, to the Adriatic coast between Pesaro and Rimini. Alexander might have made more headway against Kesselring’s new front if some of his forces had not been subtracted, in August 1944, for the American-sponsored but eventually unnecessary invasion of southern France (“Operation Anvil,” finally renamed “Dragoon”). On September 15 the Brazilian 1st Expeditionary Infantry Division joined the Fifth Army opposing the Gothic Line. The Eighth Army, having switched back from the west to the Adriatic coast, achieved only an indecisive breakthrough toward Rimini on September 21. After this offensive, the autumn rains set in, making even more difficult Alexander’s indirect movements, against Kesselring’s resolute opposition, toward the mouth of the Po River.
The Gothic Line and the German surrender
The Fifteenth Army Group now stood before the Gothic Line. On September 10, 1944, the Fifth Army attacked the German defenses frontally, and the Eighth Army, now commanded by Lieut. Gen. R.L. McCreery, pushed northwest from Rimini. Although after three months of costly fighting the line was breached, the Axis had been able to establish a new defensive position. On December 12, 1944, Alexander replaced Wilson as supreme commander, with Wilson moving to Washington, D.C., as field marshal to represent the British chiefs of staff. Clark was promoted to Fifteenth Army Group commander, and command of the Fifth army passed to Lieut. Gen. Lucian K. Truscott.
During the fall and winter months the air forces continued to pound Axis communications across the Alps and in northern Italy, as well as oil and rail targets in Austria and southern Germany. In January 1945 the Canadian I Corps with the Canadian 1st Infantry, Canadian 5th Armoured and British 5th Infantry divisions were ordered to France to reinforce the attacks on Germany.
On April 9, 1945, the Eighth Army launched a general attack west of Ravenna. Five days later the Fifth Army joined the offensive and after a week of heavy fighting drove into the Po valley and entered Bologna. Bridgeheads were established across the Po southwest of Mantua on April 23. Both armies raced across the Po valley and into the foothills of the Alps. On April 28 Italian antifascists captured Mussolini and executed him. On April 29 the Allies entered Milan; Fifth Army forces along the Ligurian Sea captured La Spezia on April 25, swept through Genoa and Savona, and advanced to make contact with the French. On every side effective support was received from Italian patriots. By May 1 Eighth Army troops advancing on Trieste had made contact with Yugoslav Partisans at Monfalcone, and the next day at noon the commander of the German armies in northern Italy capitulated. On May 4 patrols of the U.S. 88th Division met those of the Seventh Army south of the Brenner Pass.
Casualties and the significance of the Italian Campaign
Allied casualties in the Italian Campaign numbered some 350,000. Among these were more than 150,000 U.S. troops (92,000 wounded, more than 60,000 killed or missing); roughly 145,000 troops of the British Commonwealth (nearly 100,000 wounded, 45,000 killed or missing); almost 31,000 Free French (almost 24,000 wounded, 7,000 killed or missing); nearly 11,000 troops of the Polish government in exile (more than 8,000 wounded, roughly 2,500 killed or missing); and more than 1,800 Brazilian troops (1,350 wounded, approximately 450 killed and missing).
During these operations the Axis forces lost more than 47,000 known dead, 170,000 wounded, and probably some part of the 209,000 reported missing prior to the German surrender. More than 150,000 Italian civilians were killed in the fighting, and roughly 67,000 Italian troops were killed between the surrender of Badoglio’s government in September 1943 and the end of the war in Europe. While Italy was not as much a focus of the Allied strategic bombing campaign as were Germany or Japan, many Italian cities were seriously damaged by Allied air raids.
By the dogged pressure which they had maintained for 20 months, the Allied forces in Italy had made a major contribution to the common effort. Pinning down substantial strength which Hitler had needed to reinforce both his eastern and western fronts, they had accomplished the mission given them at the Trident Conference. Critics of the Italian Campaign made the opposite argument—that the slow march up the peninsula tied up Allied resources that could have been better used elsewhere. The amphibious landings in Sicily and at Anzio, however, did serve as significant predecessors for the Normandy Invasion in June 1944. The surrender of the Italian government in the early days of the invasion also fundamentally altered the strategic posture of the Third Reich. Hitler’s Fortress Europe had been breached.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
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“Wars should be fought in better country than this”
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The First Special Service Force in the Italian Mountains
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The FSSF sailed back to San Francisco and following a short period of leave, boarded trains for Camp Ethan Allen for additional training. On 28 October 1943, the Force sailed for North Africa aboard the Canadian Pacific’s Empress of Scotland. Arriving in Casablanca, Morocco on 5 November 1943, the unit moved by train to Oran, Algiers, and sailed in increments to Naples, Italy, arriving between 17 and 19 November. Their new mission was to help crack the tough German defenses south of Rome. The German Winter Line had stymied the Fifth Army since October 1943.
Rugged terrain, bad weather, and too few Allied troops slowed the Fifth Army’s progress to a crawl. The mountain ranges south of Rome were the highest along the west coast of Italy, rising to over 3,000 feet. Narrow valleys hindered off-road deployment of forces and limited the use of armored units. Winter brought drenching rains and penetrating cold that slowed movement on the few roads and exposed the troops to frostbite and hypothermia. The few divisions dedicated to the Mediterranean Theater were insufficient to crack the stiff German defenses.
Lieutenant General (LTG) Mark W. Clark’s Fifth Army had been fighting north since landing at Salerno on 9 September 1943. As the Italian campaign began to bog down, Allied planners were stockpiling troops and resources for the cross-channel attack into France, the centerpiece of the Allied Grand Strategy. Everything LTG Clark needed to maintain momentum, manpower, equipment, landing craft, aircraft, and logistics was constrained. With his freedom of maneuver hampered, he was forced to grind his way north towards Rome through the teeth of the German defenses.
When the FSSF landed at Naples in November, Fifth Army had two light corps, two American and one British. The U.S. VI Corps led by Major General (MG) John P. Lucas contained the 34th and 45th Infantry Divisions and the lead elements of the 1st Armored Division. The U.S. II Corps (MG Geoffrey T. Keyes) had the veteran 3rd and 36th Infantry Divisions. The British 10th Corps (Lieutenant General Sir Richard L. McCreery) had the 46th and 56th Infantry Divisions. The 1st, 3rd, and 4th Ranger Battalions, commanded by LTC William O. Darby, and the Force, were the “fire brigades” to be directed against the toughest objectives. Advancing slowly northward after the successful landings at Salerno, the Fifth Army became stalemated by the Germans in mid-November.
The First Special Service Force arrived at Naples, Italy on three ships, the USS Jefferson, USS Dickman, and USS Barnett during the period 17-19 November 1943. After going to temporary bivouac in Naples, the Force moved on 20 November 1943 to a permanent bivouac area in the Italian Artiller y School barracks approximately one-half mile west of Santa Maria, Italy — FSSF Historical Report
The Fifth Army’s primary objective was to capture Rome. It was believed that whoever held the “Eternal City” would control southern Italy. Though Italy had surrendered on 8 September and joined the Allies, the Italian Army would not be ready to fight against their former German allies until December. Their absence did not materially weaken the German defenses.
From the south, the wide Liri Valley and Highway 6 ran directly to Rome. Access to the Liri was blocked by ranges of mountains running laterally across the Fifth Army’s line of advance. The German defenses incorporated these massifs to form three defensive belts that the Allies called the Winter Line.
The Germans called the first line the Barbara Line. This was a series of fortified outposts running from the west coast eastward through the foothills. Behind this came the much stronger Bernhardt Line, a wide belt of defensive fortifications from the mouth of the Garigliano River up and over the forbidding summits of Monte Camino, Monte La Defensa, Monte Majo, and Monte Sammucro. The third and most formidable was the Gustav Line. It was anchored on the Garigliano and Rapido Rivers and incorporated the natural fortress of Monte Casino. The German commander in Italy was the brilliant Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring, whose forces outnumbered the attacking Allies.
As the Commander-in-Chief Southwest, Kesselring had been given control of all German forces in Italy, a total of fifteen divisions. Opposing the LTG Clark’s Fifth Army in southern Italy was the German Tenth Army, a force with more than seven divisions.
In the XIV Panzer Corps were the 94th Infantry Division, the 3rd and 15th Panzer Grenadier Divisions and a battle group from the Hermann Goering Panzer Division. The LXXVI Panzer Corps consisted of the 26th Panzer Division, the 1st Parachute Division, and the 65th and 305th Infantry Divisions. Manpower shortages in the German Army forced reorganization in October 1943 that reduced each infantry regiment to two battalions. The German infantry division strength was 13,500 men, 1,200 riflemen less than the larger (14,253) American infantry division. But the Germans fielded more divisions.
While most German units had Eastern Front or North African combat experience, the “new formations were put together in Sicily. The 15th Panzer Grenadier Division and the Hermann Goering Panzer Division were reconstituted after being destroyed in Tunisia,” recalled Kesselring after the war. Manpower and equipment shortages were offset by the advantages accrued by defending the mountains that blocked entry to the Liri Valley. LTG Clark never achieved the desired 4-to-1 superiority needed to overcome the German defenses. Beginning in early November, the Fifth Army began Operation RAINCOAT, the assault on the Bernhardt Line to punch into the Liri Valley towards Rome.
“Wars should be fought in better country than this.” — MG John P. Lucas II Corps
The Allied offensive began on 5 November 1943 when two brigades of the British 56th Infantry Division assaulted the 3,150 ft Monte Camino from the southwest. The troops struggled to fight their way up the bare, rocky, booby-trapped slopes that were raked by German machine guns. In weather that grew progressively colder and wetter, the British fought doggedly up Camino. On the 8th, the 15th Panzer Grenadiers launched a series of counter-attacks that nearly pushed the 56th off the mountain. Finally on 12 November, LTG Clark ordered the division to withdraw from Monte Camino. A similar scenario took place on neighboring Monte la Defensa.
Less than two miles to the northeast of Monte Camino and connected by a bare ridgeline, the steep slopes of Monte La Defensa (3,140 ft) presented an even more formidable obstacle to the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division. The 7th Infantry Regiment initiated the attack. Success would not only rupture the Bernhardt Line, but it would assist the British with Monte Camino. With a lineage stretching back to the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812, the 7th Infantry “Cottonbalers,” veterans of North Africa and Sicily, struggled for ten days. The 3rd Division main attack to the north of La Defensa failed as well, LTG Clark called off further offensive operations on 13 November. The lull would last for two weeks, giving the First Special Service Force time to prepare and the Germans to regroup.
For the operations against MOUNT LA DEFENSA and MOUNT REMETANA, the Force was attached to the 36th Division. On the night of 1 December 1943, the Combat Echelon moved forward to a bivouac near its objective in preparation for operations that were to begin on night 2-3 December — FSSF Historical Report
After arriving in Naples, the Force based at Santa Maria just north of the city. The unit spent ten days redistributing equipment as it arrived from the port, range firing, and conducting cross-country marches “to recondition them for immediate action.” The FSSF was attached to II Corps’ 36th Division on 22 November, prepared for the attack on La Defensa.
Numerous scouting parties were sent up to the area of operations to survey the terrain. During one reconnaissance, a faint trail up the steep cliffs on the north side of the mountain was discovered. Properly strung with ropes to assist the heavily laden troops climb the cliff, the trail could get the Forcemen up the peak behind the German positions. This would be their best option.
On the night of 1 December 1943, the Second Regiment loaded 6x6 trucks in Santa Maria to move the 20 miles to their drop-off point prior to marching up the mountain in an assembly area. The over-burdened Forcemen faced a march of more than five miles in a steady, soaking rain that turned the roads to mud. Private First Class (PFC) Robert M. Davis of 1st Company, Second Regiment recalled that night march up the mountain: “The road was very muddy. It was a real ordeal just to get one foot out of the mud. We moved for about 12 hours to get to our bivouac up on the mountainside and it was very hard.”
“The approach march took a good part of the night,” said First Lieutenant (1LT) William S. Story of 4th Company, Second Regiment. “We went up the mountain until we were concealed from the top by the bushes and trees. Then we pulled our tail up so there was no visible evidence that we had come up in the dark of the night.”
Two 1st Company scouts, Sergeants (SGTs) Thomas E. Fenton and Howard C. Van Ausdale, prepared the trail to the crest of the mountain by anchoring ropes as a handrail to assist the men on the ascent. SGT William B. Walter and Private (PVT) Joseph J. Dauphinais helped in the rope placement. “Both of the scouts happened to be hard rock miners in civilian life and could really read terrain,” said 1LT Story. “They found what they thought was the best and relatively easy route where you could anchor your ropes without hammering in pitons. They got up close enough to hear the Germans.”
The preparation for the attack on La Defensa began late in the afternoon of 2 December with a heavy barrage from the II Corps artillery. More than 925 artillery pieces of all calibers hammered the Monte Camino-La Defensa Massif. The Allies concentrated their fires on the crests and the southern and western approaches used before. 75,000 rounds were fired in support of the attack. The Force came in from the east side and climbed onto the northern shoulder of the mountain as the artillery pounded the hill masses.
The Second Regiment was assigned the mission of scaling Mount LA DEFENSA and launching an attack at dawn on 3 December against the defenders of this important hill mass. The First Regiment was assigned as reserve to the 36th Division. The First Battalion, Third Regiment was assigned as reserve for the First Special Ser vice Force. The Se cond Battalion, Third Regiment was assigned supply and evacuation duties in support of the attack on Mount LA DEFENSA â FSSF Historical Report
“I never saw another barrage like that during the war,” recalled Robert M. Davis. “That was a lulu.” “I thought that there shouldn’t be one left up there after that barrage,” said SGT Joe Glass. “After that bombardment, we called La Defensa the ‘Million-Dollar Mountain’.” The order of march was 1st, 2nd, and 3rd companies, the Regimental headquarters, and then the 4th, 5th, and 6th companies. The last 500 feet was up the steep cliffs. The ropes proved invaluable and were key to getting machine guns, mortars, and supplies up quickly.
Climbing in the darkness, the lead elements of 1st Company reached the crest of the mountain shortly before dawn. PFC Kenneth W. Betts, 1st Section, 1st Platoon, 1st Company of Second Regiment, was one of the first to reach the top. “We came up the back way,” said Betts. “We caught them by surprise, but it didn’t last long. [It was] only enough to get over the edge.” PFC Robert M. Davis remembered “coming up single file. Every sound made you think people in Rome could hear us coming.”
The 1st Company crested the hill and spread out to the left as 2nd Company behind them extended the line to the right among the rocks on the summit. The battle commenced when an alerted German sentry began firing. “We were virtually on top of the German positions when someone kicked a stone loose and a German challenged the two scouts,” said SGT Donald MacKinnon. “Someone shot, and that’s when machine gun fire opened up all around us.” A fierce firefight erupted along the crest. The Germans had their machine guns pointed to the southwest and had to work feverishly to turn their weapons around to meet the assault. The action quickly became a close-quarters shoot-out.
“It was really a series of individual firefights,” said 1LT Bill Story. “We were dealing with individuals or small groups of Germans.” A marksman with a Schmeisser machine pistol pinned down PFC Robert Davis. “That guy was an artist with that burp gun,” said Davis. “It finally took [PFC Dennis] George hitting his position with a rifle grenade to allow us to move.”
As the Force rushed across the top of the mountain, the German defenders abandoned their positions to escape down the mountain to Monte Camino or across the northwest saddle towards Monte Remetana. “We had the top cleared in about two hours,” said SGT Joseph M. Glass.” The unexpected appearance of the Force along the cliff tops had proven too much for the German defenders. “They had expected the assault to come up the forward slope,” said Bob Davis. “Once we got rid of the guys along the forward area, the rest folded up.” With the crest in their hands, the Forcemen quickly began to prepare defensive positions to meet the expected German counterattack.
The next three days were constant rain, snow, and freezing temperatures punctuated with German shelling and counter-attacks. The miserable conditions hindered the resupply and evacuation of the heavy casualties suffered from the German artillery. PFC Kenneth P. Thelen: “I had 18 different holes in me, two broken arms and two broken legs. I lay there for almost a day and a half before I was moved. Then it took 18 hours to get me down off the mountain.” German prisoners were put to work. “You could use up to six German prisoners to carry one stretcher off La Defensa,” said 1LT Bill Story. “It was the only way we could get our wounded troops down off the tops of those mountains.”
The Second Regiment reached its objective at dawn on 3 December and af ter bitter fighting, gained a foothold on the crest of MOUNT LA DEFENSA. Fighting in this area was continuous and bitter during the next fortyeight hours â FSSF Historical Report
Once reinforced by the First Regiment, the Second Regiment moved to clear the saddle running northwest to the summit of Monte Remetana. A series of attacks on 6 and 7 December dislodged the Germans. Simultaneously, the British succeeded in capturing Monte Camino, eliminating the remaining sniper and artillery threat to the Force’s west flank. The FSSF linked up with the British and by the evening of 7 December, had control of Monte Remetana. The next night the Force was relieved by the 142nd Infantry, 36th Division, and returned to Santa Maria. The first phase of the mountain campaign for the FSSF had ended. The Force had pushed the Germans off Monte La Defensa in a matter of hours despite the Fifth Army planners’ predictions that it would take two or three days. However, success was very costly.
The 3,000-man Force suffered 511 casualties on Monte La Defensa: 73 killed; 313 wounded; and 9 missing in action; and 116 evacuated with frostbite, trenchfoot, and exhaustion. Eight wounded later died. One battalion commander (LTC Thomas C. MacWilliam), one company commander (CPT William T. Rothlin), and several platoon leaders, platoon sergeants, and section sergeants had been killed. The Force rested in Santa Maria for the next eleven days and reshuffled leaders.
While the FSSF had been fighting for Monte la Defensa, II Corps attacked the Monte Lungo-Monte Sammucro complex further north. The 36th Division, with the 3rd Ranger Battalion attached, suffered heavy casualties but failed to capture the two hills and the village of San Pietro. The Force was called upon to lead the second attempt.
The First Regiment was assigned to support the attack of the Second Regiment and arrived at the to of MOUNT LA DEFENSA on 5 December. During the period 5-9 December, the First and Second Regiments continued the operations required to clear the enemy from MOUNT LA DEFENSA â FSSF Historical Report 2
For the attack on Monte Sammucro, the depleted Force had the U.S. 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment and the 1st Battalion, 141st Infantry attached. Fire support came from the 6th Armored Field Artillery Group and the 376th and 456th Parachute Field Artillery battalions. The reinforcements were badly needed because the three Force regiments were down to less than 200 men each.
The troops left the Ceppagna bivouac site on 22 December 1943 for an assault the next night. Insufficient coordination and communications among the task force elements caused COL Frederick to delay the attack until Christmas Eve. The assault on Mont Sammucro would launch a three-week concentrated effort to push the Germans off the Bernhardt Line and position Fifth Army for the Gustav Line and Monte Cassino.
Orders were issued on 22 December to have the First Special Service Force attack to capture MT SAMMUCRO, HILL 730. The First Regiment, First Special Service Force, assisted by fire from the First Battalion, 141st Infantry, accomplished this mission of the night 24-25 December. They were relieved by First Battalion, 141st Infantry, on 26 December, withdrawing to bivouac at CEPPAGNA - FSSF Historical Report 3
The troops sat in cold fog and rain for two days waiting for the attack to begin. The plan called for the First Regiment to hit Monte Sammucro while 1st Battalion, 141st Infantry assaulted nearby Hill 630, and the 504th, Hill 580. The attack began at 5:00 am on Christmas. In deadly, close-quarters fighting, the First Regiment ejected the Germans from their positions and fended off several counterattacks. The 504th captured Hill 580 and the 141st Hill 630. On the night of the 26th, the 141st relieved the Force on Monte Sammucro. The Force casualties were 77 dead and wounded in the fight. Following a respite of three days, the Force rejoined the offensive as Fifth Army continued to push to the north and west.
In the area south of ROME, December provides the most unfavorable weather conditions of the year for military operations. It is the culmination of the autumnal rainy season … Conditions of temperature and humidity, though by no means severe, are such that re quires extra clothing and fuel for efficient operations. â II Corps G-2 Meteorological Report, 27 November 1943
The first week of January 1944 was spent in fierce fighting in the hills surrounding the village of Radicosa. This was the precursor to facing the formidable mountains in the Gustav Line, Monte Majo, Hill 1270, and Monte Vischiataro. These high, rocky peaks would be the German’s final defense on the Bernhardt Line. The continual fighting and debilitating weather brought the Force to the brink of exhaustion. The final push began on 6 January to conquer Monte Majo.
Now reorganized as Task Force B, Frederick commanded the 133rd Infantry Regiment, Company A of the 19th Engineer Regiment, and Company A, 109th Medical Battalion. The 36th Division Artillery provided direct support. The largest Force regiment, the Third at roughly two-thirds strength, would lead the attack on the evening of 6 January 1944. The battle lasted through the night.
CPT T. Mark Radcliffe, 3rd Company commander, 1st Battalion, Third Regiment said: “We were one of the companies ordered to attack Monte Majo. There was no cover, just a bald hill. I sent scouts forward to take out the German machine gun positions. The Germans didn’t even know we were on them, the attack was that well executed.” By 5:30 am the last enemy positions were overrun. The Forcemen prepared for the inevitable counterattacks because Monte Majo was key to the final German defenses.
As soon as their infantry abandoned the hilltop, the Germans began to shell the summit. “They would drop those mortars in so quickly, and when you’re on the reverse slope of the hill, you can’t hear them fire,” remembered CPT Radcliffe. “Don McKinnon and Herbie Forester and I dove into this foxhole when we got a barrage right after we had taken the top of the hill,” recalled SGT Joe Glass. “A dud landed right in our hole, right in back of our legs. So we just leaped out, but it never exploded.” Then the German infantry came.
9 January 1944. Today’s Force casualty return has 122 names. Again, nearly half are frostbite and exposure. There won’t be much left of the Force if casualties keep at this rate â 1st Canadian Special Service Battalion War Diary
“Those were the worst counterattacks I have ever been involved in,” said Mark Radcliffe. “There were at least twenty-six and they came real close to pushing us off the hill.” Over the next two days, the Forcemen endured more than 40 counterattacks on Majo. Low on ammunition, the troops used abandoned German MG-42 machine guns and ammunition to beat back the determined assaults. The Force held firm.
After capturing Monte Majo, Task Force B was reinforced with Algerian troops, the battalion-sized Bonjour Groupement from the 3rd Algerian Division of the French Expeditionary Corps on 10 January. “I had some contact with the Algerians,” said SGT Joe Glass. “We traded some of our rations for their canned meat, which turned out to be horsemeat.” The Algerians were attached to the Task Force for two days, when the FSSF captured their second major objective, Monte Vischiataro.
During the final phases of the mountain campaign, high casualty rates required major force restructuring. The 1st Battalion, Second Regiment was so depleted that the six line companies were merged into two; the new A Company under CPT Mark Radcliffe had men from 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Companies; and B Company with 4th, 5th, and 6th company soldiers led by CPT Daniel P. Gallagher. Task Force B was dissolved on order of II Corps on 13 January. The Third Regiment captured Hills 780 and 1030 on 14 January and held them for the next three days. This proved to be the last fighting the Force would do in the southern Italian mountains.
The mountain campaign had decimated the Force. Of the 1800 men in the Combat Echelon, 1400 had been killed, wounded, or hospitalized. The brutal, dangerous job of resupplying the combat forces had reduced the Service Echelon to 50% combat effectives. Though the Force broke the Bernhardt Line and opened the way to the Gustav Line and Monte Cassino, it was no longer combat effective. Those bloody campaigns would fall to other units of Fifth Army. Cassino would not fall until May.
“We got darn close to Cassino before withdrawing. In fact, I think I saw guys on patrols that were halfway up Monte Cassino. If there had been a nice, fresh American division, it could have gone up and saved all that fuss later on,” surmised Technician 4th Class John R. Dawson. “We were exhausted; we couldn’t have taken the next outhouse. You could always say ’if we kept going,’ but we couldn’t keep going. There wasn’t that much pressure left in the tank.”
The FSSF returned to Santa Maria to rest and refit. 250 American volunteers joined the unit and were put through an intensive training program. The Canadian Army did not replace all of their contingent’s losses, leaving only 300 men fit for duty. Some volunteers came from the 1st Canadian Division, British 8th Army, over the next year. But Canada never filled their element to full strength again. In fact, LTC Thomas P. Gilday, the ranking FSSF Canadian after the mountain campaign, recommended that all of the Canadians be reassigned to the Canadian Parachute Battalion in England. Fortunately, this did not happen because the Force still had battles to fight at Anzio, into Rome, and in southern France.
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Battle Honour 'ARGENTA GAP'.
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Map showing the locations of the two battalions of The London Irish Rifles.
The Battle Honour ARGENTA GAP is emblazoned on the King's Colour of The Royal Irish Regiment.
The Allies in Italy launched the Spring Offensive in 1945 to break into the Po Valley in northern Italy. The Eighth Army had taken part in an assault crossing the River Senio on 9 April, followed immediately by a vigorous battle to cross the River Santerno and position the 56th Division and the 78th Infantry Division on the River Reno ready to seize the Argenta Gap from the Germans.
The 2nd Battalion The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, having already absorbed men from the disbanded 6th Battalion, was in 38 (Irish) Brigade alongside the 2nd Battalion The London Irish Rifles and the 1st Battalion The Royal Irish Fusiliers. They were organised as a brigade group, including additional supporting armour and armoured personnel carriers called Kangaroos (left). The London Irish, mounted in the majority of the Kangaroos, formed the nucleus of the mobile force that was a forerunner of the modern Battle Group. The Irish Brigade, commanded by Brigadier T P D Scott, had moved to the bridgehead in readiness for the breakout.
(Left, a Priest Kangaroo personnel carrier of 209th Self-Propelled Battery, Royal Artillery, transports infantry of 78th Division near Conselice, 13 April 1945. Second from right wears a 38 (Irish) Brigade shoulder flash. © IWM (NA 24043))
The Brigade's advance from the Reno bridgehead began on 17 April and included the 1st Faughs clearing a route across the Fossa Marina canal. The 2nd Inniskillings quickly followed and, despite a fierce attack by German tanks, the enemy, by the afternoon, was in retreat once again. The next morning the London Irish, aboard their Kangaroos, led the advance and made good progress. The combination of armour and mechanised infantry proved too much for the enemy who fell back from the vital ground in the Argenta Gap. D Company of the Faughs was rightly proud of Sergeant Lang whose patrol captured two German Panzer Mark IV tanks in good running order - complete with their crews.
By the evening of 19 April 1945, the Argenta Gap was in Allied hands and the route to the River Po was open.
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Death of The Wehrmacht The German Campaigns of 1942
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andFor Hitler 1the942 was a keyWarWorldvictoriesmilitary,turning point ofas an overstretched butWehr...
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https://pdfcoffee.com/death-of-the-wehrmacht-the-german-campaigns-of-1942-pdf-free.html
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Citation preview
and
For Hitler 1
the
942 was a key
War
World
victories
military,
turning point of
as an overstretched but
Wehrmacht replaced
lethal
still
II,
German
and huge
brilliant
gains with
territorial
stalemates and strategic retreats.
In this
major reevaluation of that crucial year, Robert Citino shows that the
German
army's emerging woes were rooted as
much
addiction to the "war of
in its
movement"
enemy
—attempts
"short
in
and
smash
to
campaigns—
lively"
as they were
in Hitler's
management
of the war.
the
deeply flawed
From the overwhelming operational victories at
Kerch and Kharkov
in
Alamein
to the catastrophic defeats at El
and
Wehrmocht
Stalingrad, Death of the
offers
May
an eye-opening new view of
upon
that decisive year. Building
widely respected critique
German
Way of War,
how
campaigns
the
in
The
shows
Citino
of
1
his
942
fit
within
the centuries-old patterns of Prussian/
German warmaking and ultimately doomed Hitler's expansionist ambitions. He examines every major campaign and
battle in the Russian
and North
African theaters throughout the year to
assess
how a
and decisive
military victories
tide turned against
geared
to
quick
coped when
the
it.
Citino also reconstructs the
generals' view of the
German
war and
illuminates the multiple contingencies that might
have produced more
favorable
results. In
addition, he cites
the fatal extreme aggressiveness of
German commanders
like
Rommel and assesses how
Erwin ihe
German
O
DEATH OF
THEWEHRMACHT
MODERN WAR STUDIES Theodore A. Wilson General Editor
Raymond J.
A. Callahan
Garry Clifford
Jacob
W.
Kipp
Jay Luvaas Allan R. Millett
Carol Rear don
Dennis Showalter
David R. Stone Series Editors
DEATH OF
THEWEHRMACHT The German
Campaigns
Robert
UNIVERSITY PRESS
OF
of 1942
M.
Citino
KANSAS
—
© 2007 by the University Press of Kansas All rights reserved
Published by the University Press of Kansas (Lawrence, Kansas 66049), which was organized by the Kansas Board of Regents and State University, Fort
Hays
State University,
is
operated and funded by Emporia
Kansas State University, Pittsburg State
University, the University of Kansas, and Wichita State University
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Citino, Robert Michael, 1958-
Death of the Wehrmacht cm.
p.
(Modern war
:
the
German campaigns
of 1942 / Robert
M.
Citino.
studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1.
978-0-7006-1531-5 (cloth
Germany. Wehrmacht
:
alk.
paper)
—History—World War, 1939-1945.
World War,
—Campaigns—Eastern Front. World War, 1939-1945— Campaigns Germany— History, Military— 20th century. North.
1939-1945 Africa,
2.
3.
4.
I.
Title.
D757.C56 2007 94o.54'i343
— dc22
2007016881
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication
Data
is
available.
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5
4
The paper used waste. It
is
3
2
1
in this publication
acid free and meets the
is
recycled and contains 50 percent postconsumer
minimum requirements
of the American National
Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39. 48-1992.
OCT
1007
To
my
wife, Roberta.
Fighter.
Survivor.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments Introduction
ix
xiii
i
i.
From Victory
2.
The Wehrmacht Reborn: The Crimean Campaign
50
3.
The Wehrmacht Reborn:
85
to Defeat: 1941
14
Annihilation
Tobruk
4.
Battering the British: Gazala and
5.
Debacle:
6.
Coming to
a Halt:
North Africa
7.
Coming to
a Halt:
The Caucasus and
8.
The End:
9.
Conclusion:
Notes
The
Summer Campaign
The Death
of the
116
152
193
El Alamein and Stalingrad
Stalingrad
267
Wehrmacht
311
Bibliography
Index
1942
Kharkov
at
385
411
Two photograph
sections
appear following pages 182 and 258.
303
223
Illustrations
Maps
Map Map Map
2.
Operation iy. concentric operations in Yugoslavia 24 Operation Marita: Bewegungskrieg in Greece, April 1941
3.
Bewegungskrieg in the Kerch peninsula: Manstein's drive on
i.
May
Kerch,
Map
1942
29
73
Thrust and counterthrust in the Izyum salient: the battle of Kharkov, May 1942 101 Map 5. Operation Theseus: Rommel's plan for Gazala, May 4.
1942
Map
134
Operation Blue:
6.
conceived)
Map
7.
Mackensen's
8.
10.
11.
1942
Map Map
Mersa Matruh, June
a surprise for
the 90th Light
207
Last gasp in the desert: the Panzerarmee 1942 216 Operational chaos: the Wehrmacht's
at
Alam
Haifa,
30,
summer
offensive,
255
12.
Oil war:
13.
End
Army Group
A's lunge into the Caucasus
229
of the line in the Caucasus: Mackensen's drive on
Ordzhonikidze
Map
at
196
Alamein (Ruweisat Ridge):
9. First
August
Map
Panzer Corps in Operation Blue,
Smashing the center: the Panzerarmee
Division
Map
ride: the III
179
26-27, 1942
Map
offensive, 1942 (as
161
July 1942
Map
German summer
241
Death of the Wehrmacht I: the Allied attack at El Alamein, October 1942 284 Map 15. Death of the Wehrmacht II: Operation Uranus, November 14.
1942
295
Photographs
Young German infantry on the long march to the Don 183 German antitank gun in action against a Yugoslavian bunker near Prevalje
183 ix
x
Illustrations
Yugoslav soldiers 184 German troops smashing their way into the Soviet Union, 184
Bewegnngskrieg 1941
The Germans would crown
the successful fighting in the Crimea
with the storming of Sevastopol 185 German assault troops on the north shore of Severnaya Bay, June 1942
185
Wehrmacht Belbek
The two
infantry enjoying
valley, Sevastopol
some badly needed down-time 186
1942
adversaries at Kharkov,
in the
May
1942
186
A well-drilled German machine gun team in position at Kharkov 187 General Erwin Rommel
Figures 14 and 15. Forgotten armies Margin of survival 189
Margin of victory Rolling toward
its
June 1942
in the field in
187
188
189
doom
190
Figures 19 and 20. In a desert landscape lacking even rudimentary terrain cover, materiel losses were always going to be high 190
A hardy British Matilda tank The war
of materiel
191
192
Operation Blue: German motorized column heading east 259 Operation Blue: SdKfz 251/10 halftrack of the XIV Panzer Corps on
way to Stalingrad 259 Having crossed the Don and reached the Volga, German infantry found tougher fighting on the outskirts of Stalingrad than they had the
260 Father and son 260 General Friedrich von Paulus having expected
of Stalingrad
a
word with
his
gunners outside
261
City fight in Stalingrad
261
The Wehrmacht conquers
yet another factory in Stalingrad, although
the battle for the city rages
on
262
Plunging into the Caucasus 262, 263 The war of movement comes to a halt 263 Even within a war noted for its detailed photographic record, these images of German mountain troops in the Hochkaukasus are still striking
The
264
death of the
Wehrmacht
265
Memorial stone to the Afrika Korps
in the
Western Desert
265
Illustrations
Death of the Wehrmacht. Final resting place of German mountain troops en route to the Black Sea port of Tuapse 266 The Wehrmacht's nemesis in the last years of the war: a U.S. M-4 Sherman tank with an apparently inexhaustible supply of ammunition 266
xi
Acknowledgments
No
book
is
truly written alone, and
to acknowledge the fruition.
Many
many
people
want to take the opportunity
I
who
years have passed since
there, Professors Barbara
my
my
projects to
graduate years
which
University, but not the fondness with
my mentors
help to bring
I recall
at
Indiana
studying under
and Charles Jelavich. All of
my
books
are, in a sense, a tribute to the
hands.
My colleagues within the field also deserve recognition. Among
the
many whose
education
I
received
kindness, friendship, and scholarly advice
I
at their
have re-
ceived gratefully over the years are Dennis E. Showalter (Colorado
Wawro (North Texas State), Richard L. DiNardo Corps Command and Staff College), and the formidably hos-
College), Geoffrey
(Marine
James F. Tent (University of Alabama at Birmingham). I would also like to thank Gerhard L. Weinberg (University of North Carolina) and James S. Corum (U.S. Army Command and General Staff pitable
College) for their expert advice in the preparation of this manuscript.
A special
thanks
is
also in order to
Military History Institute
(MHI)
all
those at the
new
U.S.
in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Army
The
col-
no more welcoming place in the profession than the MHI's reading room. The staff could not be more helpful to the visiting scholar: Conrad Crane, the director of the MHI, and Richard Sommers, the chief of patron services, have every reason to be proud. I would also like to mention archivist David A. Keough, who never fails to teach me something every time we talk, and chief librarian Louise Arnold-Friend, who must put in her share of twenty-five-hour days, based on the excellent condition of the materials I examined while I was there. I will confess that I was one of many who didn't think it would be possible to replace the old MHI, but my first five minutes in the new one dispelled any Luddite nostalgia I might have been harboring. Closer to home, my colleagues at Eastern Michigan University have given me more in the past two years than I could ever hope to repay,
lection of materials found there
is
nonpareil, and there
is
XIII
xiv
Acknowledgments
with James Holoka, Stephen Mucher, Ronald Delph, and deserving pride of place. wife Roberta and
my
And
of course, to
Mark Higbee
my family—my wonderful
daughters Allison, Laura, and Emily
simply no words to thank you adequately for
all
the love.
—there are
DEATH OF
THEWEHRMACHT
Introduction
Ponder
for a
moment
military history. It
is
this
dramatic scene from the pages of
1942, a year of fate for the
German
"Incredible," he muttered to himself, "absolutely ing."
Marshal Fedor von Bock stood
just southeast
at his hilltop
of Lozovaia, shaking his head
at
German
army:
overwhelm-
observation post,
the scene.
The
vista
beneath him was one that few generals in history had ever been privileged to see: an entire enemy army surrounded in a tiny pocket
few miles away. He focused his field glasses here, then there, flitting back and forth. The entire area couldn't have been more than two miles wide from east to east, perhaps ten miles from north to south, and every inch of it was seething with activity. Massed formations of dusty brown infantry, tank columns so dense you could probably walk from one vehicle to the other without touching the ground, guns of every shape and description all milling about, moving hither and yon without apparent plan or purpose. Above them thundered hundreds of Luftwaffe ground attack aircraft, Richthofen's boys: Stukas and 109s and Ju-88s, bombing and strafing and herding. With so many men and tanks, guns and horses, packed into such a tight space, they were an impossible-to-miss target. The airmen were probably licking their chops, he thought, and the same went for his gunners. As he surveyed the scene, he could
just a
—
from all points of the compass into the helpless, writhing mass below him. There were explosions everywhere; every see artillery firing
square inch of the pocket roiled with
fire
and smoke.
He thought of a term he had learned so many years ago as a cadet in the War Academy: Kesselschlacht, the "cauldron battle." It was the perfect term to describe
army being boiled
alive.
what was going on below: an entire enemy He remembered studying the campaigns of
the Great Elector, Frederick the Great, Blucher, and Moltke.
They
were the gamblers of their day: bold maneuvers, daring attacks from
2
Introduction
flank and rear, battles of encirclement.
And he remembered another
word: Vernichtungsschlacht, the "battle of annihilation." There was a massive explosion in the killing fields below. Bock couldn't know it, but a single 500-pound bomb delivered from a Stuka had just struck a Soviet ammunition convoy. The exploboth primary and secondary had killed or wounded over sions
—
—
300 men. Were those screams he heard? Horses? Men? No matter. He was back to his reverie. He thought once more of those longago classes, the handsome, red-bound books. Der Schlachterfolg, they were called "Success in Battle." They contained the battles and operations of all the great German captains, and they were required reading in the first-year course. The great cavalry commander Seydlitz, slashing across the march route of the hapless French army at Rossbach and destroying it in an hour. Yorck crossing the Elbe River at Wartenburg into the rear of Napoleon's army, the maneuver that trapped the emperor and led directly to his defeat at Leipzig. Hadn't the king given him a new title after that one? Yes, he thought, "Yorck von Wartenburg." Best of all, Moltke's elegant maneuver at Koniggratz, coolly risking the destruction of one army while waiting for another one to slam into the Austrian flank. Bock had long ago memorized the details of every one of these battles, could recite their orders of battle, could still diagram each one on a chalkboard from memory. He was sixty-one, but he felt young again. Not one of those immortal battles, he suddenly realized, could rival what was happening beneath him at this very moment. For ease, for swiftness, for decisiveness, this might be the greatest victory in the history of the German army. "They'll be adding another name to that list," he chuckled. Maybe he'd even get a title, like old Yorck. He chuckled and rolled it from his tongue: "Fedor von Bock und Kharkov." At Marshal Bock's feet, an enemy army was dying.
—
The
above scene
may seem
means anything to the means the turning point of
strange. If 1942
informed student of World War II, it the war, the year of El Alamein and Stalingrad (and, in the Pacific, the year of Guadalcanal and Midway), the turning of the tide the "hinge of fate," in Winston Churchill's memorable phrase. It was the year in which the German army (the Wehrmacht) died and took German dreams of conquest along with it. But it was also a year that began with no fewer than five of the greatest victories in the long history of German arms: at Kerch, Kharkov, and Sevastopol in the Soviet Union, and 1
—
2
Introduction
3
Gazala and Tobruk in North Africa. Here the Wehrmacht wrote a new chapter in its already impressive resume of battlefield success. On the strategic level, things had turned sour for Germany in Deat
Germany, already
war with Great Britain, a conflict that it tried half-heartedly to end in the summer and fall of 1940, had done nothing but add enemies since then. In June 1941, with Britain still unconquered, it had launched Operation Barbarossa, an invasion of the Soviet Union. The early weeks of the campaign had seen the Wehrmacht smash one Soviet army after another: at Bialystok, at Minsk, at Smolensk, and especially at Kiev. As summer turned to fall, Barbarossa became Operation Typhoon, the drive on Moscow. The Germans were within sight of the Soviet capital by December when the Red Army launched a great counteroffensive that drove them back in some confusion. The next day, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and the German Fiihrer, Adolf Hitler, decided to join them in their war on America. Earlier in the year, Germany had been at war with Britain alone. Now, just six months later, it was at war with an immense and wealthy enemy coalition, which Churchill, with a nod to his great ancestor the Duke of Marlborough, dubbed the "Grand Alli-
cember
ance."
1941.
at
3
The Grand
Alliance controlled most of the world's resources. It
included the preeminent naval and colonial power (Britain), the largest land power (the Soviet Union), and the globe's financial and industrial giant (the United States)
Germany. Harnessing
—more than enough potential power to smash
that dominating power, however, proved to be
The United
had come into the war with only the barest idea of how it intended to fight it. It would become evident to all concerned that there was a world of difference between potentially beating Germany and actually defeating the Gera difficult thing.
man army on
a field
States, in particular,
of battle.
The Problem: The German Way of War would prove to be harder than anyone could have imagined. If there was one army in the world that was used to fighting from a position of material inferiority, this was the one. Since the earliest days of the German state, a unique military culture had evolved, a German way of war. Its birthplace was the kingdom of Prus-
Performing that
sia.
feat
Starting in the seventeenth century with Frederick William, the
Great Elector, Prussia's rulers recognized that their small, relatively
4
Introduction
impoverished state on the European periphery had to fight wars that 4 were kurtz und vives (short and lively). Crammed into a tight spot in the middle of Europe, surrounded by states that vastly outweighed in terms of
manpower and
wars of attrition. a
way fast
could not win long, drawn-out
start, Prussia's military
problem was to
find
ended in a decisive battlefield vicstorm against the enemy, pounding
had to unleash
a
and hard.
The mans
it
to fight short, sharp wars that
tory. Its conflicts it
From the
resources,
it
solution to Prussia's strategic problem was something the Ger-
called Bewegungskrieg, the
"war of movement." This way of war
maneuver on the operational level. It was not simply tactical maneuverability or a faster march rate, but the movement of large units like divisions, corps, and armies. Prussian commanders, and their later German descendants, sought to maneuver these formations in such a way that they could strike the mass of the enemy army a sharp, even annihilating, blow as rapidly as possible. It might involve stressed
a surprise assault against
an unprotected flank, or both flanks.
On sev-
eral notable occasions, it
even resulted in entire Prussian or
German
armies getting into the rear of an of any general schooled in the ally, a
art.
enemy army, the dream scenario The goal was Kesselschlacht: liter-
"cauldron battle," but more specifically a battle of encirclement,
one that hemmed in enemy forces on all sides before destroying them through a series of concentric operations. This vibrant and aggressive operational posture imposed certain requirements on German armies: an extremely high level of battlefield aggression and an officer corps that tended to launch attacks no matter what the odds, to give just two examples. The Germans also found over the years that conducting an operational-level war of movement required a flexible system of command that left a great deal of initiative in the hands of lower-ranking commanders. It is customary today to refer to this command system as Auftragstaktik (mission tactics): the higher commander devised a general mission (Auftrag), and then left the
means of achieving it
to the officer
on the
spot. It
is
more
accurate,
however, to speak, as the Germans themselves did, of the "independence of the lower commander" (Selbstandigkeit der Unterfiihrer). A s
up a situation and act on his own was an equalizer for a numerically weaker army, allowing it to grasp opportunities that might be lost if it had to wait for reports and orders to climb up and down the chain of command. It wasn't always an elegant thing to behold. Prussian-German military history is filled with lower-level commanders making untimely commander's
ability to size
Introduction
5
advances, initiating highly unfavorable, even bizarre, attacks, and gen-
—
making nuisances of themselves at least from the perspective of the higher command. There were men like General Eduard von Flies, who launched one of the most senseless frontal assaults in military hiserally
tory at the battle of Langensalza in 1866 against
a
dug-in Hanoverian
6
army that outnumbered him two to one General Karl von Steinmetz, whose impetuous command of the 1st Army in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 almost upset the entire operational applecart and General Hermann von Francois, whose refusal to follow orders almost de;
7
;
railed the East Prussian
campaign
in 1914.
8
Although these events are
nearly forgotten today, they represent the active, aggressive side of
German
opposed to the more thoughtful, intellectual approach of Karl Maria von Clausewitz, Alfred Graf von Schlieffen, or Helmuth von Molkte the Elder. Put differently, these hard chargers in the field tended to elevate the strength of the commander's will over a rational calculus of ends and means. Indeed, although Bewegungskrieg may have been a logical solution to Prussia's strategic problem, it was hardly a panacea. The classic illustration of its strengths and weaknesses was the Seven Years' War (1756-1763). Frederick the Great opened the conflict with a classic the
tradition, as
front-loaded campaign, assembling an
immense
force,
seizing the
by invading the Austrian province of Bohemia, and pounding the Austrian army in front of Prague with a series of highly aggressive attacks. Unfortunately, he also pounded his own army in strategic initiative
the process.
When the
Frederick attacked
Austrians sent an army to the relief of Prague, 9
it
too, at Kolin. It
may
have been his
own
fault,
or
may
have been due to an overambitious subordinate commander (a general named, of all things, von Manstein), but what Frederick init
tended
as
an attack onto the Austrian right flank turned into
assault against a well-prepared
to 35,000.
The
a frontal
enemy who outnumbered him 50,000
Prussians were mauled and retreated in disarray.
Frederick was
now in serious trouble. The Austrians were resurgent,
the Russians advancing,
if
ponderously, from the
east,
and the French
moving on him from the west. He retrieved the situation by some of the most decisive victories of the entire era. First he crushed the French at Rossbach (November 1757), where another ambitious subordinate, the cavalry commander Friedrich Wilhelm von Seydlitz (who, like Manstein, would also have a namesake general in World War II), played the crucial role, actually maneuvering his entire cavalry force 10 across the march route of the French army. Then, at Leuthen in December, Frederick's keen gift for operational maneuver resulted in
6
Introduction
the whole Prussian
army dramatically appearing on the perpendicular
against a weakly defended Austrian left flank and a shocked Austrian
high command. Finally, in August 1758, he warded off the Russians at Zorndorf, a murderous and close-fought battle that saw him march his
army
around the Russian flank to attack it from the rear. Frederick had saved himself, for the moment, with classic examples of short, lively campaigns. But with his enemies refusing to make peace with him, the overall situation remained dire. The alliance facing him was huge and had many times his own number of men, cannon, and horse. His only way out now was to fight from the central position, holding secondary sectors with small forces (often commanded by his brother, Prince Henry ), rushing armies to whatever sector appeared most threatened in order to bring the enemy to battle there and crush him. Even while Prussia sat on the overall strategic defensive, however, the army's task was to remain a Well-honed instrument of attack. It had to be ready for pounding marches, aggressive assaults, and then more pounding marches. It couldn't destroy Frederick's adversaries, either singly or collectively. What it had to do instead was to land such a hard blow against any one of them France, let us say that Louis XV might well decide that seeking another round with Frederick wasn't worth the money, time, or effort, and therefore decide to drop out of the war. It wasn't an easy mission for the Prussian army, especially because the incessant attacks it launched in the first two years of the war had dulled its edge, with casualties among the officers and elite regiments being especially high. Prussia fought all its succeeding wars in similar fashion. It opened them by attempting to win rapid victories through the war of movement. Some, such as the October 1806 campaign against Napoleon, misfired horribly. Here the Prussian army deployed aggressively, far out on a limb to the west and south. It was an ideal spot to initiate offensive operations as Frederick the Great might have conceived them. Unfortunately, Frederick was long gone, his generals were in many cases well into their eighties, and they were now facing the Emperor of the French and his Grande Armee, two forces of nature in their respective primes. Prussia paid the price at the twin battles of Jena and entire
clear
11
12
—
Auerstadt. It was Bewegungskrieg of a sort. Unfortunately,
—
all
of the
Bewegung was performed by the French. Other Prussian campaigns succeeded beyond their commanders' wildest dreams. In 1866, General Helmuth von Moltke's dramatic victory at the battle of Koniggratz essentially won the war with Austria 13
Introduction
just eight days after
it
began.
14
The main
7
action in the war with France
was similarly brief. Prussian troops crossed the French border on August 4 and fought the climactic battle of St. Privat-Gravelotte two weeks later. Major operations in this war ended with an entire French army, and the emperor Napoleon III, bottled up in Sedan and smashed from all compass points simultaneously, perhaps the purest expression of the Kesselschlacht concept in history. The year 1914 was the major test for the Prussian (and now the German) doctrine of making war. The opening campaign was an immense operation involving the mobilization and deployment of no fewer than eight field armies; it was the brainchild of Count Alfred von Schlieffen, the chief of the General Staff until 1906. Like all German commanders, he had set a general operational framework (usually labeled, incorrectly, the Schlieffen Plan). What he most certainly did not do was to draw up any sort of detailed or prescriptive maneuver scheme. That, as always in the German way of war, was up to the commanders on the spot. The opening campaign in the west came within an inch of winning a decisive operational victory. The Germans smashed four of France's five field armies, nearly trapping the final one at Namur. They came far closer to winning the war than historians have generin 1870
15
ally
assumed, but eventually came to grief at the battle of the Marne in
September
1914.
The failure at the Marne was the decisive moment of World War I. For German staff officers and commanders alike, it felt as if they had returned to the time of the Seven Years' War. All the ingredients were
There was the same sense of being surrounded by a coalition of powerful enemies. There was the same sense that the army would there.
had been before the bloodletting of that first autumn. Its new commander, General Erich von Falkenhayn, went so far as to tell Kaiser Wilhelm II that the army was a "broken instrument" incapable of winning any sort of annihilating victory. Most problematic was the locking of the western front into trenches, barbed wire, machine guns, and a solid wall of backing artillery. This was no longer mobile Bewegungskrieg, but its exact opposite, what the Germans call Stellungskrieg, the static war of position. With both armies hunkered down in trenches and hurling shells at one another, it was never be
as
powerful
by definition
a
as it
war of
attrition,
and that was
a conflict that
Germany
could never win.
Germany's only hope lay opponents out of the war. Although the Germans
Even now, however, there was in driving
one of
its
a sense that
8
Introduction
did indeed
become experts
at defensive
war, warding off a nearly con-
stant series of Allied offensives, they also launched repeated offen-
own, attempting to restart the war of movement that German officers continued to view as normative. For the most part, these offensive operations targeted the Russians, although there were huge offensives in the west in both 191 6 (against Verdun) and 191 sives of their
(the so-called Kaiserschlacht, or "Kaiser's battle," of the spring).
were
also large-scale offensives against the
Italians at
Caporetto in
Romanians
1917. It is significant that
in 1916
There
and the
the post-1918 profes-
German army, the weekly Militar- Wbchenblatt, for example, spent almost as much time studying the Romanian campaign, a classic example of a rapid Bewegungskrieg, as it did the much sional literature of the
16 campaigns of trench warfare in the west. Those four long years of trench warfare exhausted the German army and eventually ground it down, but they did not change the way the German officer corps viewed military operations. It should be clear by now that the Wehrmacht's situation after 1941, ringed by powerful enemies who vastly outnumbered it, was nothing particularly new in German military history. There were unique aspects of this war, such as Hitler's vast plans for European and world empire, his racialism and eagerness to commit genocide, and the willing participation of the Wehrmacht itself in the crimes of his regime. On the operational level, however, it was business as usual. The Wehrmacht, its staff, and its officer corps were all doing what the Prussian army had done under Frederick the Great and what the Kaiser's army had done under generals Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff. Until the end of the war, it sought to land a resounding blow against one of its enemies a blow hard enough to shatter the enemy coalition, or at least to demonstrate the price that the Allies would have pay for victory. The strategy failed, but it certainly did its share of damage in those last four years, and it retained enough sting to the very end to give British, Soviet, and American commanders alike plenty of prema-
larger
—
ture gray hairs.
Although launching repeated offensives in order to smash the enemy coalition failed in the end, no one at the time or since has been able to come up with a better solution to Germany's strategic conundrum. A war-winning strategy? Not in this case, obviously. The optimal one for a Germany facing a world of enemies? Perhaps, perhaps not. An operational posture consistent with German military history and tradition as it had unfolded over the centuries? Absolutely.
Introduction
9
The Work
Wehrmacht provided a characteristic answer to the question, "What do you do when the blitzkrieg fails?" by launching another one. The attempt to defeat the Soviet Union in a lightning campaign in 1941 had come to grief in front of Moscow, and the winter that followed was one of the worst periods in the history of the German army. In 1942, the
It survived,
but
it
suffered massive casualties (over
1
million) and losses
equipment and weapons that it had still not made good the following spring. Despite the low manpower and poor supply situation, the high command Adolf Hitler, the staffs of the army command and armed forces command, and the chief of the General Staff, General Franz Haider immediately began planning for another offensive round in the Soviet Union. They chose the southern sector, aiming for the oilfields of the Caucasus, a strategic target whose seizure would provide Germany with the fuel it needed to fight a war of almost indefinite duration and permanently cripple the Soviet war economy. Along the way, the army would have to block Soviet reinforcements from arriving in the sector by either masking or seizing the city of Stalingrad on the Volga River. Before this offensive, code-named Operation Blue, could begin, there also had to be certain preliminary operations: clearing Soviet forces out of the Crimea, for example, or cleaning up a number of jagged salients along the highly irregular front. For an army that had barely survived the previous winter, it was a full operational plate. So large were the demands that it would place on the Wehrmacht that the high command had no choice but to rely on the allied and satellite nations for much of its manpower: Italians, Hungarians, and especially Romanians. Although the mass of the Wehrmacht would be heading east this spring, a significant German force was already in contact with the British in North Africa. The "western desert" (as in "west of Egypt") was the highly unusual turf of General Erwin Rommel's Panzer armee. It, too, was a coalition force: a pair of German Panzer Divisions (grouped together into the Afrika Korps); the German 90th Light Division, a motorized formation especially equipped and trained for desert conditions; and a mass of Italian divisions, a few of them motorized (Ariete armored division, for example), but most straight leg infantry. As May dawned, Rommel's army was facing a much larger and better-equipped British 8th Army, ensconced in a toiigh defenin
—
—
17
sive position that stretched
out into the desert south of Gazala.
The
10
Introduction
many ways unique, but Wehrmacht was marching off
operational problems of desert warfare were in
some things never change. Just to attack a
much larger and Rommel react to
as the
wealthier adversary in Operation Blue,
entrenched enemy that outnumbered him, by doing the characteristic thing: launching an offensive at Gazala, Operation Theseus, that would mark the apogee of so, too,
did
his situation, an
his career.
Death of the Wehrmacht is intended as a sequel to my previous book, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years' War to the Third Reich. Where the former work covered 300 years of military history, this one roughly seven months in the operational life of the German army, starting with the decisions to launch Operations Blue and Theseus and ending with the destruction of the Panzerarmee at the will analyze
battle of El
Alamein and the encirclement of the German 6th
at Stalingrad. It will
operations in
provide a detailed account of
German
Army
military
theaters during those fateful months, both in the
all
North African
with an overview of the campaigns of 1941 in both the Balkans and in the Soviet Union, we will turn to the renewed fighting in the east, the launching of what 18 the Germans called the "second campaign." The action will begin in the nearly isolated peninsula known as the Crimea, where General Erich von Manstein would write another chapter in his own personal resume, first by smashing Soviet armies in the eastern Crimea in the highly mobile Kerch campaign, a decisive and improbable victory that is nearly forgotten today, and then launching a successful, although eastern and
fronts. Starting
bloody, assault on what was at the time the strongest fortress in the
world: Sevastopol.
From
here,
we move
north. Operation Fridericus was one of the
preliminary offensives to regularize the front in the east before the start of Blue.
Directed
at a
sharp bulge jutting into the
German
lines
between German-held Kharkov and Soviet-held Izyum (the "Izyum salient"), it was on the launching pad and ready to go when something unusual happened. The Red Army launched an offensive of its own, this one out of the Izyum salient toward Kharkov. It was a new model Soviet force, one that relied on tanks and more tanks, very different from the infantry horde that the Germans had come to expect from 1941. The clash of armor would be one of the largest in the war so far, and the result would be one of the greatest victories of annihilation in the history of the
German army.
Kerch and Kharkov, Rommel own grand offensive at Gazala. The situation seemed
Just weeks after decisive victories at
would launch
his
Introduction
particularly unpropitious for an offensive.
Manpower
levels,
11
numbers
—
of tanks and guns, the inherent strength of the defense all these crucial factors tilted decisively toward the British. The Panzerarmee had
something
too: not only a skilled general, but a
for seeking the operational-level opening,
way of war
that called
one that scoffed
at
an "or-
dinary victory" in favor of an annihilating one. Rommel's solution to the Gazala problem was simple:
march
mechanized army, in the dead of night and across a featureless desert, around the flank of his adversary. The British woke up to more than their morning tea: they found an entire tank army in the rear of their carefully constructed defensive line. When all was said and done, the 8th Army had been routed, Rommel had seized the fortress, Tobruk, that had eluded him the previous year, and the Panzerarmee was in Egypt, driving hard for Alexandria, the Nile River, and the Suez Canal. It was an amazing May, but everyone in the Wehrmacht planning circles knew that the main event was yet to come. Operation Blue began well and ended badly, a microcosm of German operations in both world wars. With no fewer than five German armies (along with three, and later four, from the satellite countries) involved in the initial thrusts, it was a complex plan over which Hitler and Haider alike were determined to maintain a firm grip. Above all, they wanted to avoid the operational chaos that had arisen during the drive on Moscow the previous fall, a factor that had played no small role in the German his entire
failure.
The
success of the opening assault seemed to bear
them
out. Blue
slashed through the Soviet lines within days, heading east toward Vo-
ronezh and then swinging to the south, brushing the Don River with its sleeve on the left. The Red Army appeared to have been caught off balance. Most of its best formations were completely out of position, screening Moscow from the southwest against a thrust that never came. In front of the German assault, one Soviet formation after another simply vanished. Seen by some
as a
new,
flexible operational ap-
proach on the part of the Soviet army and by others as simple flight, it was probably something in the middle: an order to retreat from higher command echelons that got lost in translation by the time it had reached the common riflemen in the field. At any rate, it was a process attended by a sense of chaos
all its
From the German perspective,
own.
the Soviet
flight,
whether planned or
spontaneous, was a development that threatened the entire operational sequence of Operation Blue. On two occasions, at Millerovo and then at
Rostov,
German armored pincers
closed
on what the high command
12
Introduction
believed were large Soviet concentrations
— and came up empty. Like
the proverbial tree falling in the forest without anyone to hear, the Wehrmacht had fought a Kesselschlacht without the enemy being present. Analysis of the
form
German
reaction to this failed maneuver scheme
major portion of the book. It is a disturbing picture: a sequence of fired generals and a raving Fiihrer, hastily improvised operational plans, and in the background, a million-man army hurtling ever further from its bases of supply and communications. By September, it was stuck, with two strong arrowheads embedded firmly at Stalingrad and in the Caucasus, unable to reach its objectives and equally unable, or unwilling, to retreat. It was in southern Russia that Bewegungskrieg ground to a halt, giving way to the very type of war that the German army had historically tried to avoid: Stellungskrieg. At virtually the same time, the wheels at come off of Rommel's offensive as well, and he too found himself stuck fast against superior forces. The result in both theaters would be decisive and catastrophic defeat. After their promising starts, the German offensives of 1942 would give birth to twins: Stalingrad and El Alamein. In the course of this survey, we will attempt to answer some fundamental questions about the Wehrmacht. How does a military force configured, armed, and trained for the offensive war of movement and quick victory cope with a military situation that suddenly turns sour? will
a
How much much ers?
responsibility does Hitler bear for the catastrophe?
should be shared by the General Staff and the
How
commandand how much
field
How much was it the result of individual decisions,
was the result of more impersonal, systemic factors, the complicated matrix of military culture, tradition, and history that comprise the German way of war? Indeed, how much of it was simply chance? Throughout, I have tried to refrain from argumentation that attempts to show "how the German army could have won at Stalingrad" or "what the Wehrmacht should have done to win the war." This is a history book. It does not offer a series of perfect plans for 1942 as if it could make any difference at this point; nor does it purport to be a manual of lessons learned. These approaches, which praise this decision as "correct" and that one as "wrong" with all the assurance of a sixteenth-century reformer parsing Scripture, are essentially ahistorical (as important as they may be to the training of soldiers and officers). They are akin to writing a history of the French Revolution that does nothing but tell Louis XVI how he could have avoided it. Operational history (that is, explaining what actually happened in the course of a campaign, and why) is complicated enough without spend-
—
19
Introduction
13
ing time lecturing the historical actors on what they ought to have
done.
20
Admittedly, there are times to split the offensive into
two
when
it is
hard not
to. Hitler's
decision
parts in late July 1942 and head simul-
taneously for Stalingrad and the Caucasus (Directive 45) is a classic example. Another was the decision, shared by all levels of authority, to
Rommel
Egypt with an unconquered Malta
choking off his supply lines. In both cases, however, the Germans came within an ace of victory anyway. The short distances, in some cases only hunsend
into
Wehrmacht from its strategic objecCaucasus, and North Africa should give anyone
dreds of yards, that separated the tives in Stalingrad, the
still
pause about treating 1942 as
a
foregone Conclusion.
From Victory to Defeat 2941
In the opening years of World
War
II,
the
German army uncorked
a
run of victories that was quite unlike anything in living memory. In contrast to World War I, in which the front lines soon solidified and battlefield stalemate was the norm, this war saw the Germans move from one dramatic success to another. With their fearsome tank, or Panzer, formations as an apparently irresistible spearhead, and with a powerful
air
force (Luftwaffe) circling overhead, the
Wehrmacht ran
through, around, and over every defensive position thrown in
its
path.
The opening campaign in Poland (which went by the operational name Case White) saw the Germans smash the Polish army in eighteen days, although a bit more fighting was necessary to reduce the capital, Warsaw. Equally impressive was the invasion of Denmark and Norway (which went by the operational name Exercise Weser), which saw two enemy capitals, Oslo and Copenhagen, fall on the first day to a combination of ground forces, seaborne landings, and paratroopers. Still, there were those among the European general staffs who took comfort in the fact that up to now, the Wehrmacht was beating up on 1
2
weaker, smaller neighbors.
The
great offensive in the
West
in
May
1940 (Case Yellow) quickly disabused them of that notion. Here, the German Panzer formations met and smashed the cream of the French and British armies, destroying the former and booting the latter off the continent altogether in a hurried evacuation from one of the last ports still in British hands, Dunkirk. Even with most of the British army gone, the Germans took something like 2 million French, British, Dutch, and Belgian prisoners. Combined with the minimal nature of their own losses, Case Yellow was one of the most decisive military victories in history.
3
The next year continued the
pattern.
A lightning drive into the Bal-
kans in April 1941 overran both Yugoslavia and Greece. 14
When
a Brit-
5
From Victory to Defeat: 1941
ish
army
arrived to help defend the latter, the
Germans drove
it
1
from
position to position, then off the mainland altogether, forcing their
second forced evacuation in less than a year. The British destination this time was Crete, where they were hit by a true thunderbolt: Operation Mercury, the first all-airborne military operahapless foe into
its
4 tion in history. It quickly seized the island
monwealth defenders, who had
from
its
British and
Com-
to evacuate again, this time to Egypt.
Indeed, in the opening period of the war,
it
sometimes seemed
like the
evacuation had become the characteristic British military operation. Certainly no other army in the world had as
much
practice at
it.
German operations in World War II continues somehow novel, as an example of a new method of
Analysis of these
them as warmaking called to paint
blitzkrieg,
or "lightning war." Allegedly invented
transformed warfare by mechanizing it. In place of the foot soldier and the cavalry, there were now machines, especially tanks and aircraft. In place of the trench deadlock that had characterized World War I were vast campaigns of breakthrough, encirclement, and maneuver. In fact, the word itself is in the interwar era, blitzkrieg
is
said to have
5
misnomer. The German army didn't invent it, and they hardly ever used the word outside of quotation marks. It was a term that seems to have been kicked around international military circles in the 1930s to describe any rapid and decisive victory, in contrast to the long, horrible war of attrition that had just ended. Even if they didn't invent the blitzkrieg, however, the Germans clearly did something in the interwar period. It had been a time of rethinking and experimentation for them, certainly, but we might say the same thing for all armies of the day. The British had invented the tank and were working on a radical Experimental Mechanized Brigade as early as 1928. Likewise, if there was one military force in the world that seemed obsessed with the possibilities of tanks, aircraft, and paratroopers, it would had to have been the Red Army. What distinguished the activity of the interwar German army (the Reichswehr until 1934, then renamed the Wehrmacht) was that it was not trying to discover anything new. It felt that it already had a workable wara
6
war of movement on the operational level. This is where the Germans saw tanks and aircraft as making their contribution. These new weapons had to be used on the operational level that is, in large units, from divisions on up. The result was the Panzer Division, a unit built around tanks but containing a full panoply of combined arms: infantry, artillery, reconnaissance, supply columns, bridging trains, and more, all of which had their mobility fighting doctrine: Bewegungskrieg, the 7
—
Chapter One
16
raised to the level of the tank.
A Panzer
Division was more than any
contemporary army could handle from 1939 to 1941. It could assault and penetrate, smash through into the clear, pursue, and destroy any defensive position or formation that tried to stop it, then reform and do it all over again. It wasn't a wonder weapon or magic bullet, but it certainly might have looked that way to a Polish lancer or a Belgian antitank gunner.
As important
8
as the
tank and the airplane was the Wehrmacht's highly
command and control. Some of this hearkened German traditions, especially the notion of the inde-
articulated system of
back to older pendence of the lower commander, often referred to, incorrectly, as 9 Auftragstaktik, or mission tactics. Arising first out of the distinctive in which the king had only limited ausocial contract in old Prussia thority to intervene in the operations of his commanders, who were without exception of the noble, or Junker, caste it had evolved over
—
—
the centuries into the distinctive characteristic of
Prussian and
von
German
command
in the
Helmuth modern field
armies. In the eyes of Field Marshal
Moltke, the victor in the wars of German unification,
become far too complex to be tightly choreographed in advance. There were simply too many factors in play: huge forces,
operations had
complex weaponry, and massive supply requirements, not to mention the friction and fog that were simply part of war in any era. Under Moltke, the Prussian army prided itself on providing general missions to lower levels of command, then allowing the lower commander to devise the best
way
to carry
them
out.
On
all
levels
of command, or-
ders were to be short, snappy, and to the point. Ideally, they were to be
Prusso-German armies made more limited use of written orders than any other contemporary force. Finally, commanddelivered orally; the
were encouraged to forgo maps, if their orders by pointing to the actual
and to deliver terrain. The recipient was to listen, repeat the order out loud in the presence of his superior, and then go off and carry it out in the best possible way. On its face, the Prussian command system might seem to be a recipe for chaos, a free-for-all in which each division, corps, and army commander fought his own private war. In fact, there were two circumstances that worked in its favor. The staff system was the first. While on campaign, each commander had a chief of the General Staff at his side, an operational advisor and confidante. He was not a co-commander, and in fact the formation commander always bore ultimate responsibility for his own decisions and the performance of his unit. The chief of staff, however, was an elite officer who had been taught ers
at all possible,
7
From Victory to Defeat: 1941
1
the art of war in a highly selective school with a murderously difficult
Members of the staff tended to way and to dispense remarkably
curriculum, the famous Kriegsakademie. see operational problems in a similar
commanders with whom they worked. A second factor that made Auftragstaktik work was the highly aggressive nature of the Prussian-German officer corps. Throughout similar advice to the
German
military history, the officer corps's operational doctrine
al-
making a beeline for the nearest enemy force and launching an attack on it. It rarely meant slacking or lying down on the job. Prussia-Germany had fought dozens of campaigns since the seventeenth century, and virtually all of them saw the army on the operational offensive, seeking to strike a sharp and unsettling blow against its opponents. The "short and lively war" demanded most always consisted of one
thing:
such an aggressive posture. Frederick the Great was the exemplar, perhaps the most aggressive commander of the entire eighteenth century, and certainly
was
all
one of the top ten of
that complicated.
all
time.
He
"The Prussian army always
didn't think
war
he once path through the Napoleonic wars, attacks,"
During Prussia's difficult there was Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher, a septuagenarian oddball who wedded an innate battlefield drive and aggression to a visceral hatred of the French enemy. His art of war wasn't all that intellectual, either; his men nicknamed him Marschall Voi~warts (Gen10 eral Forward). During the wars of unification, Moltke may have been said.
the brains of the army,
its
were army commanders
doctrinal and administrative wizard. Its guts
like
army
Frederick Charles, the Red Prince,
outnumbered him two
who
one to get the battle of Koniggratz rolling in 1866. " World War II hard chargers like Guderian and Manstein look far less unusual when we examine attacked an Austrian
that
to
Prussian-German warmaking from the perspective of the tongue duree. This spirit of aggression was not something that the German army invented one afternoon in 1935. The preference for the "short and lively" war; Bewegungskrieg (the war of movement on the operational level); an officer corps that was allowed to handle matters in the field as it saw fit, without a great deal of interference from above, and that paid for that privilege in blood, some of its own and a great deal belonging to the men under its command; tanks and aircraft working in close harmony, commanded and controlled by the modern miracle of radio communications these comprised the impressive and highly successful operational package the Germans brought to the table in the opening years of World War II. Like all military cultures, it was a unique combination of traits, a
—
18
Chapter One
"distinctive language"
spoken only by the Wehrmacht,
German military journal of the in
all
day, the Militdr Wochenblatt, put
of Germany's wars, the main
in Full Stride:
12
it.
As
—indeed, the only—question was
whether Germany's adversaries could learn to decipher
Bewegungskrieg
as the leading
it
in time.
The Balkans, 1941
war was a simple contest to see who could most completely humiliate an opponent in a first encounter, then the Wehrmacht would have won World War II, hands down. The Polish, Danish, Norwegian, French, Yugoslavian, Greek, British, and Soviet armies all learned this lesson the hard way. The first six armies did not survive to tell the tale, nor did the states they were called on to defend. British armies were smashed not just in their first encounter with the Wehrmacht (in If
France), but also in the next three, as well (in
North Africa,
in Greece,
and then again in Crete). Britain managed to survive the experience thanks to the presence of the English Channel, a sturdy water barrier that has stopped many would-be invaders since 1066. Finally, the Soviet army was hammered as hard as any military force in history during that first awful campaigning season, from June to December 1941. It was an utterly hapless performance that saw it sustain the incredible total of 4 million casualties in six short months, most of them prisoners lost in one massive Kesselschlacht after another. And finally, lest we forget, the U.S. Army's first meeting with the Wehrmacht, on an obscure hunk of Tunisian rock known as the Kasserine Pass, was a humbling experience that should have made all Americans happy for the existence of the Atlantic Ocean. The point is that first encounters with the Wehrmacht were inherently dangerous. This was an army that liked its campaigns frontloaded, meticulously planned, and designed for maximum impact. The corollary was that those who survived that first encounter had taken the best shot that the Germans had to offer. For the Wehrmacht, things were always going to go downhill after it delivered that first devastating blow. The advantage in sustainability was always going to lie with the Allies, especially after the entry of the United States into the war in 1941. As satisfying as it would be to blame the problem on individuals within the Nazi leadership, it was not due to poor planning on Hitler's part or to the General Staffs deep and documented disinterest in logistics. It was simply the way things were, the way they had been since the 1600s, and the way they would still be to-
From Victory
19
Germany had survived World War II as a great military power. there was still a German General Staff, there would still be war-
day, If
to Defeat: 1941
if
fighting doctrine based
on landing
a
knockout punch early through
aggressive, mobile operations.
One of the classic examples of Bewegungskrieg in World War II was the German campaign in the Balkans in the spring of 1941. Here the 13
Germans fought
the front-loaded campaign to perfection, with the
German 2nd and
12th
Armies launching two simultaneous operations into Greece and Yugoslavia on April 6. Operation Marita the invasion of Greece had been in the works for months, a response to the humiliating defeat suffered by the Italian army in its invasion of Greece in late 1940. Not only had the hardy Greeks stopped Italian forces at the border, but they also had gone on the offensive, driving into Albania and threatening to unhinge the entire Axis position in the Balkans. The invasion of Yugoslavia, by contrast, had been put together overnight, quite literally, as a response to a pro-Allied coup in Belgrade on the night of March 26-27, 1941. It was an improvisation,
—
—
just the sort of thing that the
Germans
historically excelled
at.
The
brief time span for conception and planning did leave a few loose ends
here and there, and in nearly It is
After
fact,
the undertaking would take place under the
anonymous designation of Operation
25.
easy to underestimate the significance of a campaign like all,
given
its
population and resource advantages,
this.
Germany
should have been able to beat the Greek army, or the Yugoslav army, or both at the same time, without breaking a sweat.
We might say the
same thing about the Polish campaign in 1939, or the invasion of Denmark and Norway in 1940. Yet those who look at the Balkan campaign and see only a great power landing a hit on two of the war's weaker sisters miss the point entirely: the Wehrmacht's complete and rapid victory over the Greeks and Yugoslavs precisely mirrors the treatment it meted out in every first encounter of the war, without exception.
Operation 25: Yugoslavia
For centuries, the ideal of Prussian-German military operations had been the concentric attack, with converging columns coming at the defender from
all
directions and
making
it
impossible for
him
to
any sort of coherent position. In that sense, Operation 25 marks a culmination point in the German art of war. With Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria all safely in the Axis camp by this time, the establish
Chapter One
20
attacking force of
German and German- allied (Hungarian and
Ital-
be strung out over an immense crescent nearly 400 miles long, from Trieste on the Adriatic in the north to the BulgarianYugoslav border in the south. Moving from right to left, there was Italian 2nd Army, German 2nd Army under General Maximilian von Weichs (consisting of XXXXIX Mountain Corps, LI and LII Corps, ian) armies could
XXXXVI Panzer Corps); Hungarian 3rd Army; an independent German XXXXI Panzer Corps; and, finally, 1st Panzer Group (Field and
Marshal Ewald von Kleist). With the Italians and Hungarians having to be cajoled into doing anything more than occupying a place in the line, the heavy lifting was the task of the three German formations. Weichs's army was deployed in the Austrian provinces of Carinthia and Styria, curling around the Slovenian-Croatian bend in northern Yugoslavia; XXXXI Panzer Corps was deployed in western Romania, near Timosoara; Kleist 's Panzer group lay far to the south, in western Bulgaria.
The
Schwerpunkt, or point of main effort, included no fewer than
on the capital, Belgrade. On the right, XXXXVI Panzer Corps (2nd Army) would deploy in Nagykanizsa in Hungary, southwest of Lake Balaton. It would cross the Drava River into Yugoslavia, then wheel sharply southeast toward Belgrade. In the center, the independent XXXXI Panzer Corps under General Georg-Hans Reinhardt, including the 2nd S.S. Motorized Division, the Grossdeutschland Motorized Infantry Regiment, and the Hermann Goring Panzer Regiment, had the shortest hop to Belgrade, a straight shot heading almost due south. Finally, on the extreme left, 1st Panzer Group would send two corps (XIV Panzer and XI) across three mighty mechanized columns driving
the Bulgarian border, head toward Nis, and then wheel sharply to the north.
As always
in
German
operations, the point of these multiple
drives was not simply to seize the capital, but rather to threaten a strategic object that the Yugoslavs could not afford to lose
therefore have to defend.
As
in the Franco-Prussian
war
ing in the general direction of the capital was the best
confrontation with the enemy's main
The
Yugoslavs did what
all
field
army.
and would
in 1870, driv-
way
to ensure a
14
of Germany's enemies had done in the
two years of the war. They tried to defend every inch of the country's borders, establishing what the Germans called a "cordon position" (Kordonstellung). The 1st Army Group stood in the north, consisting of
first
Army in Slovenia, facing the German and Italian frontiers, and the 4th Army along the Hungarian border. The 2nd Army Group stood to its right, with 2nd Army along the Danube and 1st Army in the 7th
From Victory to Defeat: 1941
21
An
independent 6th Army deployed to the east, along the Romanian border, defending the district known as the Banat as well as the northern approaches to Belgrade. Finally, a 3rd Army Group (5th and 3rd Armies) had to cover an immense stretch of western part of the Vojvodina.
southern Yugoslavia, with 5th Army along the Bulgarian border and 3rd Army standing watch against the Italians on the Albanian frontier. None of these "armies" was up to modern standards. They consisted, typically, of
two
to four
weak infantry
divisions,
alry division or brigade. Reserve forces
they are by definition in
a
with an attached cav-
were grossly inadequate,
cordon defense. The 3rd
Army Group
as
in the
south, for example, had a single infantry division in reserve at Skoplje,
and the entire Yugoslav reserve consisted of three infantry divisions and one cavalry division. Although each army had some terrain feature in front of it (typically one of Yugoslavia's numerous rivers: the Drava, Sava, Morava, and Danube), the deployment offered no hope of operational maneuver. Strategic redeployment to respond to threats as they developed, always tricky in a linear defense, would simply be impossible in this case. Neither the road nor rail net would permit it. It is interesting to note that this was still the orthodox response 15
Wehrmacht's mobile operations. The Poles had done the same September 1939, stringing their armies in a cordon over 875 miles
to the in
long along the border with Greater
Germany and
Slovakia.
The
16
French and British had also attempted a linear defense of western Europe in 1940, which was penetrated in three days. The Yugoslav army was not an insignificant force: it included seventeen active and twelve reserve infantry divisions, plus three cavalry divisions and a number of nondivisional brigades.
When
fully mobilized,
numbered nearly
it
10,000,000 men. Still, lining it up to defend 1,900 miles of border was to extend it far beyond its capabilities. To be fair, the Yugoslav supreme commander, General Dusan Simovic (who had also been one of the ringleaders of the coup that precipitated the
German invasion), was
faced with a
number of equally
bad alternatives. Analysts of the campaign both then and since have spoken of the advantages of a pullback from the borders and a concentrated defense of
some
central position, perhaps Belgrade
itself, just
of the Polish campaign tend to talk up a withdrawal to the river lines of the Narew, Vistula, and San. A cordon defense invited as analysts
penetration and destruction by a mobile enemy,
it is
the almost complete absence of armor, antitank, or
true,
and given
air assets in
the
Yugoslav military, it was made to order for the German approach of a high-speed mechanized Bewegungskrieg. But military historians need
Chapter One
22
any strategy that advocates the immediate abandonment of over 90% of the national territory before a shot has even been fired is a nonstarter. It is a school exercise, in other words, utterly divorced to admit that
from the reality of politics. No government in the modern era will ever do it, or could afford to. Moreover, the situation within Yugoslavia was not all propitious for the success of any strategy. The state was riven by ethnic tension. Neither the Slovenes nor the Croats could generate much enthusiasm about fighting for a Serb-dominated regime 17
which, in their opinion, treated them the urging of
German propaganda
broadcasts and
leaflets,
bers of Croats would desert once the shooting started.
Operation 25 played out
Under large num-
like second-class citizens.
fairly predictably,
18
given the balance of
weaponry in play, and the imperatives of German doctrine. No campaign in Prussian or German history had a more pressing need It had been designed overnight, the to be wrapped up so quickly. formations fighting it had to be dragged hither and yon from across forces, the
19
Germany and
the occupied territories into this remote and underde-
veloped theater, and the Panzer units, at least, had to finish their business and then be ready for transfer to the east. Barbarossa was only
months away. An army that habitually moved fast was about to kick the tempo up one more notch. The campaign opened with a massive early-morning bombing raid against a nearly undefended Belgrade. It was April 6, the Orthodox Eas-
two and
a half
Operation Punishment, the Wehrmacht did something that many later military ventures have tried, yet none have been able to achieve: a "decapitation" of the enemy's command structure. The Luftwaffe came in three separate waves, some 500 sorties in all, flying mainly from bases in the Ostmark and western Romania. Not only did the Germans destroy the obsolete Yugoslav air force and Belgrade's weak antiaircraft screen, pound large chunks of the city into rubble, and kill thousands of civilians, they also destroyed the communication links between the Yugoslav high command and the field formations. It was an unprecedented event, an air power advocate's dream, that left virtually every operational unit in the army begging for direction and orders just at the moment that the Wehrmacht poured over the borter Sunday. In
ders in strength.
The
Luftwaffe's losses amounted to just two aircraft.
no exaggeration to say that Operation Punishment had won the Yugoslav campaign in the first twenty minutes. The raid, and especially the massive number of civilian deaths, would also be one of the war crimes included in the later indictment against General Alexander It is
From Victory to Defeat: 1941
23
Lohr, commander of Luftflotte 4; he would be executed in Belgrade in i947-
M
The
now began, as 1st Panzer Group crossed the borsouth on April 8. With XIV Panzer Corps in the lead and XI
land campaign
der in the
headed for Nis. After breaking through the defenses of the Yugoslav 5th Army, the Germans took the city on April 9. As planned, the Panzers now wheeled north, driving rapidly along the valley of the Morava River toward Belgrade. Resistance was weak and getting weaker, and the high command soon decided 21 to remove 5th Panzer Division from the main drive on the capital. It peeled off in a southwesterly direction, making it one of the few formations to take part in both Operation 25 against Yugoslavia and Operation Marita against Greece. By April 12, 1st Panzer Group stood just 35 miles south of Belgrade; it was also deep in the rear of Yugoslav 6th Army, still deployed along the Romanian border. The second element in the drive on Belgrade was XXXXVI Panzer Corps, part of 2nd Army. The original schedule called for 2nd Army's attack to begin on April 12, which had then been moved up to April
Corps
10.
trailing, Kleist's forces
Some
analysts
still
see this as a deliberate staggering of the initial
thrusts to further confuse the
the main blow.
22
A better
enemy
leadership as to the location of
explanation was the difficulty the
Germans
were having in transporting the assault formations into position. The Yugoslav border was immense, and the entire region was vastly underserved by road and rail. The 2nd Army, in particular, was still arriving in the theater when the bombers appeared over Belgrade. Nonetheless, there were a series of small attacks by German units as they deployed, often undertaken on the initiative of the local commander. These included the seizure of a road bridge at Bares and a rail bridge near Koprivnica.
23
Even before the
start of
formal
hostilities, the sluggish
Yugoslav response to these provocations, due no doubt to the large proportion of Croats in the Yugoslav 7th Army, the principal defender in this sector,
showed the Germans that there was trouble
in the en-
emy camp.
When XXXXVI
Panzer Corps's actual attack opened on April 10, it blew a hole in the Yugoslav line almost immediately. Although most of the corps wheeled southeast to join in the drive on Belgrade, one division, the 14th Panzer, headed for the Croatian capital, Zagreb ("Agram" to the Germans). The drive on Zagreb was an epic in its own way. Rolling at top speed, moving so rapidly that it was out of radio communications with corps and
army headquarters
for
much
of
Chapter One
24
GREATER
GERMANY
ADRIATIC SEA
Map
i.
Operation
25:
concentric operations in Yugoslavia.
smashed through position after position, taking 15,000 prisoners, among them twenty-two Yugoslav generals. It reached Zagreb by nightfall after traveling almost one hundred miles since morning. It ended the day being feted by thousands of enthusiastic Croats who considered the arrival of the Germans as a day of liberation from Serb the day,
it
oppression. 24
on Belgrade was that of the XXXXI Panzer Corps. After crossing the Romanian- Yugoslav border south of Timosoara on April 11, Reinhardt's corps almost immediately broke
The
third motorized drive
through Yugoslav 6th
Army
and raced into the
clear.
The
relatively
From Victory to Defeat: 1941
25
weak force, consisting of little more than the Grossdeutschland Regiment and 2nd S.S. Motorized Infantry Division, drove halfway to Belgrade in a single day, reaching Pancevo by nightfall and preparing itself for a drive on the capital the next day. Already, the Yugoslav situation had deteriorated to the point that General Simovic sent orders to his three army groups to "fight the enemy wherever you may be in contact with him in all directions, on your own initiative, without awaiting 25 special orders from higher command echelons." Even today, it is difficult to say which German force arrived first in Belgrade. With all three sending mobile detachments ahead of the main body in a headlong rush, even the German high command wasn't exactly sure. Elements of the 2nd S.S. Motorized Infantry Division (XXXXI Panzer Corps) crossed into the city on rafts over the Danube in the early evening of April 12; patrols of 8th Panzer Division (2nd Army) entered at about the same time from the north; and nth Panzer Division (1st Panzer Group) did the same from the south. Although none of these armored drives met with much opposition, they did have to negotiate some of Europe's most difficult terrain, and the exercise showed that there really isn't any such thing as "bad tank country" to a well-trained and aggressive armored force. Although sending flying armored columns into enemy territory might have been risky in a different context, here the principal problem was dealing with the hordes of Yugoslav soldiers wishing to surrender. With the capital in German hands and the Yugoslav front broken everywhere, and with Italian and Hungarian troops finally crossing the Yugoslav border, all that remained was the final pursuit. There was some fear on the part of the German command that remnants of the defeated army would retreat into the mountain fastness of the southern part of the country, in particular Bosnia.
To counter the threat,
the
Germans now redirected virtually all their mobile formations toward a drive on Sarajevo. One pursuit group, spearheaded by 14th Panzer Division, moved in from the west; another, with 8th Panzer Division approached the city from the east. The city fell to these converging drives on April 15, the tenth day of hostilities, signaling the end of major operations. 26 An armistice would be signed on April 17. The Wehrmacht had overrun Yugoslavia in record time and with
in the van,
million-man army and taken at least 250,000 prisoners in this short campaign. Its own casualties were just 151 dead, 392 wounded, and 15 missing. The ingredients for the rout were obviease. It
ous.
had dismantled
On
German side, they included superior training and weapcommand of the air; and a high degree of mechanization,
the
onry; total
a
26
Chapter One
at least at
the cutting edge. For the Yugoslavs, there was the lateness
of the mobilization decree, which resulted in numerous units being overrun before they were fully prepared for combat; lack of air and armor; the decision to defend every inch of the country's long border; and, perhaps
most importantly, the ethnic troubles
especially in the Croatian territories.
inside the country,
One German
staff officer called
27 Operation 25 more of "a military parade" than a campaign, and that is 28 in many ways a fair assessment of this "twelve-day war." Still, there is more to it than that. The conquest of Yugoslavia was a distilled form of the German way of war as it had developed over the centuries. As one German source put it, after the breakthrough along the border fortifications, the Yugoslav army was "smashed in the open field, held in place by German infantry forced-marching in the pursuit, overtaken and encircled by the mobile troops, broken down by uninterrupted attack from the air while on the march and during rail 29 transport." It was a "lightning victory" (Blitzsieg), one that displayed every aspect of the German operational package. The assembly of massive force; a plan that included a violent blow from the very outset
in the
form of the vicious
for the land forces that
air raids
on Belgrade;
emphasized shock,
a
maneuver scheme
rapidity,
and
a
concentric
advance against a crucial objective in the enemy's heartland
—these
had been the ingredients of Bewegungskrieg at least since the days of Moltke. Given the gross imbalance of force, the Wehrmacht should have beaten the Yugoslav army and swiftly overrun the country; that much is obvious. But as Prussian and German armies had shown other armies in other times and places, when the war of movement was working as it should, it could make many a campaign appear to be a "military parade."
There
is
one
last
aspect of the quick and almost painless victory
in Yugoslavia that deserves mention, especially as
German way
it
reflects
on the
of war. Despite the totality of the victory, this was a
campaign with an extremely problematic aftermath. By the end of the operation, fighting had already broken out within Yugoslavia between Serbs and Croats in Mostar and other parts of Dalmatia. With German forces being redeployed rapidly to the East and the land occupied by relatively small forces, there was no one to stop it, even if the Germans had wanted to. Moreover, a quick look at the math of the campaign (250,000 prisoners taken out of an army that numbered almost 1 million when fully mobilized) would indicate that large forces had indeed escaped the German net. The Germans had advanced so far and so fast that they left numerous loose ends. Yugoslav soldiers
From Victory to Defeat: 1941
27
cut off from their units soon took to the mountains to form resistance
Germans would
bands, and the
find themselves conducting an anti-
partisan campaign for the rest of the war.
among
30
There was no unanimity
these groups about the kind of Yugoslavia they wished to recre-
once they had liberated the country, and they would spend as much time fighting each other as fighting the Germans. Royalist Chetniks under Colonel Draza Mihailovic and the communist Partisans under Josip Broz, code-named Tito, would fight their own bloody war for the future of Yugoslavia, a tale outside our purview here. Nevertheless, there is something incomplete about a way of war that relies on the shock value of small, highly mobile forces and airpower, that stresses rapidity of victory over all, and that then has a difficult time putting the country it has conquered back together again. ate
Operation Marita: Greece
was more of the same in Greece. Here the Wehrmacht encountered not just another weak army of a second-rate power, but British and Commonwealth forces as well. Operation Marita met Operation LusIt
tre,
from North Africa
the transfer of a British expeditionary force
to the Balkans. fight the
31
Force
W,
as it
was known, was utterly inadequate to
Germans, comprising two divisions (2nd
Australian), the 1st
Tank Brigade
(of
New
Zealand, 6th
2nd Armored Division), and
a small
commitment of airpower. One German commentator called it "a drop in the ocean by the standards of continental warfare." The commander of the expedition, General Henry Maitland Wilson, was placed in a nearly 32
impossible position; he had to thrust forward a small force against an
onrushing Wehrmacht coming at him from all directions. The precise placement of the force was a thus a matter of crucial importance, as well as controversy, within the Allied camp. Essentially, the Greek supreme commander, General Alexander Papagos,
wanted the British
as far
north
as possible;
Maitland Wilson preferred
33
Again, like the Yugoslavs, the Greeks were not at all enthusiastic about defending the country at the or relatively narrow waist, Mount Olympus, perhaps, or points south
to stay as far south as he could manage.
—
any position that abandoned a large chunk of it to the invader. Indeed, Papagos was still thinking of the offensive, one last blow to shatter the Italians in Albania.
The plan that eventually evolved was, worlds. If the
as is typical,
Germans had been advancing from
the worst of both
Bulgaria alone, then
28
Chapter One
the deployment of Force
W
to a defensive position stretching north-
west-southeast along the Vermion Mountains and Aliakmon River
(it
was called the "Vermion line," grandiloquently, because there were no prepared works there at all) might have made sense. The operational situation that Maitland Wilson encountered as he marched north, however, was far different. Once again, the Germans had planned a bold operational-level stroke, utilizing the mechanized formations of 12th Army. Although the infantry divisions of XXX Corps crossed the Rhodope Mountains into western Thrace and the XVIII Mountain Corps had the unenviable task of smashing through the well-fortified Metaxas Line along the Bulgarian frontier, 2nd Panzer Division would cross into Yugoslavia toward Strumica. From here it would wheel sharply south, pass just to the west of Lake Doiran on the Greek- Yugoslav border, then drive as rapidly as possible on the major port of Thessaloniki. Seizure of the city would be a strategic blow to the Greeks, cutting off their entire 2nd Army still fighting to the east. Simultaneously, however, there would be an even more dramatic stroke, a westward drive into southern Yugoslavia by XXXX Corps (9th Panzer Division, Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler S.S. Motorized Infantry Regiment, and the 73rd Infantry Division). The corps would drive toward the Vardar River between Skoplje and Veles, then, once again, wheel sharply south, passing through the Monastir Gap and crossing into central Greece from the north. This would result in a linkup with the Italians and the isolation of the Greek 1st Army still fighting in Albania. The Albanian campaign still accounted for the lion's share of the Greek army, some twelve infantry divisions, a cavalry division, and three infantry brigades. Morever, the German maneuver would also fatally compromise the Allied defensive position, outflanking Force no matter what line it happened to occupy. 34 And so it went. As in Operation 25, there was a signal moment at the
W
start of Marita.
An April 6,
was going up in flames,
at virtually
the same
moment that Belgrade
Luftwaffe raid on the port of Piraeus scored a direct hit on the 12,000-ton ammunition ship S.S. Clan Fraser. It exploded spectacularly, triggering secondary explosions all over the harbor and destroying much of the port itself, along with twenty-seven a
docked there and a great deal of shore equipment. Windows were shattered seven miles away in Athens. Within hours, German forces were across the Greek border in strength. On the far left, XXX Corps had fairly easy going because much of the Greek force in isolated western Thrace had been evacuated when German troops first entered Buicraft
35
From Victory to Defeat: 1941
(Sal
xxxx
2
29
Bulgaria
CUb xvm
fejxxx
AEGEAN SEA
IONIAN (T) Aliakmon Line
SEA
(T) Olympus Position
(T) Thermopylae Line
Map
Operation Marita: Bewegnngskrieg in Greece, April 1941.
2.
garia.
In the center,
XVIII Mountain Corps found the Metaxas Line,
and the Greek infantry and gunners defending it, to be as tough as anything they'd yet encountered in this war. Losses were heavy here, with at least one regiment having to be pulled out of the line, but the attack on both sides of the Rupel Gorge, supported by massed artillery and nonstop attack by Stukas, finally chewed its way through the
Greek
wire, pillboxes, and concrete bunkers.
36
Metaxas Line soon became a moot point, however, as 2nd Panzer Division cut through light opposition to the west and reached Thessaloniki on April 9. In the course of its short hop south,
The
battle for the
Chapter One
30
it
overran elements of the Greek 19th Division that were just moving
up into position. The Greek formation was ostensibly "motorized," which meant in this case possessing a handful of Bren carriers and 37 captured Italian tanks and trucks. The fall of Thessaloniki made the entire Greek force to the east superfluous, and 2nd Army surrendered to the Germans on April 9.
The Schwerpunkt of this campaign,
however, lay with
Corps (General Georg Stumme). Jumping off at
XXXX Panzer
5:30 a.m.
on April
6, it
encountered Yugoslav forces almost immediately (elements of the 5th Yugoslav Army). Brushing them aside, the mass of the corps reached its
Stumme's lead forthat one day and had to perform a ma-
objective (the line Skoplje -Veles) the next day.
mations had made sixty miles in jor river crossing of the Vardar to boot. After passing through Prilep on April 8 and Monastir on April 9, the corps stood ready to invade
Greece the next day. On April 10, XXXX Corps crossed the border, peeled off the 9th Panzer Division to link up with the Italians in Albania, and continued the drive to the south, toward the Greek town of Fiorina.
38
was not immediately apparent, but the drive on Fiorina and thence into central Greece had unhinged the entire Allied strategic position in the theater. Not only had the maneuver uncovered the communications of the Greek 1st Army in Albania, it had also inserted a strong mobile German force far into the rear of the original British defensive position along the Vermion line. Maitland Wilson could read a map. The news sent the entire Commonwealth force scurrying back down to the south from whence it had come, desperately trying to extricate itself from the jaws of two pursuing German pincers. Australian and New Zealand troops fought with their usual tenacity, and there was some gritty action of the rear guard variety, but on the operational It
moved
The
Vermion position became the Aliakmon Line (April 11), which gave way to the Mount Olympus position (April 16) and then the Thermopylae level,
the front line
steadily southward.
line (April 24), the last actually a
original
crescent-shaped defensive position
stretching across central Greece from
Molos in the east to the Gulf of Corinth in the south. The place-names make the after-action reports read like some lost essay by Herodotus, which lends the entire affair 39
a certain
was
a
epic aura that
it
does not
nightmare, carried out under
attacks. It
at all deserve.
a
In
fact,
the retreat
nearly constant barrage of Stuka
had been the same in Norway and Dunkirk, and now
more of the same
in Greece.
it
was
From Victory to Defeat: 1941
31
Making good use of the difficult terrain and their 25-pounder guns, however, the Commonwealth rear guards did manage to hold up the Germans just long enough to allow the main body to escape, and that was no small feat. The Germans, for their part, managed to keep up the pressure only by sending light pursuit groups ahead of their main
body. There certainly were not entire Panzer divisions in play during this portion of the campaign. But even the smaller pursuit groups
found themselves limited by the difficulty of mountainous terrain. At one point they tried, unsuccessfully, to pass a column of tanks single the original European tactifile through the pass at Thermopylae 40 cal exercise, one might say. Even the most celebrated incident of the campaign, the April 26 airdrop onto the isthmus of Corinth by two battalions of the 2nd Fallschirmjager Regiment, failed to seal the deal. Indeed, it met with disaster when a lucky shot detonated charges on the canal bridge, dropping it and killing most of the German paratroopers crossing it, along with the German war correspondent film41 ing the seizure of the bridge. It did not matter one way or another. Most of Force was off the mainland by this time, having already been evacuated from Rafina and Porto Rafti in Attica or from Monemvasia and Kalamata in the Peloponnesus. Athens fell on April 27, and the onrushing Germans swiftly occupied the Peloponnesus on April 28 and 29. The fighting was over by April 30. General Wilhelm List's 12th Army had performed impressively. It had dismantled the Greek army and handed the British another humiliating defeat, driving them into another helter-skelter retreat and forcing them into yet another evacuation that saved the men only at the cost of abandoning virtually all of the equipment. Nor were Brit-
—
W
ish
manpower
who had alike
losses inconsiderable: 11,840
men out of the 53,000-plus
embarked for Europe. Both had taken place under nonstop German originally
retreat and evacuation air attack,
Robert Crisp, armored commander, describes what it was like:
for a large share of British casualties.
a
accounting
South African
From dawn to dusk there was never a period of more than half an hour when there was not an enemy plane overhead. It was the unrelenting pressure of noise and the threat of destruction in every hour
which accentuated the psychological consequences of continuous retreat,
from
and turned so
many men
into nervous wrecks
their driving seats and trucks at the first distant
without stopping their vehicles
who
leapt
hum—often
—and ran from the roads
.
.
.
not
Chapter One
32
running until the skies were clear and the explosions had ceased to echo in their minds. Then they would make their way slowly, fearfully, back and ride on for another few miles until the 42 next raid, or threat of a raid, set them running again. to stop
In "tossing
much
Tommy
from the continent," 43 German
heavier than in the Yugoslav campaign, yet
overall, especially as
still
losses
had been
startlingly light
they were fighting against one of their great pow-
er adversaries in this campaign: 1,100 killed
and 4,000 wounded.
The
had been sustained by XXX Corps's frontal assault on the Metaxas Line, a venture that even some German analysts argued could have been dispensed with altogether.
vast majority of the casualties
Bewegungskrieg and
Its
Weaknesses
The Balkan campaign was a classic demonstration of the German art of war. Once again, bold and rapid maneuver had led to decisive success. As we view the Wehrmacht standing on the eve of Barbarossa, however,
it is
Today,
has
it
appropriate to discuss the weaknesses of the approach.
become customary
maneuver represented
a
to argue that the
German
focus on
narrow, even crabbed vision of warfare, one
German army at a serious disadvantage in both world wars. World War II saw German staff officers planning ever more elegant maneuver schemes, ones that may well represent the acme of the art, while their enemies did much, much more: mobilizing a major portion of the world's resources, easily besting Germany in the that placed the 44
manpower, technical innovation, production, and logistics, and winning a decisive victory in the shadow war of intelligence and
battle of
counterintelligence.
Consider
45
this point: in
World War
II,
the Allies actually cracked 46
German encoding mechanism, the so-called Enigma machine. They then spent the entire war deliberately underreacting to the inthe
had gleaned from this coup, lest the Germans realize they'd been had and move to some new, more secure system. Even so, the Allies enjoyed as complete an intelligence advantage as any in military history. Likewise, the Allies employed an entire series of highly successful agents, from Richard Sorge in Tokyo to Juan Pujol Garcia to the "12 apostles" 47 dispatched by President Roosevelt to North Africa to prepare the ground for the Torch invasion. Even today, the story of Pujol Garcia seems to have been concocted by an overly imagina-
telligence they
From Victory to Defeat: 1941
33
Hollywood screenwriter. Code-named Garbo, he was ostensibly a German agent working in Britain, who fed false information to the very top of the Nazi intelligence chain, up to and including Hitler tive
himself. For his intelligence reports before the
Normandy
invasion,
he received the Reich's highest honors and decorations, including the 48 Iron Cross. The Germans managed nothing like a counterweight to Allied success in this area. Despite the Nazi reputation for fanaticism,
the democracies and Soviet Russia were far
more
successful at produc-
and women who were willing to go behind enemy lines and risk life and limb in the battle for information. The German military intelligence office, the Abwehr, by contrast, spent much of the war trying first to overthrow, and then to kill, Hitler. In this war, most of the true believers were on the side of the Allies. The Wehrmacht, in other words, was a military force that cared a great deal for concentric operations but very little for long-term planning. German military planners gave little thought at all to strategic concerns, at least as they have traditionally been conceived in the even rest of the world. Exactly how individual operational victories decisive ones would actually lead to the surrender of their enemies ing
men
—
—
received very
little
mans smashed four enemy
Netherlands, Belgium, and France. or even to
come
May
1940, for example, the Gerarmies in short order and occupied the
consideration. In
to terms, Hitler
When Britain refused to surrender, and the entire German leadership
were completely at sea about how to proceed. The Wehrmacht, in a sense, had conquered its way into a strategic impasse. It knew it, and it spent the next year flailing around, searching for a way to move forward. The amount of paperwork generated by such indecision (shared by Hitler and the high command) was prodigious. In the year after Case Yellow, the staff produced plans for no fewer than fifteen major operations: Sea Lion (the invasion of England), Sunflower (the introduction of
North Africa), Cyclamen attack on Greece), Felix (the
German forces
to
Marita (an seizure of Gibraltar), Isabella (the occupation of Spain and Portugal), a possible invasion of Switzerland, operations against the Canary and Azore Islands, Operation 25 against Yugoslavia, Operation Mercury (the occupation of Albania),
occupy Vichy France, and the establishment of 49 military missions to Romania and Iraq. It wasn't as if there was a lot of downtime in German planning circles during this period. All of this frenzied activity sat uneasily on top of planning the greatest operation against Crete, plans to
in military history: Barbarossa.
with
a gigantic
Nor are we talking about the Pentagon,
bureaucratic hive churning out planning documents
34
Chapter One
—
by the bushel. German planning staffs were small tiny, in fact. The General Staff had always seen itself as the true German military elite, 50 and keeping itself small was part of the institutional ethos. Although wars are won or lost on the strategic level, the Germans were literally sitting in a conceptual prison. It was all operations, all the time. This was not an issue of trying to think outside the box. German staff officers might not have even been conscious of the fact that there was a box. Bewegungskrieg had worked well enough over the centuries; the Germans actually seemed unaware that there might have been viable alternatives to it. It had become a default setting.
Barbarossa It is
Union was the Here, a way of war
axiomatic to say that the invasion of the Soviet
ultimate test of operational-level Bewegungskrieg.
win
51
campaigns in the cozy confines of western Europe, a prosperous region with a highly developed economy and communications infrastructure, found itself very far from home indeed. Here it faced a behemoth, one with room in which to retreat and a manpower pool that was, by German standards at least, limitless. Moreover, the road and rail net was utterly unsatisfactory for a mechanized army that relied so heavily on tanks and other vehicles. It would be untrue to state that planners on the German General Staff were unaware of any of these things. They also knew that the campaign would have to end before the onset of winter. At the same time, however, it was nearly impossible for most of them to conceive of failure. The war was approaching its third year, and no land force had yet come close to stopping them. Although the postwar memoir literature of the German generals is filled with misgivings over Hitler's decision to go east, there was in fact little debate over the wisdom of the move at the time. Most of the staff felt that the overthrow of the Soviet Union would amount to little more than a "sand table exer52 cise" a war game. In fact, the Red Army very nearly got the Yugoslav treatment. On June 21, 1941, over 3 million German and Axis troops crossed the Soviet border. Organized into three great army groups (North, Central, and South, heading for Leningrad, Moscow, and the Ukraine, respectively), they had managed to assemble beneath the radar of Soviet intelligence and to achieve not just strategic or operational surprise, but actual tactical surprise as well. As a result, the opening of Operathat had been designed to
—
short, sharp
From Victory to Defeat: 1941
35
Red Army
senseless,
methodically encircling and destroying huge Soviet forces
at Bialys-
tion Barbarossa saw the
Wehrmacht pound
Germans fought
tok and Minsk. In this opening phase, the
huge swath of territory
a
as large as
as close to the
border
as possible
the endless depths of the country, and better than
it
did.
world's largest
The
disaster has
army was
no
it
before
The
Great Britain.
operational plan for Barbarossa called for destroying as
Red Army
the Kes-
taking hundreds of thousands of prisoners and
selschlacht to perfection,
overrunning
the
it
much
of the
could retreat into
could not have worked
much
parallel in military history: the
essentially destroyed and the richest portions
of the world's largest country overrun.
Although by well-practiced
time the Germans had the entire thing
this
we must recognize how much of the
drill,
for their early triumphs has to literally,
as the a
the pile of intelligence
lie at Stalin's feet.
on
his desk
He
down
responsibility
ignored, quite
—from sources
as diverse
German
—
Moscow and Winston Churchill of on the border. With a network of intel-
Yugoslav ambassador to
massive
to a
buildup
ligence agents abroad unparalleled in size and motivation (this was the
communism was still a religion for many in the West), and steady stream of German deserters crossing the border before
age in which
with
a
the operation, Stalin should at least have been able to alert the units at
the border to the imminent
German
blow.
The
only trouble was that
the vozhd, or Boss, as he liked to be called, didn't believe any of it. all a
plot,
he swore
with Germany, or
—either a
It
was war
western one to get him mixed up in a Nazi one to get him to move first and thus justify a
German
counterblow. "You cannot always trust the intelligence," he once snapped at General G. K. Zhukov, who was gingerly trying a
to talk sense into him.
unmoved, and
53
The
evidence mounted, but Stalin remained
punches in their reports, hesitating to tell him things that they knew would only anger him. When Richard Sorge, his spymaster in Tokyo, tried to tell him the truth, Stalin dismissed him as "a little shit." When the commissar for state security, Merkulov, passed on inside reports of Luftwaffe preparations for the impending attack, Stalin blew up. "Comrade Merkulov," he his aides learned to pull
"you can send your 'source' from the headquarters of German 54 aviation to his ing mother." The Red Army not only had to fight the Germans in those early days, therefore, but also what one modern
hissed,
—
own regime. The resulting level of confusion still boggles the mind. Communications between Moscow and the front broke down immediately, al-
writer aptly calls the "staggeringly inept" nature of
though perhaps
it is
more accurate
to say that they
its
were never
55
really
36
Chapter One
established.
56
Stalin's technological conservatism,
shared by old
civil
war cronies like the greatly mustachioed cavalry officer Marshal Semen Budenny, ensured that the Red Army's communications net consisted almost entirely of cable rather
German
than radio.
A relative handful of
agents in the country were able to utterly disable
it
before the
main body had even crossed the border. Likewise, it took months for something like a valid supply system to get up and running. Some Soviet soldiers in those terrible early days actually marched into battle with no food but anchovies, a particularly terrible thing in light of the heat and the lack of drinking water. 57 There is one moment that may stand as representative
of the entire opening phase of Barbarossa: Soviet 8th
Mechanized Corps trundling up the single road from Drogobych to Sambor and crashing into Soviet 13th Mechanized Corps, which was, unfortunately, moving from Sambor to Drogobych. The result, need58 less to say, was a traffic jam of epic proportions. They might still be there, sorting themselves out, if the
Germans hadn't destroyed them
both.
As
a result
dizzying.
of
By now,
all
these factors, the initial
German
progress was
the surprise air assault, launched in early morning
had become almost obligatory. It did enormous damage. It destroyed hundreds of planes on the ground and made short work of the few disorganized patrols that managed to get into the air. After wrecking the Red Air Force, the Luftwaffe turned its attention to other targets, interdicting Soviet road and rail movement, pounding enemy troop concentrations and thoroughly disrupting command and communication facilities. As German ground forces advanced, they would, as always up to this point in the war, have the advantage of operating under an irresistible umbrella of air power. There was progress almost everywhere. Army Group North (Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb) blasted through the Soviet border defenses in the newly occupied Baltic states almost immediately and headed for Leningrad. With 4th Panzer Group under General Erich Hoepner acting as the armored spearhead, Leeb's army group actually covered half
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https://www.storiespreschool.com/worldwar1_battle74.html
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Battle of Verdun
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Battle of Verdun fought from 21 February to 18 December 1916, was the largest and longest battle of the First World War on the Western Front between the German and French armies. The battle took place on the hills north of Verdun-sur-Meuse in north-eastern France. The German 5th Army attacked the defences of the Fortified Region of Verdun and those of the French Second Army on the right bank of the Meuse.
|
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images/favicon.ico
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The Battle of Verdun (Bataille de Verdun), fought from 21 February to 18 December 1916, was the largest and longest battle of the First World War on the Western Front between the German and French armies. The battle took place on the hills north of Verdun-sur-Meuse in north-eastern France. The German 5th Army attacked the defences of the Fortified Region of Verdun (RFV, Région Fortifiée de Verdun) and those of the French Second Army on the right bank of the Meuse. Inspired by the experience of the Second Battle of Champagne in 1915, the GermansThe German Empire, also referred to as Imperial Germany, the Second Reich, as well as simply Germany, was the period of the German Reich from the unification of Germany in 1871 until the November Revolution in 1918, when the German Reich changed its form of government from a monarchy to a republic. During its 47 years of existence, the German Empire became the industrial, technological, and scientific giant of Europe.Germans planned rapidly to capture the Meuse Heights, an excellent defensive position with good observation for the artillery to bombard Verdun. The Germans hoped that the French would commit their strategic reserve to recapture the position and suffer catastrophic losses in a battle of annihilation, not costly for the Germans because of their tactical advantage.
Poor weather delayed the beginning of the German attack until 21 February, but the Germans enjoyed initial success, capturing Fort Douaumont in the first three days of the offensive. Afterwards the German advance slowed, despite many French casualties. By 6 March, 20 1â2 French divisions were in the RFV and a more extensive defence in depth had been constructed. Pétain ordered that no withdrawals were to be made and that counter-attacks were to be conducted, despite exposing French infantry to fire from the German artillery. By 29 March, French artillery on the west bank had begun a constant bombardment of German positions on the east bank, which caused many German infantry casualties.
In March, the German offensive was extended to the left (west) bank of the Meuse, to gain observation of the ground from which French artillery had been firing over the river onto the Meuse Heights. The Germans were able to advance at first but French reinforcements contained the attacks short of their objectives. In early May, the Germans changed tactics and made local attacks and counter-attacks, which gave the French an opportunity to begin an attack against Fort Douaumont. Part of the fort was occupied, until a German counter-attack recaptured the fort and took numerous prisoners. The Germans changed tactics again, alternating their attacks on both banks of the Meuse and in June captured Fort Vaux. The Germans continued the offensive beyond Vaux, towards the last geographical objectives of the original plan, at Fleury-devant-Douaumont and Fort Souville. The Germans drove a salient into the French defences, captured Fleury and came within 4 km (2.5 mi) of the Verdun citadel.
In July 1916, the German offensive was reduced to provide artillery and infantry reinforcements for the Somme front and during local operations, the village of Fleury changed hands sixteen times from 23 June to 17 August. A German attempt to capture Fort Souville in early July was repulsed by artillery and small arms fire. To supply reinforcements for the Somme front, the German offensive was reduced further and attempts were made to deceive the French into expecting more attacks, to keep French reinforcements away from the Somme. In August and December, French counter-offensives recaptured much of the ground lost on the east bank and recovered Fort Douaumont and Fort Vaux.
The Battle of Verdun lasted for 303 days and became the longest and one of the most costly battles in human history. An estimate in 2000 found a total of 714,231 casualties, 377,231 French and 337,000 German, for an average of 70,000 casualties a month; other recent estimates increase the number of casualties to 976,000 during the battle, with 1,250,000 suffered at Verdun during the war.
Background
Strategic Developments
After the German invasion of FranceFrench Third Republic was the system of government adopted in France from 4 September 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed during the Franco-Prussian War, until 10 July 1940, after the Fall of France during World War II led to the formation of the Vichy government. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the French colonial empire was the second largest colonial empire in the world only behind the British Empire. France had been halted at the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914, the war of movement ended at the Battle of the Yser and the First Battle of Ypres. The Germans built field fortifications to hold the ground captured in 1914 and the French began siege warfare to break through the German defences and recover the lost territory. In late 1914 and in 1915, offensives on the Western Front had failed to gain much ground and been extremely costly in casualties. According to his memoirs written after the war, the Chief of the German General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, believed that although victory might no longer be achieved by a decisive battle, the French army could still be defeated if it suffered a sufficient number of casualties. Falkenhayn offered five corps from the strategic reserve for an offensive at Verdun at the beginning of February 1916 but only for an attack on the east bank of the Meuse. Falkenhayn considered it unlikely the French would be complacent about Verdun; he thought that they might send all their reserves there and begin a counter-offensive elsewhere or fight to hold Verdun while the BritishThe British Empire, was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. At its height it was the largest empire in history and, for over a century, was the foremost global power. By the start of the 20th century, Germany and the United States had begun to challenge Britain's economic lead.British launched a relief offensive. After the war, the Kaiser and Colonel Tappen, the Operations Officer at Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL, General Headquarters), wrote that Falkenhayn believed the last possibility was most likely.
By seizing or threatening to capture Verdun, the Germans anticipated that the French would send all their reserves, which would have to attack secure German defensive positions, which were supported by a powerful artillery reserve and be destroyed. In the GorliceâTarnów Offensive (1 May â 19 September 1915), the German and Austro-HungarianAustria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. Austria-Hungary was one of the Central Powers in World War I, which began with an Austro-Hungarian war declaration on the Kingdom of Serbia on 28 July 1914. Austro-Hungarian Armies attacked RussianRussian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. The rise of the Russian Empire coincided with the decline of neighbouring rival powers: the Swedish Empire, the PolishâLithuanian Commonwealth, Qajar Iran, the Ottoman Empire, and Qing China. Russia remains the third-largest empire in history, surpassed only by the British Empire and the Mongol Empire.Russian defences frontally, after pulverising them with large amounts of heavy artillery. During the Second Battle of Champagne (Herbstschlacht autumn battle) of 25 September â 6 November 1915, the French suffered "extraordinary casualties" from the German heavy artillery, which Falkenhayn considered offered a way out of the dilemma of material inferiority and the growing strength of the Allies. In the north, a British relief offensive would wear down British reserves, to no decisive effect but create the conditions for a German counter-offensive near Arras.
Hints about Falkenhayn's thinking were picked up by Dutch military intelligence and passed on to the British in December. The German strategy was to create a favourable operational situation without a mass attack, which had been costly and ineffective when it had been tried by the Franco-British, by relying on the power of heavy artillery to inflict mass losses. A limited offensive at Verdun would lead to the destruction of the French strategic reserve in fruitless counter-attacks and the defeat of British reserves in a futile relief offensive, leading to the French accepting a separate peace. If the French refused to negotiate, the second phase of the strategy would begin in which the German armies would attack terminally weakened Franco-British armies, mop up the remains of the French armies and expel the British from Europe. To fulfil this strategy, Falkenhayn needed to hold back enough of the strategic reserve for the Anglo-French relief offensives and then conduct a counter-offensive, which limited the number of divisions which could be sent to the 5th Army at Verdun, for Unternehmen Gericht (Operation Judgement).
The Fortified Region of Verdun (RFV) lay in a salient formed during the German invasion of 1914. The Commander-in-Chief of the French Army, General Joseph Joffre, had concluded from the swift capture of the BelgianBelgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country as it exists today was established following the 1830 Belgian Revolution. Belgium has also been the battleground of European powers, earning the moniker the "Battlefield of Europe", a reputation reinforced in the 20th century by both world wars.Belgian fortresses at the Battle of Liège and at the Siege of Namur in 1914 that fixed defences had been made obsolete by German siege guns. In a directive of the General Staff of 5 August 1915, the RFV was to be stripped of 54 artillery batteries and 128,000 rounds of ammunition. Plans to demolish forts Douaumont and Vaux to deny them to the Germans were made and 5,000 kilograms (11,000 lb) of explosives had been laid by the time of the German offensive on 21 February. The 18 large forts and other batteries around Verdun were left with fewer than 300 guns and a small reserve of ammunition while their garrisons had been reduced to small maintenance crews. The railway line from the south into Verdun had been cut during the Battle of Flirey in 1914, with the loss of Saint-Mihiel; the line west from Verdun to Paris was cut at Aubréville in mid-July 1915 by the German 3rd Army, which had attacked southwards through the Argonne Forest for most of the year.
Région Fortifiée de Verdun
For centuries, Verdun, on the Meuse river, had played an important role in the defence of the French hinterland. Attila the Hun failed to seize the town in the fifth century and when the empire of Charlemagne was divided under the Treaty of Verdun (843), the town became part of the Holy Roman Empire; the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 awarded Verdun to France. At the heart of the city was a citadel built by Vauban in the 17th century. A double ring of 28 forts and smaller works (ouvrages) had been built around Verdun on commanding ground, at least 150 m (490 ft) above the river valley, 2.5â8 km (1.6â5.0 mi) from the citadel. A programme had been devised by Séré de Rivières in the 1870s to build two lines of fortresses from Belfort to Ãpinal and from Verdun to Toul as defensive screens and to enclose towns intended to be the bases for counter-attacks. Many of the Verdun forts had been modernised and made more resistant to artillery, with a reconstruction programme begun at Douaumont in the 1880s. A sand cushion and thick, steel-reinforced concrete tops up to 2.5 m (8.2 ft) thick, buried under 1â4 m (3.3â13.1 ft) of earth, were added. The forts and ouvrages were sited to overlook each other for mutual support and the outer ring had a circumference of 45 km (28 mi). The outer forts had 79 guns in shell-proof turrets and more than 200 light guns and machine-guns to protect the ditches around the forts. Six forts had 155 mm guns in retractable turrets and fourteen had retractable twin 75 mm turrets.
In 1903, Douaumont was equipped with a new concrete bunker (Casemate de Bourges), containing two 75 mm field guns to cover the south-western approach and the defensive works along the ridge to Ouvrage de Froidterre. More guns were added from 1903â1913, in four retractable steel turrets. The guns could rotate for all-round defence and two smaller versions, at the north-eastern and north-western corners of the fort, housed twin Hotchkiss machine-guns. On the east side of the fort, an armoured turret with a 155 mm short-barrelled gun faced north and north-east and another housed twin 75 mm guns at the north end, to cover the intervals between forts. The fort at Douaumont formed part of a complex of the village, fort, six ouvrages, five shelters, six concrete batteries, an underground infantry shelter, two ammunition depots and several concrete infantry trenches. The Verdun forts had a network of concrete infantry shelters, armoured observation posts, batteries, concrete trenches, command posts and underground shelters between the forts. The artillery comprised c.â1,000 guns, with 250 in reserve and the forts and ouvrages were linked by telephone and telegraph, a narrow-gauge railway system and a road network; on mobilisation, the RFV had a garrison of 66,000 men and rations for six months.
Prelude
German Offensive Preparations
Verdun was isolated on three sides and railway communications to the French rear had been cut except for a light railway; German-controlled railways lay only 24 km (15 mi) to the north of the front line. A corps was moved to the 5th Army to provide labour for the preparation of the offensive. Areas were emptied of French civilians and buildings requisitioned, thousands of kilometres of telephone cable were laid, thousands of tons of ammunition and rations were stored under cover with hundreds of guns installed and camouflaged. Ten new rail lines with twenty stations were built and vast underground shelters (Stollen) were dug 4.5â14 m (15â46 ft) deep, each to accommodate up to 1,200 German infantry. The III Corps, VII Reserve Corps and XVIII Corps were transferred to the 5th Army, each corps being reinforced by 2,400 experienced troops and 2,000 trained recruits. V Corps was placed behind the front line, ready to advance if necessary when the assault divisions were moving up and the XV Corps, with two divisions, was in the 5th Army reserve, ready to advance to mop up as soon as the French defence collapsed.
Special arrangements were made to maintain a high rate of artillery-fire during the offensive, 33 1â2 munitions trains per day were to deliver ammunition sufficient for 2,000,000 rounds to be fired in the first six days and another 2,000,000 shells in the next twelve. Five repair shops were built close to the front to reduce delays for maintenance; factories in Germany were made ready, rapidly to refurbish artillery needing more extensive repairs. A redeployment plan for the artillery was devised, for field guns and mobile heavy artillery to be moved forward, under the covering fire of mortars and the super-heavy artillery. A total of 1,201 guns were massed on the Verdun front, two thirds of which were heavy and super-heavy artillery, which had been obtained by stripping the modern German artillery from the rest of the Western Front and substituting it with older types and captured Russian guns. The German artillery could fire into the Verdun salient from three directions, yet remain dispersed.
German Plan of Attack
The 5th Army divided the attack front into areas, A occupied by the VII Reserve Corps, B by the XVIII Corps, C by the III Corps and D on the Woëvre plain by the XV Corps. The preliminary artillery bombardment was to begin in the morning of 12 February. At 5:00 p.m., the infantry in areas A to C would advance in open order, supported by grenade and flame-thrower detachments. Wherever possible, the French advanced trenches were to be occupied and the second position reconnoitred, for the artillery fire on the second day. Great emphasis was placed on limiting German infantry casualties, by sending them to follow up destructive bombardments by the artillery, which was to carry the burden of the offensive in a series of large "attacks with limited objectives", to maintain a relentless pressure on the French. The initial objectives were the Meuse Heights, on a line from Froide Terre to Fort Souville and Fort Tavannes, which would provide a secure defensive position from which to repel French counter-attacks. Relentless pressure was a term added by the 5th Army staff and created ambiguity about the purpose of the offensive. Falkenhayn wanted land to be captured, from which artillery could dominate the battlefield and the 5th Army wanted a quick capture of Verdun. The confusion caused by the ambiguity was left to the corps headquarters to sort out.
Control of the artillery was centralised by an Order for the Activities of the Artillery and Mortars, which stipulated that the corps Generals of Foot Artillery were responsible for local target selection, while co-ordination of flanking fire by neighbouring corps and the fire of certain batteries, was determined by the 5th Army headquarters. French fortifications were to be engaged by the heaviest howitzers and enfilade fire. The heavy artillery was to maintain long-range bombardment of French supply routes and assembly areas; counter-battery fire was reserved for specialist batteries firing gas shells. Co-operation between the artillery and infantry was stressed, with accuracy of the artillery being given priority over rate of fire. The opening bombardment was to build up slowly and Trommelfeuer (a rate of fire so rapid that the sound of shell-explosions merged into a rumble) would not begin until the last hour. As the infantry advanced, the artillery would increase the range of the bombardment to destroy the French second position. Artillery observers were to advance with the infantry and communicate with the guns by field telephones, flares and coloured balloons. When the offensive began, the French were to be bombarded continuously, harassing fire being maintained at night.
French Defensive Preparations
In 1915, 237 guns and 647 long tons (657 t) of ammunition in the forts of the RFV had been removed, leaving only the heavy guns in retractable turrets. The conversion of the RFV to a conventional linear defence, with trenches and barbed wire began but proceeded slowly, after resources were sent west from Verdun for the Second Battle of Champagne (25 September â 6 November 1915). In October 1915, building began on trench lines known as the first, second and third positions and in January 1916, an inspection by General Noël de Castelnau, Chief of Staff at French General Headquarters (GQG), reported that the new defences were satisfactory, except for small deficiencies in three areas. The fortress garrisons had been reduced to small maintenance crews and some of the forts had been readied for demolition. The maintenance garrisons were responsible to the central military bureaucracy in Paris and when the XXX Corps commander, General Chrétien, attempted to inspect Fort Douaumont in January 1916, he was refused entry.
Douaumont was the largest fort in the RFV and by February 1916, the only artillery left in the fort were the 75 mm and 155 mm turret guns and light guns covering the ditch. The fort was used as a barracks by 68 technicians under the command of Warrant-Officer Chenot, the Gardien de Batterie. One of the rotating 155 mm (6.1 in) turrets was partially manned and the other was left empty. The Hotchkiss machine-guns were stored in boxes and four 75 mm guns in the casemates had already been removed. The drawbridge had been jammed in the down position by a German shell and had not been repaired. The coffres (wall bunkers) with Hotchkiss revolver-cannons protecting the moats, were unmanned and over 5,000 kg (11,000 lb) of explosive charges had been placed in the fort to demolish it.
In late January 1916, French intelligence had obtained an accurate assessment of German military capacity and intentions at Verdun but Joffre considered that an attack would be a diversion, because of the lack of an obvious strategic objective. By the time of the German offensive, Joffre expected a bigger attack elsewhere but ordered the VII Corps to Verdun on 23 January, to hold the north face of the west bank. XXX Corps held the salient east of the Meuse to the north and north-east and II Corps held the eastern face of the Meuse Heights; Herr had 8 1â2 divisions in the front line, with 2 1â2 divisions in close reserve. Groupe d'armées du centre (GAC, General De Langle de Cary) had the I and XX corps with two divisions each in reserve, plus most of the 19th Division; Joffre had 25 divisions in the strategic reserve. French artillery reinforcements had brought the total at Verdun to 388 field guns and 244 heavy guns, against 1,201 German guns, two thirds of which were heavy and super heavy, including 14 in (360 mm) and 202 mortars, some being 16 in (410 mm). Eight specialist flame-thrower companies were also sent to the 5th Army.
Castelnau met De Langle de Cary on 25 February, who doubted the east bank could be held. Castelnau disagreed and ordered General Frédéric-Georges Herr the corps commander, to hold the right (east) bank of the Meuse at all costs. Herr sent a division from the west bank and ordered XXX Corps to hold a line from Bras to Douaumont, Vaux and Eix. Pétain took over command of the defence of the RFV at 11:00 p.m., with Colonel Maurice de Barescut as chief of staff and Colonel Bernard Serrigny as head of operations, only to hear that Fort Douaumont had fallen. Pétain ordered for the remaining Verdun forts to be re-garrisoned. Four groups were established, under the command of generals Guillaumat, Balfourier and Duchêne on the right bank and Bazelaire on the left bank. A "line of resistance" was established on the east bank from Souville to Thiaumont, around Fort Douaumont to Fort Vaux, Moulainville and along the ridge of the Woëvre. On the west bank, the line ran from Cumières to Mort Homme, Côte 304 and Avocourt. A "line of panic" was planned in secret as a final line of defence north of Verdun, through forts Belleville, St. Michel and Moulainville. I Corps and XX Corps arrived from 24â26 February, increasing the number of divisions in the RFV to 14 1â2. By 6 March, the arrival of the XIII, XXI, XIV and XXXIII corps had increased the total to 20 1â2 divisions.
Aftermath
Falkenhayn wrote in his memoir that he sent an appreciation of the strategic situation to the Kaiser in December 1915,
The string in France has reached breaking point. A mass breakthroughâwhich in any case is beyond our meansâis unnecessary. Within our reach there are objectives for the retention of which the French General Staff would be compelled to throw in every man they have. If they do so the forces of France will bleed to death.
-âFalkenhayn
The German strategy in 1916 was to inflict mass casualties on the French, a goal achieved against the Russians from 1914 to 1915, to weaken the French Army to the point of collapse. The French Army had to be drawn into circumstances from which it could not escape, for reasons of strategy and prestige. The Germans planned to use a large number of heavy and super-heavy guns to inflict a greater number of casualties than French artillery, which relied mostly upon the 75 mm field gun. In 2007, Foley wrote that Falkenhayn intended an attrition battle from the beginning, contrary to the views of Krumeich, Förster and others but the lack of surviving documents had led to many interpretations of Falkenhayn's strategy. At the time, critics of Falkenhayn claimed that the battle demonstrated that he was indecisive and unfit for command; in 1937, Förster had proposed the view "forcefully". In 1994, Afflerbach questioned the authenticity of this "Christmas Memorandum" in his biography of Falkenhayn; after studying the evidence that had survived in the Kriegsgeschichtliche Forschungsanstalt des Heeres (Army Military History Research Institute) files, he concluded that the memorandum had been written after the war but that it was an accurate reflection of much of Falkenhayn's thinking in 1916.
Krumeich wrote that the Christmas Memorandum had been fabricated to justify a failed strategy and that attrition had been substituted for the capture of Verdun, only after the city was not taken quickly. Foley wrote that after the failure of the Ypres Offensive of 1914, Falkenhayn had returned to the pre-war strategic thinking of Moltke the Elder and Hans Delbrück on Ermattungsstrategie (attrition strategy), because the coalition fighting Germany was too powerful to be decisively defeated by military means. German strategy should aim to divide the Allies, by forcing at least one of the Entente powers into a negotiated peace. An attempt at attrition lay behind the offensive against Russia in 1915 but the Russians had refused to accept German peace feelers, despite the huge defeats inflicted by the Austro-Germans that summer.
With insufficient forces to break through the Western Front and to overcome the Entente reserves behind it, Falkenhayn attempted to force the French to attack instead, by threatening a sensitive point close to the front line. Falkenhayn chose Verdun as the place to force the French to begin a counter-offensive, which would be defeated with huge losses to the French, inflicted by German artillery on the dominating heights around the city. The 5th Army would begin a big offensive with limited objectives, to seize the Meuse Heights on the right bank of the river, from which German artillery could dominate the battlefield. By being forced into a counter-offensive against such formidable positions, the French Army would "bleed itself white". As the French were weakened, the British would be forced to launch a hasty relief offensive, which would be another costly defeat. If such defeats were not enough to force negotiations on the French, a German offensive would mop up the remnants of the Franco-British armies and break the Entente "once and for all".
In a revised instruction to the French army of January 1916, the General Staff (GQG) had stated that equipment could not be fought by men. Firepower could conserve infantry but a battle of material prolonged the war and consumed the troops which had been preserved in earlier battles. In 1915 and early 1916, German industry quintupled the output of heavy artillery and doubled the production of super-heavy artillery. French production had also recovered since 1914 and by February 1916, the army had 3,500 heavy guns. In May 1916, Joffre implemented a plan to issue each division with two groups of 155 mm guns and each corps with four groups of long-range guns. Both sides at Verdun had the means to fire huge numbers of heavy shells to suppress the opposing defences before taking the risk of having infantry move in the open. At the end of May, the Germans had 1,730 heavy guns at Verdun against 548 French, which were sufficient to contain the Germans but not enough for a counter-offensive.
German infantry found that it was easier for the French to endure preparatory bombardments, since French positions tended to be on dominating ground, not always visible and sparsely occupied. As soon as German infantry attacked, the French positions "came to life" and the troops began machine-gun and rapid field artillery fire. On 22 April, the Germans had suffered 1,000 casualties and in mid-April, the French fired 26,000 field artillery shells during an attack to the south-east of Fort Douaumont. A few days after taking over at Verdun, Pétain told the air force commander, Commandant Charles Tricornot de Rose, to sweep away the German air service and to provide observation for the French artillery. German air superiority was challenged and eventually reversed, using eight-aircraft Escadrilles for artillery-observation, counter-battery and tactical support.
The fighting at Verdun was less costly to both sides than the war of movement in 1914, which cost the French c.â850,000 and the Germans c.â670,000 men from August to December. The 5th Army had a lower rate of loss than armies on the Eastern Front in 1915 and the French had a lower average rate of loss at Verdun than the rate over three weeks during the Second Battle of Champagne (SeptemberâOctober 1915), which were not fought as battles of attrition. German loss rates increased relative to French rates from 1:2.2 in early 1915 to close to 1:1 by the end of the battle and rough parity continued during the Nivelle Offensive in 1917. The main cost of attrition tactics was indecision, because limited-objective attacks under an umbrella of massed heavy artillery-fire could succeed but created battles of unlimited duration.
Pétain used a "Noria" (rotation) system, to relieve French troops at Verdun after a short period, which brought most troops of the French army to the Verdun front but for shorter periods than for the German troops. French will to resist did not collapse, the symbolic importance of Verdun proved a rallying point and Falkenhayn was forced to conduct the offensive for much longer and commit far more infantry than intended. By the end of April, most of the German strategic reserve was at Verdun, suffering similar casualties to the French army. The Germans believed that they were inflicting losses at a rate of 5:2; German military intelligence thought that French casualties up to 11 March, had been 100,000 men and Falkenhayn was confident that German artillery could easily inflict another 100,000 losses. In May, Falkenhayn estimated that the French had lost 525,000 men against 250,000 German casualties and that the French strategic reserve had been reduced to 300,000 troops. Actual French losses were c.â130,000 by 1 May and the Noria system had enabled 42 divisions to be withdrawn and rested, when their casualties reached 50 percent. Of the 330 infantry battalions of the French metropolitan army, 259 (78 percent) went to Verdun, against 48 German divisions, 25 percent of the Westheer (western army). Afflerbach wrote that 85 French divisions fought at Verdun and that from February to August, the ratio of German to French losses was 1:1.1, not the third of French losses assumed by Falkenhayn. By 31 August, 5th Army losses were 281,000 and French casualties numbered 315,000 men.
In June 1916, the amount of French artillery at Verdun had been increased to 2,708 guns, including 1,138 seventy-five mm field guns; the French and German armies fired c.â10,000,000 shells, with a weight of 1,350,000 long tons (1,370,000 t) from FebruaryâDecember. The German offensive had been contained by French reinforcements, difficulties of terrain and the weather by May, with the 5th Army infantry stuck in tactically dangerous positions, overlooked by the French on the east bank and the west bank, instead of secure on the Meuse Heights. Attrition of the French forces was inflicted by constant infantry attacks, which were vastly more costly than waiting for French counter-attacks and defeating them with artillery. The stalemate was broken by the Brusilov Offensive and the Anglo-French relief offensive on the Somme, which had been expected to lead to the collapse of the Anglo-French armies. Falkenhayn had begun to remove divisions from the armies on the Western Front in June, to rebuild the strategic reserve but only twelve divisions could be spared. Four divisions were sent to the 2nd Army on the Somme, which had dug a layered defensive system based on the experience of the Herbstschlacht. The situation before the beginning of the battle on the Somme was considered by Falkenhayn to be better than before previous offensives and a relatively easy defeat of the British offensive was anticipated. No divisions were moved from the 6th Army, which had â17 1â2 divisions and a large amount of heavy artillery, ready for a counter-offensive when the British offensive had been defeated.
The strength of the Anglo-French offensive surprised Falkenhayn and the staff officers of OHL despite the losses inflicted on the British; the loss of artillery to "overwhelming" counter-battery fire and the policy of instant counter-attack against any Anglo-French advance, led to far more German infantry casualties than at the height of the fighting at Verdun, where 25,989 casualties had been suffered in the first ten days, against 40,187 losses on the Somme. The Brusilov Offensive had recommenced as soon as Russian supplies had been replenished, which inflicted more losses on Austro-Hungarian and German troops during June and July, when the offensive was extended to the north. Falkenhayn was called on to justify his strategy to the Kaiser on 8 July and again advocated sending minimal reinforcements to the east and to continue the "decisive" battle in France, where the Somme offensive was the "last throw of the dice" for the Entente. Falkenhayn had already given up the plan for a counter-offensive near Arras, to reinforce the Russian front and the 2nd Army, with eighteen divisions moved from the reserve and the 6th Army front. By the end of August only one division remained in reserve. The 5th Army had been ordered to limit its attacks at Verdun in June but a final effort was made in July to capture Fort Souville. The effort failed and on 12 July, Falkenhayn ordered a strict defensive policy, permitting only small local attacks, to try to limit the number of troops the French took from the RFV to add to the Somme offensive.
Falkenhayn had underestimated the French, for whom victory at all costs was the only way to justify the sacrifices already made; the pressure imposed on the French army never came close to making the French collapse and triggering a premature British relief offensive. The ability of the German army to inflict disproportionate losses had also been exaggerated, in part because the 5th Army commanders had tried to capture Verdun and attacked regardless of loss; even when reconciled to Falkenhayn's attrition strategy, they continued to use the costly Vernichtungsstrategie (strategy of annihilation) and tactics of Bewegungskrieg (manoeuvre warfare). Failure to reach the Meuse Heights, forced the 5th Army to try to advance from poor tactical positions and to impose attrition by infantry attacks and counter-attacks. The unanticipated duration of the offensive made Verdun a matter of German prestige as much as it was for the French and Falkenhayn became dependent on a British relief offensive and a German counter-offensive to end the stalemate. When it came, the collapse of the southern front in Russia and the power of the Anglo-French attack on the Somme reduced the German armies to holding their positions as best they could. On 29 August, Falkenhayn was sacked and replaced by Hindenburg and Ludendorff, who ended the German offensive at Verdun on 2 September.
Casualties
In 1980, Terraine gave c.â750,000 Franco-German casualties in 299 days of battle; Dupuy and Dupuy gave 542,000 French casualties in 1993. Heer and Naumann calculated 377,231 French and 337,000 German casualties, a monthly average of 70,000 casualties in 2000. Mason wrote in 2000 that there had been 378,000 French and 337,000 German casualties. In 2003, Clayton quoted 330,000 German casualties, of whom 143,000 were killed or missing and 351,000 French losses, 56,000 killed, 100,000 missing or prisoners and 195,000 wounded. Writing in 2005, Doughty gave French casualties at Verdun, from 21 February to 20 December 1916 as 377,231 men of 579,798 losses at Verdun and the Somme; 16 percent of Verdun casualties were known to have been killed, 56 percent wounded and 28 percent missing, many of whom were eventually presumed dead. Doughty wrote that other historians had followed Churchill (1927) who gave a figure of 442,000 casualties by mistakenly including all French losses on the Western Front. (In 2014, Philpott recorded 377,000 French casualties, of whom 162,000 men had been killed, German casualties were 337,000 men and a recent estimate of casualties at Verdun from 1914 to 1918 was 1,250,000 men).
In the second edition of The World Crisis (1938), Churchill wrote that the figure of 442,000 was for other ranks and the figure of "probably" 460,000 casualties included officers. Churchill gave a figure of 278,000 German casualties of whom 72,000 were killed and expressed dismay that French casualties had exceeded German by about 3:2. Churchill also stated that an eighth needed to be deducted from his figures for both sides to account for casualties on other sectors, giving 403,000 French and 244,000 German casualties. Grant gave a figure of 434,000 German casualties in 2005. In 2005, Foley used calculations made by Wendt in 1931 to give German casualties at Verdun from 21 February to 31 August 1916 as 281,000, against 315,000 French casualties. Afflerbach used the same source in 2000 to give 336,000 German and 365,000 French casualties at Verdun, from February to December 1916.
In 2013, Jankowski wrote that since the beginning of the war, French army units had produced états numériques des pertes every five days for the Bureau of Personnel at GQG. The health service at the Ministry of War received daily counts of wounded taken in by hospitals and other services but casualty data was dispersed among regimental depots, GQG, the Ãtat Civil, which recorded deaths, the Service de Santé, which counted injuries and illnesses and the Renseignements aux Familles, which communicated with next of kin. Regimental depots were ordered to keep fiches de position to record losses continuously and the Première Bureau of GQG began to compare the five-day field reports with the records of hospital admissions. The new system was used to calculate losses since August 1914, which took several months but the system had become established by February 1916. The états numériques des pertes were used to calculate casualty figures published in the Journal Officiel, the French Official History and other publications.
The German armies compiled Verlustlisten every ten days, which were published by the Reichsarchiv in the deutsches Jahrbuch of 1924â1925. German medical units kept detailed records of medical treatment at the front and in hospital and in 1923 the Zentral Nachweiseamt published an amended edition of the lists produced during the war, incorporating medical service data not in the Verlustlisten. Monthly figures of wounded and ill servicemen that were treated were published in 1934 in the Sanitätsbericht. Using such sources for comparisons of losses during a battle is difficult, because the information recorded losses over time, rather than place. Losses calculated for particular battles could be inconsistent, as in the Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War 1914â1920 (1922). In the early 1920s, Louis Marin reported to the Chamber of Deputies but could not give figures per battle, except for some by using numerical reports from the armies, which were unreliable unless reconciled with the system established in 1916.
Some French data excluded those lightly wounded but some did not. In April 1917, GQG required that the états numériques des pertes discriminate between the lightly wounded, treated at the front over a period of 20â30 days and severely wounded evacuated to hospitals. Uncertainty over the criteria had not been resolved before the war ended, Verlustlisten excluded lightly wounded and the Zentral Nachweiseamt records included them. Churchill revised German statistics, by adding 2 percent for unrecorded wounded in The World Crisis, written in the 1920s and the British official historian added 30 percent. For the Battle of Verdun, the Sanitätsbericht contained incomplete data for the Verdun area, did not define "wounded" and the 5th Army field reports exclude them. The Marin Report and Service de Santé covered different periods but included lightly wounded. Churchill used a Reichsarchiv figure of 428,000 casualties and took a figure of 532,500 casualties from the Marin Report, for March to June and November to December 1916, for all the Western Front.
The états numériques des pertes give French losses in a range from 348,000 to 378,000 and in 1930, Wendt recorded French Second Army and German 5th Army casualties of 362,000 and 336,831 respectively, from 21 February to 20 December, not taking account of the inclusion or exclusion of lightly wounded. In 2006, McRandle and Quirk used the Sanitätsbericht to adjust the Verlustlisten by an increase of c.â11 percent, which gave a total of 373,882 German casualties, compared to the French Official History record by 20 December 1916, of 373,231 French losses. A German record from the Sanitätsbericht, which explicitly excluded lightly wounded, compared German losses at Verdun in 1916, which averaged 37.7 casualties for each 1,000 men, with the 9th Army in Poland 1914 average of 48.1 per 1,000, the 11th Army average in Galicia 1915 of 52.4 per 1,000 men, the 1st Army Somme 1916 average of 54.7 per 1,000 and the 2nd Army average on the Somme of 39.1 per 1,000 men. Jankowski estimated an equivalent figure for the French Second Army of 40.9 men per 1,000, including lightly wounded. With a c.â11 percent adjustment to the German figure of 37.7 per 1,000 to include lightly wounded, following the views of McRandle and Quirk, the loss rate is analogous to the estimate for French casualties.
HISTORY
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Research A World War II Veteran (WWII WW2) ⋆ Golden Arrow Research
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2019-12-18T19:51:27+00:00
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Trace the military service of your individual WWII veteran to learn what they did and where they were during the war. Request WWII records.
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en
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Golden Arrow Research
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https://www.goldenarrowresearch.com/research-a-wwii-veteran/
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Our military records specialists are on site at archival research facilities nationwide and can access a wide variety of WWII military service records of your veteran. Our unique research process is essential to understanding the experiences of individual military veterans of WWII-since the vast majority of WWII Army/Air Corps personnel records were lost in the 1973 National Archives fire. Our expertise enables us to reconstruct the service history of your individual WWII veteran and to give you a glimpse of the experiences that he or she had during the war-even if their military service records were lost in the fire
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https://history.companyofheroes.com/monte-cassino/polish-soldiers-monte-cassino-1944/
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The Polish Corps - Heroes of Monte Cassino
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At Monte Cassino, Polandâs soldiers fought bravely against overwhelming odds â having already overcome so much. Learn about their incredible story here.
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https://www.companyofheroes.com/core/misc/favicon.ico
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https://history.companyofheroes.com/monte-cassino/polish-soldiers-monte-cassino-1944/
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In the battle for Italy during the Second World War, Monte Cassino was not just a key strategic outpost for the Axis powers on the road to Rome â it was one of the strongest defensive positions in Europe.
Among the huge Allied coalition facing a gruelling uphill struggle to conquer this rugged mountain and its formidable defences, it was the Polish II Corps who finally broke the Axis line.
Amid the monastery ruins, after five months of heavy fighting, slow progress and strategic blunders, these brave soldiers proudly raised the red and white flag of Poland.
But Monte Cassino was just one chapter in an extraordinary tale of occupation, exile and fightback.
This is their story.
The Polish II Corps formed in 1943, the same year as Operation Avalanche and just a year or so before the battles at Monte Cassino.
By 1945, they comprised approximately 55,000 men and 1,500 women, incorporating units such as:
3rd Carpathian Infantry Division
5th Kresowa Infantry Division
2nd Armoured Brigade
Army Group Artillery
Womenâs Auxiliary Service
If you were to read a list of Polish soldiers at Monte Cassino, you would find troops from many different walks of life, and an array of religious backgrounds â Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Jewish.
Today, the resting place of many can be found at the Monte Cassino Polish war cemetery, along with the ashes and gravestone of their general, WÅadysÅaw Anders.
The II Corps travelled a long, dangerous route from Poland to Monte Cassino â enduring the brutal Soviet Gulag and an arduous evacuation to the Middle East before they even arrived at the battlefield in Italy.
This saga ties closely to the history of their homeland, and its status in Europe at the beginning of the 20th Century.
âFor our freedom and yoursâ â Poland 1918-1939
Poland is set on the flat expanses of the North European plain â a historical crossing point for armies marching from east to west, and west to east, with few defensible borders.
As a result, the nation has often found itself at the mercy of powerful, expansionist neighbours. In fact, from 1795 to 1918, Poland didnât exist at all. Instead, it was partitioned by the Austro-Hungarian, German and Russian Empires.
Polish self-determination and political consciousness were key weapons against their authoritarian rulers. During this period, âfor our freedom and yoursâ became a call to arms for Polish soldiers and exiles, as they fought in revolutionary uprisings at home and abroad.
Freedom was a watchword in Poland for many decades to come. According to Matthew Parker, author of Monte Cassino: The Hardest Fought Battle of World War II, by the time of the Second World War, there had been âgenerations of Poles wanting to free their country⦠a huge tradition.â
After the First World War, when the map of Europe was redrawn, Poland reformed as a republic â seeming to beckon a new era of self-governance for the Polish people.
But in early 1919, just months after the conflict came to an end, Soviet troops invaded â hoping to use Poland as a jumping-off point to spread their revolution to Germany and Western Europe.
Though the Poles repelled the invading Russian forces, this moment would be a foreboding sign of things to come, as well as a dark reminder of the past.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the beginning of World War Two
Poland was invaded again on September 1st, 1939, this time infamously by Nazi Germany â seeking lebensraum territorial expansion. As a result, the UK and France declared war on Germany, and the Second World War had begun.
A few weeks later, the Soviet Union also invaded from the east. Despite being ideological enemies, the German regime and the Soviets had agreed to carve up Poland and Eastern Europe between them as part of a secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop nonaggression pact.
The people of Poland suffered brutal treatment at the hands of both regimes. In German-occupied territory, the Poles were considered untermenshen and were heavily persecuted.
The Nazis also began the systematic subjugation and extermination of millions of Polish Jews. By 1941, some of the most notorious concentration camps of the Holocaust had been built on Polish soil â including Auschwitz and Treblinka. Over the next few years, an estimated two million people were murdered in those two camps alone, while Warsaw became the site of Europeâs most notorious Jewish ghetto.
Meanwhile, eastern Poland was incorporated into the Soviet territories of Ukraine and Belarus. There, the feared NKVD secret police carried out the deportation and massacre of Polish army officers, civil servants and professionals in the forest of Katyn.
Others were rounded up and sent by rail to the Gulag in the far reaches of the vast Soviet empire â from Kazakhstan to Siberia â where they faced starvation, disease and brutal forced labour.
In one Siberian camp, 40% of the prisoners were said to have died in the first year.
For many Poles, their treatment led to lasting trauma â and vigilance. Matthew Parker notes how some survivors of World War Two were left with permanent fear of a further Russian invasion.
However, along with this trauma, there was also a deep-rooted desire among many Poles to fight back.
WÅadysÅaw Anders forms a new Polish Army
In 1941, the surprise German invasion of the Soviet Union â codenamed Operation Barbarossa â put a swift end to the fragile German-Soviet alliance. Now allied with the United Kingdom, Stalin agreed to release his Polish detainees and allow them to form their own army on Soviet soil.
General WÅadysÅaw Anders was released from the NKVDâs feared Lubiyanka jail to lead the new force. Anders had fallen foul of the Soviet regime for fighting for Tsarist forces in World War One, and battling the Red Army in the Polish-Soviet conflict. He had faced years of interrogation, starvation, solitary confinement and torture.
But now, the resolute Anders called on "all able-bodied Polish citizens to fulfil their duty to their country and to join the banner of the White Eagleâ.
âOne might ask what our soldiers, scattered all over the world, are fighting for. There is only one, simple and clear answer: we fight for justice and for our nation, we fight for free and independent Poland, which every nerve in our body is craving so badly. We know that great hardships await us, that the way will be tough and bloody, and that perhaps not all of us will succeed. But weâll get there eventually â so help us God!"
From a radio speech in 1941
The Polish Army heads south
The troops and civilians who eventually answered Andersâ call were exhausted, malnourished and often extremely ill. They had faced 18 months in forced labour camps, building roads and railways, or working in mines and sawmills.
They gathered in the steppe of Kazakhstan, where they lived in tents in freezing conditions. Before long, however, it was time to journey south to the British territories of Iraq, and Iran â known then as Persia.
Of the 1.7 million soldiers and civilians who were taken to the USSR, only around 115,000 made the long journey south between March and October 1942. According to one account:
âMany thousands died of malnutrition, exhaustion, and diseases (typhoid was rampant), often on the doorstep to freedom, waiting to be transported to Persiaâ.
Parker notes the âsense of extreme joyâ of the Poles to leave the USSR, contrasted with their physical condition when they arrived in the Middle East:
âTheyâre met by the British, and all of their clothes are instantly burnt because they're all full of lice. They're instantly given very urgent medical treatments and food. And some of them actually made themselves very ill, almost fatally ill, by eating too much too soon because they have been so starved for so long.â
Those troops that made the journey were incorporated into the British Eighth Army, entering a steady training process to get them back to full strength. They then formed the Polish II Corps â numbering around 40,000 â before being posted to Persia, Iraq and Palestine, ultimately heading to Egypt and then on to the Italian campaign.
Over the last few years, the Axis war machine had mercilessly torn through Europe and Africa. But the tide was turning.
In Egypt, the British Eighth Army defeated Erwin Rommelâs forces at El Alamein, while the Soviets had taken the upper hand at Stalingrad. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, the Americans were shortly to join the fray as well.
Anders and his troops had witnessed the terror of invasion, the fear of occupation and the hell of the Gulag. They saw themselves as âall that was left of free Polandâ. With Hitler and Mussolini on the back foot, they now had a chance to fight through Axis territory to recapture and rebuild their homeland.
Hitlerâs soft underbelly?
In 1943, the Polish Corps landed in Taranto and joined a large Allied force taking on the Axis in Italy.
Italy was said to be âHitlerâs soft underbellyâ, but breaking the rigorous defences on the road to Rome proved harder than expected.
The Gustav Line was a series of heavy fortifications that ran the width of the Italian peninsula. It made excellent use of the peaks, gorges and caves of the Apennine mountains, and was reinforced with machine gun turrets, barbed wire and mines. The area was âicy in the winter and baking in summerâ.
Monte Cassino and its seemingly impossible obstacles formed the linchpin of the Gustav Line. If the Allies took this, the rest would crumble.
But it wouldnât be easy.
The Germans constructed cunning defences on the slopes and took up commanding positions on the higher ground.
Atop the towering hill was a vast, ancient Benedictine monastery. Though this abbey was said to be a neutral zone, the Allies believed the enemy to be using it as a surveillance position from which they could direct attacks and artillery fire. At the bottom of the mountain, meanwhile, the Allies faced a quagmire of flooded rivers and brutal winter conditions.
Every move the Allied troops made seemed to be watched. The monastery took on an ominous, malevolent presence of its own: âYou couldnât scratch without being seenâ, said one soldier. âAnd it was a psychological thing. It grew the longer you were thereâ.
After two failed attempts to take the position, British commanders demanded action to remove this obstacle. They directed waves of US bombs to flatten the monastery, despite dubious evidence of its occupation.
The bombings devastated the complex and killed 230 civilians. But while the cloisters, courtyards and statues were reduced to rubble and craters, the German forces, who indeed had not been using the monastery, quickly moved in and established defensive positions in the ruins.
Subsequent Allied engagements achieved little progress and suffered heavy casualties.
It was at this moment, with the Allies in disarray, that the II Corps were assigned the task of taking the hill once and for all.
If they were successful, it would not only achieve the seemingly impossible â the morale boost and propaganda victory for the previously-oppressed Polish units would be incalculable.
Polandâs army at Monte Cassino
On 12th May 1944, the Polish II Corps advanced on Monte Cassino, with Anders eyeing a relatively gradual assault on the monastery. Rather than heading straight towards the target and risking enemy fire, his troops would steadily take positions on the high ground beyond the ruins.
The Polish Corps were hungry for the fight. According to Matthew Parker, as they ascended the hillside, one British eyewitness noted how heâd ânever seen anyone so full of hatred. All they wanted to do is kill Germansâ.
As they marched, they were subject to propaganda through loudspeakers â urging them to surrender, join forces with Germany and take the fight to the Russians.
It is safe to say this did not work.
On their way to their attacking positions at Monte Cassino, the Polish troops noted the stark ruin of this once idyllic Italian hillside â the product of months of grinding battle.
A bloody advance
They immediately found that the artillery fire had been ineffective, despite its scale. The ruins, craters, caves and other defences had provided excellent shelter for the German troops. If they were to vanquish their enemy, the Polish Corps would need to face them up close and personal.
Under heavy fire, the Carpathian Battalion succeeded in making progress onto Hill 593 despite mounting casualties. A German counterattack came, covered by mortar and machine gun, but the Poles defended their position with fierce determination. Eventually, they were forced to retreat â and only a few dozen evaded death or injury.
Meanwhile, the fight for Phantom Ridge became an intense battle of attrition. The commanding German position made for slow progress â with Polish troops regularly needing to dive for cover and crawl.
Ultimately, enemy fire proved insurmountable for the Polish Corps and they were forced to withdraw. However, this push had provided an opportunity for other Allied attacks to make headway. The Free French Units were now making progress on the far side of the battle, while British divisions were soon to enter the field as well.
Despite their heavy losses, the symbolic victory and morale boost for the Polish people was immeasurable.
The bravery of the Polish II Corps made global headlines in its aftermath. Monte Cassino graffiti was even found scrawled on walls across Poland as a mark of defiance against their Nazi occupiers â as âMonte Cassinoâ became a byword for Polish courage.
With Germanyâs defences all but broken, the Allies soon liberated Rome â albeit controversially. Hoping to lead the first Allied army into the Italian capital, American General Mark Clark missed a vital opportunity to cut off the entire German 10th Army, who regrouped and fought the Allies again at the Gothic Line, north of Florence.
Though the fight for Italy would wear on for many more months, the noose would soon tighten fully around the Axis. The D-Day landings would open a new front of the war, while Soviet troops pushed in from the east.
As the Allies liberated German-occupied territory, discovered the atrocities of the Holocaust and entered Berlin, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels would ultimately take their own lives. The war in Europe ended on 8th May 1945.
However, for Anders and many of the Polish troops, the Allied victory was bittersweet.
Poland was again under Russian influence and â despite assurances at the Yalta conference that Polandâs government in exile would have a say on its future - the post-war reality was starkly different to the wishes of Anders and many of the Poles. Indeed, many chose to settle in Great Britain in the aftermath of the war.
Back in Poland, the Soviet occupation gave way to a totalitarian state, which would remain under Soviet influence until the early 1990s.
Despite its turbulent post-war era, the victory at Monte Cassino remains a huge source of pride for Polish veterans and civilians alike.
Today, the elaborate Polish Cemetery at Monte Cassino is something of a pilgrimage site, where coachloads of Polish people sing national songs, and priests conduct services.
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https://www.ww2-weapons.com/final-german-orders-of-battle/
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Final German Orders of Battle > WW2 Weapons
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2023-10-26T01:17:41+03:00
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Final German Orders of Battle > Schematic layout of the German Wehrmacht from April 30, 1945:
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en
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WW2 Weapons
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https://www.ww2-weapons.com/final-german-orders-of-battle/
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The final battles in the East and the last German Orders of Battle from April 30, 1945.
Army groups, armies, corps and divisions.
The establishment and distribution of the divisions of the Wehrmacht and subordinate units of allies on 30 April 1945.
German Orders of Battle April 30, 1945
Included are:
VG Division, the Volks-Grenadier (peoples grenadiers) Divisions.
FJ-Divisions, abbreviation for Fallschirmjäger (paratroopers) divisions.
Panzer Div. (or Pz.Div.) is the armored (tank) division.
Panzergrenadier (or Pz.Gren.) Div is the motorized infantry division with tank elements.
Jager are light infantry units, mainly for anti-partisan warfare.
Battle Groups are the still available, operational troop units of wiped out divisions.
zbV, German short term for ‘at special disposal’.
Schematic layout of the German Wehrmacht from April 30, 1945:
Eastern Front
Army Group E
Army Group South
Army Group Center
Western Front
OB West
Northern Italy
Army Group C (Commander Southwest)
Status as of April 12, 1945, since current status unknown (* actually the army group had initiated the surrender in the meantime)
In total about 146 1/2 divisions (because of the different basic organizations of the divisions and changing combat strength the numbers are only an indication).
See also: Germany Army Unit Organisation 1942-45.
Final battles in the east
In the second half of February and throughout March 1945, Soviet military action was concentrated on clearing the flanks of the imminent attack on Berlin and at the same time building up forces and supplies for this offensive.
The Red Army was initially defeated in battles of immense hardship, but then managed to destroy most of the German troops in Pomerania or drive them back across the Oder.
The two German armies that were cut off in East Prussia were broken up into several parts. Those German units which could not be evacuated by sea were destroyed or pushed back in a tiny enclave which was still held until May 1945.
Using their artillery, the Red Army troops of the Third Belorussian Front advanced as far as Königsberg (today Kaliningrad) and literally smashed most of the remains of the old north wing of the German Eastern Front to pieces. The German general who eventually surrendered the remains of Königsberg was sentenced to death in absentia and his family was arrested. Such actions did not stop the Red Army, nor did the ever-increasing German practice of hanging soldiers in public with signs explaining the fate of traitors to the Third Reich.
On the Eastern Front, however, German soldiers generally fought with a bravery born of desperation to save their own lives and what they thought was the future of their families and their homeland. There the ‘flying execution squads’ were completely unnecessary. And when the Eastern Front finally disintegrated for good, they too could no longer stop the soldiers’ desperate attempts to escape westwards into captivity of Western Allies instead of the Russians.
One after the other, the isolated German positions in the east gave up, with a small number escaping or breaking through. Only the German units in Kurland and in two places in East Prussia were able to hold out until the total surrender in May 1945.
The German soldiers trapped in these positions had at least a greater chance of surviving the war than if they had been evacuated early to the Oder Front.
But neither Hitler, who wanted them to stay in place, nor Chief of General Staff Guderian, who wanted them to be evacuated to the new Eastern Front, was concerned about their survival. They merely had different views on how best to prolong the war. Hitler hoped to be able to turn the tide, or that the Allied alliance of convenience would still be dissolved, while Guderian hoped to hold a new front in the East until the Americans and British arrived. Both ideas were, however, hopelessly unrealistic.
Further south, the Red Army conquered more of Silesia and surrounded Breslau (today Wroclaw), which held out until the end of the war in May. In Bohemia, the Fourth Ukrainian Front had enormous difficulties in pushing back the German Army Group Center. The German troops there had been considerably reinforced, partly because of the assumption that the Red Army’s major spring offensive would be launched on this important industrial area and because its commander, the hard-hitting staying power General Schörner, was one of Hitler’s great favorites.
In Hungary, the last major German offensive of the war against the resistance and the subsequent counteroffensive of the Second and Third Ukrainian Front, which drove the Germans out of Hungary and southern Slovakia, collapsed.
While the Red Army continued to advance towards Vienna via Pressburg, on 2 April they conquered the Hungarian oil fields on Lake Balaton at the southern end of the front. At the same time, Tito’s Partisans army pushed the Germans back into Yugoslavia, where they were in danger of being attacked from behind by the British advancing from Italy.
One day before the capture of the Hungarian oil fields, on April 1, Stalin had set the date for the major offensive on Berlin at the latest to April 16. At the same time, Stalin informed his Western allies that the Red Army would not attack Berlin until the end of May.
For the large-scale attack on Berlin, Stalin had previously declared that he preferred Zhukov to take this city. Now he gave the final orders for the offensive, which was to be carried out from three fronts: the Second Belorussian (Rokossovsky), the First Belorussian (Zhukov) and the First Ukrainian Front (Konev).
Before that, however, the Fourth Ukrainian Front was to attack further south, in order to cover the left flank of the First Ukrainian Front advancing towards Berlin and to attract German reserves there. Both were remarkably successful and there were practically no German reserves behind the German lines in front of Berlin.
In the north, Rokossovsky’s Second Belorussian Front had to carry out the most difficult preparations and troop deployments and was faced with the most difficult terrain. An attack was necessary across a river which branched into different arms and was located in an area crossed and flooded by dikes, which could easily be fired at by the defenders.
His armies were therefore to attack a few days after the other two fronts, and therefore did not start the offensive until 20 April, with only the northernmost of the three attempted assaults across the river area being successful.
Rokossovsky then quickly shifted his focus to this section and penetrated into Mecklenburg.
Immediately east of Berlin was Zhukov’s First Belorussian Front, which already had bridgeheads over the Oder and was to attack from them in three waves. A spearhead was to advance north of the German capital and eventually surround it, one aimed directly at Berlin and one to the southwest, in order to cut off the German 9th Army standing on the Oder from the north.
Konev’s First Ukrainian Front, which was supposed to make the German defenders believe that they were attacking their left flank, was in fact supposed to cross the Neisse River against the German 4th Panzer Army, then advance northwest to cut off the 9th Army from the south and then advance further west to meet the Americans and enclose Berlin from the south.
In the first two weeks of April, when the Third Ukrainian Front was advancing deeply into Austria and was occupying Vienna by April 3, the extensive preparations for the main offensive on Berlin continued. As in previous offensives, these preparations were greatly aided by thousands of trucks supplied by the United States under the Lend-Lease program.
With about two and a half million soldiers, the offensive was opened on 16 April. Stalin had told his commanders that he wanted the operation to be completed in twelve to fifteen days. With enormous effort and losses, they delivered to him essentially what he had demanded.
Although Zhukov’s Belorussian Front began its offensive with bridgeheads across the Oder, the first frontal attacks, which began at night in the spotlight and were intended to blind the German soldiers, hardly pushed back the defenders.
At Stalin’s insistence Zhukov let his soldiers continue to run into the fire, and when the Soviet artillery had worn down the defenders, Red Army units broke through the front line of the Vistula Army Group and pushed forward towards Berlin and north of it.
There were very heavy losses on both sides and numerous Soviet tanks were destroyed, many of them by the Panzerfaust of members of the Hitler Youth. According to Soviet information, during the subsequent fighting in Berlin alone, some 700 Red Army tanks were destroyed by the Panzerfaust alone.
But the enormous numerical superiority of the Red Army slowly but surely drove all defenders before them.
Further south, Konev’s forces crossed the Neisse River with great success after a huge artillery barrage. Within a short time several divisions of the 4th Panzer Army simply disintegrated and before the Germans realized what was going on, Konev’s spearheads were behind the German 9th Army.
Within five days it was clear that the Eastern Front had been torn apart. The only open question now was whether the Germans would try to keep fighting or give up.
The advancing Russians invaded Berlin from the north, east and south when the spearheads of the Zhukov and Konev armies met west of the city on April 25. On the same day Konev’s troops also made contact with the Americans near Torgau on the Elbe.
The German capital was completely surrounded, and at the same time its most important large formation for its planned defense, the 9th Army, had been trapped in its own pocket southeast of Berlin.
Hitler’s desperate efforts to relieve the capital did not have a significant impact on the operations. Under heavy artillery support, Red Army troops invaded the city from all sides. Although they suffered considerable losses, they continued to advance.
Hitler had decided to stay in the capital and commit suicide there if the relief operations failed.
However, an increasing number of German military leaders saw a completely different perspective at that time. They recognized that the war was lost and that there was no prospect of a renewed stabilization of the front. As Russian shells fell on the capital, the Red Army and American troops would meet in central Germany, while other American armies from the north and south could be expected at the Brenner Pass, they had only one reason to continue the fighting. They wanted to gain time for the civilian population who had to flee from the eastern areas to the west and to avoid as much of their soldiers as possible from being captured by Soviet troops.
Therefore, those parts of the German armies that were standing near Berlin tried – not entirely unreasonably – to escape the place of doom and not to reach it. Meanwhile, Hitler and his entourage in the Führer’s bunker vacillated between feverish dreams of last-minute salvation and sheer desperation.
The last garrison commander of Berlin, General Helmuth Weidling, had been appointed to this post by Hitler when he was supposed to be executed, since he had not handled his previous corps command as Hitler had ordered. Now he informed Hitler that the last ammunition would be used up on April 30.
Since Hitler had by then implemented his earlier plan to let Dönitz and Kesselring continue the war in the northern and southern parts of the remaining German sphere of power, he now only had to settle his personal affairs. All that was not absolutely necessary at headquarters he had already sent away at the last moment.
The encirclement and the struggle through the big city had lasted only a few days longer for the Red Army soldiers than Stalin had originally demanded.
The still allied Americans summed it up as follows: ‘The fighting in Berlin lasted so long because it was a large metropolis, which had been bombed out of a field of rubble and, on top of that, had been amateurishly fortified, which meant that it could not be quickly captured even against the weak German defense forces. This especially when the attacking troops already knew that the war was now practically over, and they did not belong to the last victims and wanted to see their home again’.
As the fighting approached the immediate vicinity of the bunker that served as Hitler’s headquarters, the Führer married his lover Eva Braun on April 29 and dictated his political and private will.
In the former, he defended his policy, made wicked remarks about his generals whom he blamed for the defeat and called on all surviving Germans to continue his racist policy of exterminating the Jews. He appointed Dönitz as his successor.
The following day he and his new wife committed suicide. The bodies were soon found by the Russians, as there was not enough gasoline for their complete incineration, which Hitler had ordered in his private will. Nevertheless, for years the Soviet government continued to spread the rumor that Hitler might still be alive somewhere.
The Berlin garrison – or rather what was left of it – surrendered to the Red Army after the failure of attempts by the last acting Chief of General Staff of the German Army, General Hans Krebs, to work out a more comprehensive surrender.
The battle for Berlin was over. After a careful study, it had cost the lives or health of half a million people, according to the most conservative estimates. Even as the last defenders had marched off into captivity, Soviet patrols were already searching for fugitive Nazi leaders, while a group of German Communists led by Walter Ulbricht was flown in from Soviet exile to form a new government in occupied Germany.
North and south of Berlin the fighting continued in the following days. The announcement that Hitler was dead finally convinced the commanders in Italy to hand over their units.
In Bohemia, a final Soviet offensive was launched against the remaining German Army Group Center, which finally had to lay down its arms as part of the overall surrender.
There, the ROA units organized by former Red Army general Vlasov, recruited from Soviet prisoners of war to fight alongside the Germans against the Soviet regime, became involved in the final battles around Prague and fell into the hands of the Russians or were handed over to them by the Americans. Those who did not kill themselves were shot or sent to labor camps.
The Czechoslovakian exile government of Benes returned to Prague, but under circumstances that gave little hope for a good future.
References and literature
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https://academic.oup.com/book/12205/chapter/161665026
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https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/7135541
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47th Reserve Division (German Empire)
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Infobox Military Unit unit name=47th Reserve Division ( 47. Reserve Division ) dates=1914 1918 country=Germany branch=Army type=Infantry size=Approx. 15,000 battles=World War I: Gorlice Tarnów Offensive, Spring OffensiveThe 47th Reserve Division…
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https://en-academic.com/favicon.ico
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Academic Dictionaries and Encyclopedias
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https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/7135541
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Infobox Military Unit
unit_name=47th Reserve Division ("47. Reserve-Division")
dates=1914-1918
country=Germany
branch=Army
type=Infantry
size=Approx. 15,000
battles=World War I: Gorlice-Tarnów Offensive, Spring Offensive
The 47th Reserve Division ("47. Reserve-Division") was a unit of the Imperial German Army in World War I. The division was formed in September 1914 and organized over the next month, arriving in the line in October. [ [http://www.1914-18.info/erster-weltkrieg.php?u=396 47. Reserve-Division (Chronik 1914-1918)] ] It was part of the first wave of new divisions formed at the outset of World War I, which were numbered the 43rd through 54th Reserve Divisions. The division was disbanded on August 2, 1918. [ [http://www.1914-18.info/erster-weltkrieg.php?u=396 47. Reserve-Division (Chronik 1914-1918)] ]
Recruitment
The 217th Reserve Infantry Regiment was raised in the Prussian Province of Saxony and the Duchy of Anhalt. The 218th, 219th, and 220th Reserve Infantry Regiments were raised in the Prussian Province of Westphalia, but included troops from other Prussian provinces and German states. After the 217th Reserve Infantry Regiment was transferred to the 225th Infantry Division, the 47th Reserve Division was nominally all-Westphalian, but by that point in the war levies of new replacements often came from all over the German Empire.
Combat chronicle
The 47th Reserve Division initially fought on the Western Front, entering the line in October between the Meuse and Moselle and remaining there until late November, when it was transported to the Eastern Front. It fought in the Limanowa-Lapanow in December 1914 suffering heavy casualties and Gorlice-Tarnów Offensive in 1915. In May 1917, it returned to the Western Front, and occupied the line near Verdun. In 1918, the division fought in the German Spring Offensive, breaking through at St.Quentin–La Fère and fighting on to the Montdidier-Noyon region. It later saw action in the Second Battle of the Marne. The division was in Lorraine when it was disbanded on August 2, 1918. In 1917, Allied intelligence rated the division as a mediocre division. In 1918 it was rated second class, and it was noted that its strength had been allowed to diminish without replenishment, leading to its dissolution. [ [http://www.1914-18.info/erster-weltkrieg.php?u=396 47. Reserve-Division (Chronik 1914-1918)] ] ["Histories of Two Hundred and Fifty-One Divisions of the German Army which Participated in the War (1914-1918), compiled from records of Intelligence section of the General Staff, American Expeditionary Forces, at General Headquarters, Chaumont, France 1919" (1920), pp. 474-476.]
Order of battle on formation
The 47th Reserve Division was initially organized as a square division, with essentially the same organization as the reserve divisions formed on mobilization. The order of battle of the 47th Reserve Division on September 10, 1914 was as follows: [Hermann Cron et al., "Ruhmeshalle unserer alten Armee" (Berlin, 1935).]
*93. Reserve-Infanterie-Brigade
**Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 217
**Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 218
*94. Reserve-Infanterie-Brigade
**Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 219
**Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 220
*Reserve-Kavallerie-Abteilung Nr. 47
*Reserve-Feldartillerie-Regiment Nr. 47
*Reserve-Pionier-Kompanie Nr. 47
Order of battle on February 9, 1918
The 47th Reserve Division was triangularized in May 1917. Over the course of the war, other changes took place, including the formation of artillery and signals commands and a pioneer battalion. The order of battle on February 9, 1918 was as follows: [Cron et al., "Ruhmeshalle".]
*94. Reserve-Infanterie-Brigade
**Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 218
**Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 219
**Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 220
**MG-Scharfschützen-Abteilung Nr. 47
*4.Eskadron/Jäger-Regiment zu Pferde Nr. 4
*Artillerie-Kommandeur 47
**Reserve-Feldartillerie-Regiment Nr. 47
**Fußartillerie-Bataillon Nr. 158 (from April 15, 1918)
*Pionier-Bataillon Nr. 347
*Divisions-Nachrichten-Kommandeur 447
References
* [http://www.1914-18.info/erster-weltkrieg.php?u=396 47. Reserve-Division (Chronik 1914/1918) - Der erste Weltkrieg]
* Hermann Cron et al., "Ruhmeshalle unserer alten Armee" (Berlin, 1935)
* Hermann Cron, "Geschichte des deutschen Heeres im Weltkriege 1914-1918" (Berlin, 1937)
* Günter Wegner, "Stellenbesetzung der deutschen Heere 1815-1939." (Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück, 1993), Bd. 1
* "Histories of Two Hundred and Fifty-One Divisions of the German Army which Participated in the War (1914-1918), compiled from records of Intelligence section of the General Staff, American Expeditionary Forces, at General Headquarters, Chaumont, France 1919" (1920)
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Gorlice breakthrough
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorlice_breakthrough
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Central powers offensive at 1915 on the Eastern front
Gorlice breakthroughPart of Gorlice-Tarnów Offensive in the Eastern Front during World War I
Gorlice-Tarnów breakthrough
and Russian withdrawalBelligerents Russian Empire German Empire
Austria-HungaryCommanders and leaders Grand Duke Nicholas
Nikolay Ivanov Erich von Falkenhayn
August von Mackensen
Hans von SeecktUnits involved III Army XI Army
III Army
IV ArmyStrength On May 1:[1]
401,041 men
525 machine guns
729 guns On May 1:[2]
700,299 men
734 machine guns
1,691 gunsCasualties and losses 100,000 prisoners
80 guns and 250 machine guns captured
Unknown but very large number of KIA and WIA[3] 36,570[4][5]-90,000
The Gorlice breakthrough occurred in the May 1–10, 1915 as part of the Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive during World War I. The German 11th Army led by General August von Mackensen, with the support on the flanks by the 3rd and 4th Austro-Hungarian Armies, defeated the 3rd Russian Army. For the first time in the history of the First World War a heavily fortified and long-term defensive position was broken through during the Gorliсе offensive.
Background
[edit]
From August 1914 until early spring 1915, the German Empire prioritized war on the Western front to their Eastern front. This allowed Russian troops to steadily advance through Galicia, taking the Austrian territory, including the Hungarian fortress of Przemysl in March and seizing its weapons stores.[7] Progress was not easy, though and the Russian Imperial Army suffered heavy casualties. No matter how hard they were hit, they managed to recover so quickly that Prince von Bulow reportedly once said, "fighting the Russians [was] like pounding a pillow.".[8]
As a result of the Russian advance into Austria and chatter that Italy (which was neutral) was preparing to enter the war on the side of the Allies, the situation was seen as dire for the Austrian-Hungarian empire. The Central Powers reorganized their armies and Field Marshall von Hindenburg who believed that Russia "could be defeated in a single campaign, provided enough troops were at hand" [9] gave Mackensen command of the newly created German Eleventh Army with Colonel Hans von Seeckt as his Chief of Staff.
Offensive operations of the Central Powers on the Russian front until May 1915 were carried out without numerical superiority, often with equality of forces. The key to the success of the Gorlice breakthrough was built on the creation of an overwhelming superiority in forces and means. "A quick and stunning strike in Galicia, carried out by large forces in order to achieve a decisive change in the situation in the eastern theater of operations" – this is how von Falkenhayn described the idea of the offensive on April 18, 1915.[10] Having no advantage in manpower and machine guns in general, the Central Powers achieved an advantage in the front of the strongest of the Russian armies of the Southwestern Front and overwhelming superiority in the main attack zone (2.5 times in manpower and machine guns, almost 6 times in artillery).
Another factor of superiority and success was to be the artillery support of the operation. By the beginning of the fighting, each light battery had 1,200 shells, 15-cm howitzer batteries had 600, and batteries of 21-cm mortars had 500.
On April 27, Mackensen outlined the requirements for the operation to subordinate commanders: "The attack of the 11 Army, in order to achieve its goal, must be carried out as quickly as the operational situation requires. Only the speed of attack can prevent the enemy from gaining a foothold in the rear positions and systematically bringing up stronger reserves ... There are only two means for such actions: deep separation of the attacking infantry and rapid artillery pursuit by fire. Therefore, the attacking corps and divisions of the army should not think about a clearly defined task for the day, but strive by all means to advance as far as possible ... You should not expect that the attack along the entire front will go evenly ... but a faster advance of one sector of the front will facilitate the heavier and certainly slower progress in other areas and again drag them along with it."[11] This deep separation was served by the allocation of an entire army corps to the reserve of the 11th Army.
The concentration of large enemy forces in front of the front of the 3rd Army did not go unnoticed by the Russian side. From prisoners and defectors, it became known about the offensive being prepared for approximately April 28, "the Austrians, who will be supported by the Germans." Already on April 26, the headquarters of the 3rd Army took measures to strengthen the defense at the Gorlice-Tarnów line, ordering the creation of reserves from units of the 70th and 81st Infantry Divisions. The front headquarters also took measures to return to their divisions the regiments previously allocated to other sectors, and on April 29 issued a directive to the armies on measures to form and concentrate reserves: the 3rd Caucasian Army Corps (21st and 52nd infantry divisions; a total of 23,859 combat personnel with 65 machine guns and 84 guns) entered the 3rd Army. [12]
The construction of defensive lines, which began during the Carpathian battle, in January 1915, was also accelerated. The operation of the fortifications was hampered in the spring by groundwater floods and landslides. On April 29, the front headquarters ordered the 3rd and 4th armies to start building the second line of defense.[13]
The German raid into Courland diverted the attention of the Russian Headquarters from the Beskids and the Carpathians. The Austro-Hungarian Army High Command also took steps to disorientate the Russian side. On the night of April 30, the Austro-Hungarian 31st Landwehr Infantry Regiment crossed the Vistula River and, at the cost of heavy losses, captured a bridgehead in the rear of the Russian 9th Army Corps.[14]
The concentration of forces of the Central Powers in the Gorlice sector, was known to the Russian command, which took, as far as possible, measures to strengthen the defense. For several days, the second echelon behind the positions of the Russian 10th Army Corps gathered troops equal to it in number (41,912 infantry and 985 cavalry, excluding rear services personnel), and even superior in machine guns and guns (121 and 118, respectively). This objectively reduced the superiority of the Central Powers, but the scale of this superiority was unknown to the Russian side, which played a fatal role. The headquarters of the 3rd Army and the Southwestern Front were going to repel an increased attack, similar to the February and March 1915 attempts by the Austro-Hungarian troops, possibly in the form of the last battles in the Beskids. Neither the commanders nor the fighters were ready for the fact that an entire German army would be brought into battle on a narrow sector of the front.[15]
Battle
[edit]
May 1–2
[edit]
At dusk on May 1, the artillery of the three armies of the Central Powers opened fire on the Russian positions. By the morning of May 2, the shelling of the Gorlice sector took on the character of a hurricane. The head of the Russian 61st Infantry Division, Major General P. Simansky, noted: “Despite the well-known difficulty of loading, heavy guns, due to their large number and undoubtedly frequent installation, rattled like simple guns rattle with burst fire”. At 10:00 o'clock the German infantry went on the attack. Under the cover of dense artillery fire that destroyed trenches and shelters, some German gun crews rolled them out to support the infantry, approaching Russian positions up to 40–50 m, and fired direct fire at machine gun nests.[16]
Several attacks were repulsed by the Russian 9th, 31st and 61st Infantry Divisions; at the same time, the 70th Infantry Division began to retreat from the right flank, which was attacked by the Austro-Hungarian 9th Corps, and against the 10th th army corps, the attacks were interspersed with new shelling, so that the trenches were completely destroyed. At 17:42, the corps commander N. Protopopov allowed the retreat to the rear position at nightfall. A brigade of the 63rd Infantry Division was introduced into the battle. However, the commander of the 3rd Army, Radko Dmitriev, “did not see sufficient motives” for retreat, ordered to continue to hold the already almost lost position and even go on the offensive from it after the approach of the divisions of the 3rd Caucasian Corps in a day or two.[17]
However, by 20 o'clock the location of the divisions of the Russian 10th Army Corps was completely broken through, the dominant heights were captured by the Germans, and the reserves were used up. On the front of the Russian 9th Army Corps, the 70th Infantry Division was broken through and thrown back, and the 42nd Division restored the situation with difficulty. The breakthrough was carried out on the 60-km front, 2–4 km deep. 20,000 men were taken prisoners, the Germans captured 50 machine guns and 12 guns.[18] At 21:30 Radko Dmitriev ordered the 9th Army Corps to restore the situation, the 10th Army Corps to strengthen in a new position.
May 3
[edit]
On May 3, von Mackensen united the 11th Bavarian, 20th and 119th Infantry Divisions into the corps of General of Infantry Otto von Emmich and reinforced the Guards Corps with a part of the field artillery of the 19th Infantry Division and ordered the offensive to continue. Despite the introduction of new units into battle from the Russian side, the Germans continued to successfully advance. Another 4,000 prisoners, 2 guns and 19 machine guns were captured.[19]
On the night of May 3, Radko Dmitriev reported the situation to Ivanov, commander of the Southwestern Front; he informed Headquarters of the breakthrough of the 11th German Army and asked to send a division from the armies of the North-Western Front to the threatened area. Further withdrawal of the 10th Army Corps and the 70th Infantry Division to some extent of the Dunaets River and the beginning of the offensive of the 11th Russian Army (the 18th Army Corps was transferred from the 9th Army), during which 17 officers and 1,570 soldiers and 4 machine guns were captured. But help on the right flank was excluded: with strong attacks, the Central Powers completely fettered the units of the 4th Russian army, only the 298th Mstislavsky infantry regiment was sent from it to the southern bank of the Vistula River.[20]
At 14:49, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich, informed Ivanov about the direction of one infantry division to him and recommended that the 33rd Army Corps be transferred from the 9th Army to the 3rd Army, and in case of danger he promised to reinforce the latter with a corps of the 7th Army (located in Odessa and Sevastopol). Ivanov convinced the Headquarters of the need to keep the 33rd Corps in the 9th Army, which was preparing to go on the offensive (it still took about two weeks to transport it), and on the same day, the Chief of Staff of the Supreme Commander, Infantry General N. N. Yanushkevich agreed to go over to the offensive of the 9th Army, at the same time explaining that “for the North-Western Front, distracted at the present time by the need to stop the unfolding German offensive on Riga ... it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to further strengthen the South-Western front."[21]
The commander of the 3rd Army formed a group of artillery general V. Irmanov (3rd Caucasian and 10th Army Corps), who was ordered to attack the Germans.
May 4
[edit]
On May 4, the Quartermaster General of the Headquarters, Infantry General Y. Danilov, spoke by telephone with the Chief of Staff of the Southwestern Front, V. Dragomirov, to report on the situation. The latter reported that the presence of the 11th German army in the sector of the Russian 3rd Army had already been established, to which Danilov noted that there were enough reserves on the Southwestern Front that were not brought into battle (the Headquarters was completely unfamiliar with the current situation), and supported the plan for the speedy transition to the offensive of the 9th Army: "If the 9th Army really goes on the offensive without delay and achieves its goal, then it seems that even a partial withdrawal of the 3rd Army will be redeemed by this success". Dragomirov assured that the offensive would begin on May 7–8, but complained about the lack of shells.[22]
However, the counterattack of the group of Irmanov was repelled by noon on May 4, the Germans broke through at the junction of the 3rd Caucasian and 24th army corps, other corps of the 11th army also successfully advanced.
The 3rd Army suffered losses unprecedented in severity. The head of the 61st Infantry Division, Major General P. Simansky, reported to the headquarters of the 10th Army Corps: "I testify to the unconditional valor of the troops, who fought for three days under the fire of numerous enemy heavy artillery, inflicting enormous losses and severe wounds. The 61st division faithfully fulfilled the order of the army commander: now there are only miserable remnants of it, it died in position".[23]
May 5
[edit]
At night and early in the morning of May 5, telegrams were exchanged between the Russian Headquarters, the headquarters of the Southwestern Front and the headquarters of the 3rd, 4th and 8th armies. Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich, continued to believe that the 3rd Army, which received the 3rd Caucasian Corps, was able to regain its lost positions. But both Dmitriev and Ivanov more sensibly assessed the current situation: even the hopes of stopping the onslaught of the Germans became more and more illusory. Ivanov still hoped that the introduction into battle of the combined division from the regiments of the 3rd Army, sent in February–March to the 9th Army and now returning to their divisions, the occupation of the newly arrived 13th Siberian Rifle Division of a breakthrough on the left flank of the 9th army corps will help to avoid the withdrawal of the flank corps of the 3rd army, which would entail the retreat of neighboring armies. However, the headquarters of the 3rd Army insisted on the need to leave the bank of the Dunajetz River because of the threat of the Germans going to the rear. It was decided to withdraw the army of Radko Dmitriev, which necessitated the withdrawal of the left flank of the 4th Army and the right flank of the 8th Army.[24]
At 10 o'clock on May 5, Dragomirov telephoned Danilov's opinion on the need to withdraw all the armies of the Southwestern Front. Such an arrangement would, in the opinion of the headquarters of the South-Western Front, make it possible to arrange and put the troops of the 3rd Army in order for a new offensive. Dragomirov doubted the possibility of the 3rd Army to hold its positions, and the withdrawal of the 4th Army under pressure from the Austro-Hungarians without reinforcing it with five divisions was considered a “matter of time”. Retreat across the San, he considered "the only expedient decision" that needed to be taken right now.[25]
Danilov declared that he did not have the authority to make a decision that "brings the most fundamental break in the position of not only the armies of the Southwestern Front, but decisively affects the interests of the Northwestern Front." He believed that "the size of the failure of the 3rd Army ... does not seem so serious as not to try to catch on and stay in the nearest area ... There are still means in order to arrange and strengthen the situation without resorting to such radical means." “I believe that at the present time, on the eve of the possible appearance of neutral states on our side, it is extremely unprofitable and even dangerous to take such radical measures to change our strategic position that you are planning, unless these measures are dictated by extreme necessity, which I personally do not see. I will add to this that hardly anything will change with the retreat to the San River: we will have as much firearms as we do now; The management of withdrawal cannot be helped either: if it is bad in the 3rd Army, then it will remain so: the enemy, of course, will not give time to win, it is unprofitable for him".[26]
Soon Ivanov received an order from Yanushkevich: "His Imperial Highness approved the thoughts expressed by General Danilov, categorically indicated that he did not allow the possibility of the withdrawal of the 3rd Army, in connection with which decisive and persistent measures must be taken to consolidate this line and strengthen named army on it."[27]
The 62nd Infantry and 13th Siberian Rifle Divisions, united by the headquarters of the 29th Army Corps, were urgently sent to the 3rd Army. In addition, the 11th Cavalry Division was transferred from the 8th Army to the 24th Army Corps. Dmitriev set the immediate task of withdrawing the 12th and 24th Army cCorps from the mountainous regions.[28]
At the same time, the issue of developing a breakthrough was being decided at the headquarters of the Central Powers. The commander of the 11th Army, von Mackensen, believed that "the decisive and difficult struggle to win the entire operation is still ahead, and is connected with dislodging the Russian troops from the prepared positions of the first line and defeating their reinforcements and reserves." At 13:00 o'clock an order followed: covering the left flank with the forces of the 4th army, connecting the 9th and 14th Corps, the German 11th Army and the Austro-Hungarian 3rd Army to advance, pushing the Russian troops from the Carpathian ridge to the north.[29]
By the end of the day, Emmich's corps stood at Żmigród, having contact with the Austro-Hungarian 10th and 17th corps at Dukla and the 7th corps at Jaśliska. The Russian 3rd Army had to fight in the conditions of a gradual withdrawal to new positions. The expansion of the offensive front of the Central Powers aggravated the crisis, and now a retreat became inevitable. At 11:00 p.m., the army headquarters gave the order to withdraw the entire army.[30]
May 6
[edit]
In the morning of May 6, the corps of the German 11th Army successfully moved forward, gradually crossing the Wisłok River. Deepening into the mountains overgrown with forests, the Emmich Corps advancing on Rymanów encountered the chaotically arriving masses of troops of the Russian 48th Infantry Division, which was pressed from the south by the Austro-Hungarians (10th Corps). The retreating units were thrown into confusion and some fled. The Austro-Hungarians captured the commander of the 48th artillery brigade, the chief of staff of the division, lieutenant colonel, the commander of the 192nd Rymnik infantry regiment and with them 1,300 soldiers, 15 machine guns, 30 light guns and 5 corps mortars. 64 officers and 2,566 soldiers with 5 guns managed to break out of the encirclement. Somewhat later, on May 12, Austro-Hungarian soldiers captured the head of the division, Lieutenant General Lavr Kornilov, wounded in the hand, and with him 7 staff officers. On May 7, the rout of the 48th division was completed by the German 20th infantry division; another 3,500 soldiers were taken prisoner.[31]
May 7
[edit]
The expansion of the offensive of the von Mackensen's army group to the entire front of the Russian 3rd Army, the attacks on the positions of the Russian 4th and 8th armies, the ongoing withdrawal of Russian troops forced the Supreme Commander-in-Chief Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich to pay close attention to the current situation. On May 7, he arrived in Chełm, where the headquarters of the armies of the Southwestern Front was located. However, the discussion of the situation on the ground was not fruitful. The Supreme Commander-in-Chief still considered the position of the armies of the Southwestern Front reliable and only ordered that the 15th Army Corps and the 5th Caucasian Army Corps be transferred to the front armies. In addition, the 8th Army was allowed to withdraw beyond the Carpathian Range, which shortened the front and made it possible to form reserves. In particular, the entire 21st Army Corps was withdrawn from the battle to the reserve.[32]
Command and control on the Southwestern Front fell into complete decline. The actions of the army commanders were coordinated by the chief of staff of the armies of the front, Dragomirov, while he complained to the Headquarters about the inept actions of the commander of the 3rd Army, Dmitriev. The latter now and then criticized the corps commanders, expressing dissatisfaction with their actions. But no measures were taken to replace this or that commanding person at any level. After reviewing the general retreat plan, the commander of the 4th Army, General of Infantry Aleksei Evert, called the withdrawal from the position along the Nida River undesirable, and the proposed position was stretched, for the defense of which one more division of infantry and cavalry would be needed. The commander of the 8th Army, A. Brusilov, also stated that he would not be able to hold a new defensive line during the offensive of the superior forces of the Central Powers.[33]
May 8
[edit]
On May 8, after negotiations between the chiefs of staff of the Russian 3rd, 4th and 8th armies with the front headquarters, Ivanov decided to suspend the withdrawal of troops and give a day of rest. Adjutant General Prince D. Golitsyn came to the 3rd Army from the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, who conveyed to Dmitriev the order to "hold at all costs in the positions currently occupied." The latter ordered the troops of the army "to die in positions, but not to retreat.[34]
On this day, von Mackensen sent the Austro-Hungarian 4th Army to Rzeszów and Sędziszów. On the northern bank of the Vistula against the Russian 4th Army, the 46th Landwehr Infantry Division from the Austro-Hungarian 1st Army went on the offensive. The Austro-Hungarian 14th and 9th Corps reached Dębica, Wielopole Skrzyńskie and Frysztak. For Frysztak, a stubborn battle with the 3rd Caucasian Corps was waged by the Austro-Hungarian 10th Infantry Division and the German Guards Corps, which also captured the bridgehead on the Wisłok River. The 81st reserve division and Emmich's corps broke through the location of the Russian 24th and 12th army corps. The situation on the front of P. Lechitsky's 9th Army escalated. On the night of May 8, the Austro-Hungarian 7th Army, with the forces of the 30th Infantry Division, liquidated the Russian bridgehead and crossed to the northern bank of the Dniester River. The expansion of the German offensive line prompted Ivanov to send the 45th Infantry Division from the 4th Army to the 3rd Army and inform Dmitriev that the 8th Army could no longer help him.[35]
May 9
[edit]
On May 9, Mackensen's army group fought stubborn battles on the Vistula River. Units of the Russian 58th Infantry Division attached to the 3rd Caucasian Corps were surrounded, 18 officers and 2,250 soldiers were captured. The troops of the Austro-Hungarian 2nd Army continued to push back the 8th and 17th Army Corps of Brusilov's army. [36]
May 10
[edit]
On the night of May 10, the Russian Supreme Commander-in-Chief sent a telegram to Ivanov following the results of the trip of Adjutant General Golitsyn: “In view of the continuous attempts of the headquarters of the front entrusted to you to retreat for one reason or another, alternately in different sectors of the front, I categorically command – without my special instructions and the actual combat situation do not produce waste ... In general, I ask you to leave the idea of waste. ”[37]
By this time, the Russian 48th infantry Division of 24th Army Corps of the 3rd Army was driven back from the right bank of the Wisłok River. At the junction with the 3rd Caucasian Corps, there was a threat of a bypass. At dawn on May 10, the Russian 21st Army Corps went on the attack. The offensive of the 21st Army Corps was unexpected for the Germans. The 11th Bavarian Infantry Division was thrown back. However, the Russian 24th Army Corps not only failed to attack, but was driven back from the position, and soon the positions of the 12th Infantry Division of the 12th Army Corps were broken through on the left flank. After the retreat of the 49th Infantry Division, the left flank of the 10th Army Corps was thrown into confusion.[38]
At 15:15 Brusilov announced that the 12th and 21st Army Corps were subordinate to the 8th Army and ordered them to "continue to withdraw without stopping." At 4 p.m., Dmitriev announced the failure of the counterattack and ordered the 3rd Army to retreat to the San River. The Central Powers pursued on the heels, the Austro-Hungarian 4th Army successively knocked out the 9th Army Corps from Pstrągowa, Laszki. Only at Dębica the Russians continued to defend stubbornly. The German 11th Army went on the offensive again. The Austro-Hungarian 3rd Army pushed back the 12th Army Corps.[39]
In the evening, Ivanov, having received a number of telegrams from the 3rd Army, indicating that the retreat was already inevitable due to the almost complete extermination of troops in battles, allowed the 8th Army to begin the withdrawal of troops. Brusilov again stated that he would not be able to stay on the front of 60 km, and for a successful defense he needed not 11, but 20 divisions. Ivanov again began negotiations on the withdrawal of the 4th Army, the left flank of which stretched along the banks of the Vistula and went deeper and deeper into the rear and messages. Yanushkevich again objected both to the retreat and to the weakening of this army and complained that "the 8th army so easily gave up the passes that had come at such a high price." Negotiations between Dragomirov and Danilov were not productive: the proposal to withdraw the armies of the Southwestern Front beyond the San and Dniester rivers, without defending Przemysl, was not answered. Then Ivanov, under his own responsibility, gave the order to withdraw the 4th Army, the 3rd Army and the 8th Army.[40]
Only at night was the directive of the Russian Headquarters finally received, which determined the immediate task of the armies of the Southwestern Front to hold the line along the San and Dniester rivers at all costs. Przemysl was declared not a fortress, but a section of the front, fortified in advance. “I ask the commander-in-chief of the armies South-West front, always keep in mind the sacrifices made by our valiant troops for the conquest of Galicia, why I put surveillance on his responsibility so that, without extreme need, not to give up extra space to the enemy, especially on the front of the 9th and 11th armies, ”emphasized at the same time Yanushkevich.[41]
Parallel developments
[edit]
While Mackensen directed his troops against the Russians along the Dunajetz, Hindenburg occupied Russian forces in northern Poland and Kurland, so they could not be sent as reinforcements. Also, due to Russian attention being drawn to their line further south, Hindenburg moved to attack Warsaw.
Outcome
[edit]
The Central Powers had a number of military advantages going into this offensive. They were numerically and technologically superior. In addition, air superiority allowed them to carry out careful reconnaissance of Russian positions and well as drop bombs on the Russian trenches.[42]
The German focus, at this time, was to break Russian morale and take the sector of land between Gorlice and Tarnow. This would enable them to march on Przemyśl Fortress from the North and join the Austro-Hungarians approaching from the East and southeast. They certainly succeeded in doing so. By the end of May, the Russians had been pushed back to the Carpathian mountains.[43]
References
[edit]
Bibliography
[edit]
Bichanina, Zinaida (2018). Первая мировая война. Большой иллюстрированный атлас [The First World War: Great illustrated atlas]. Litres. ISBN 978-5-17-084566-8.
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Case white, also known as Fall Weiss or Fourth Enemy Offensive was part of the German strategic plan for a joint axis attack in early 1943 against the partisans on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Offensive lasted from January to April 1943. The Germans wanted to destroy the central command of the Partisans, the …
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https://wartraveller.com/ww2-location/jablanica-case-white/
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Museum Reina Sofia Madrid
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Calle de Santa Isabel, Madrid, Spain
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía is the National Museum of Spanish Art of the 20th Century in Madrid. The museum was officially opened on September 10, 1992 and is named after Queen Sofia. The museum is primarily dedicated to Spanish art. The highlights of the museum are excellent collections of two of the greatest masters of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí. Surely the most famous masterpiece in the museum is Picasso's painting Guernica.
Monument Calvo Sotelo
Monument Sotelo Madrid
It is one of the major monuments of Francoist symbology in Madrid. It was built in memory of Jose Calvo Sotel, Minister in the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, Member of Parliament in the Second Republic.
Naval Museum Madrid
Naval museum madrid
The Madrid Naval Museum is a national museum displaying the history of the Spanish Navy from the Catholic monarchs of the 15th century until today. The screens place maritime history in a broad context with information about the Spanish rulers and former colonies of the country. The collections include navigation instruments, weapons, maps and pictures.
Valley of the fallen
Valley of the Fallen, Carretera de Guadarrama/El Escorial, San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Spain
Valle de los Caídos is a monument of the Francoist regime, a Catholic basilica and a monument in the municipality of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, erected in the Cuelgamuros valley in the Sierra de Guadarrama, near Madrid. Franco claimed the monument was a "national act of salvation" and reconciliation. The monument, considered a landmark of 20th century Spanish architecture, was designed by Pedro Muguruza and Diego Méndez on a scale that, in Franco's words, would be "the majesty of ancient monuments that defy time and memory."
Copenhagen War Museum
Krigsmuseet, Tøjhusgade, Copenhagen, Denmark
The Danish Military Museum is a specialized museum of cultural history. When visiting permanent and special exhibitions on topics such as war, defense and weapon technology, you can experience the full range of Danish military history from 1500 to the present. Part of the museum is dedicated to Denmark in the Second World War.
War museum Trieste
Via Costantino Cumano, 22, 34139 Trieste, TS, Italija
The military museum has about 15,000 items in its inventory, including 2,800 pieces of weapons. It also has a substantial archive of 24,000 photos, 287 logs (38,000 pages), 12,000 books, 2,600 posters and flyers, 470 geographic and topographic maps. The Henriquez collection is now owned by the city of Trieste, which continues to rebuild materials.
Risiera di San Sabba – Concentration camp
Risiera di San Sabba, Via Giovanni Palatucci, Trieste, Province of Trieste, Italy
Risiera di San Sabba is a large building near Sv. Sobota (San Sabba), in which rice was first peeled, in 1943, the Nazis have turned it into a concentration camp. In 1944, a crematorium was built inside, in which about 4,000 to 5,000 people were burned. The furnace capacity was 50 to 70 bodies a day. The victims were mostly Slovenians, then Croats, Italian anti-fascists and Jews.
Volgograd – Mamayev Kurgan
Mamayev Kurgan, Prospekt Imeni V.i. Lenina, Volgograd, Russia
Mamayev Kurgan is a dominant height overlooking the city of Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad). The formation is dominated by a memorial complex commemorating the Battle of Stalingrad. The battle, a hard-fought Soviet victory over Axis forces on the Eastern Front of World War II, turned into one of the bloodiest battles in human history. At the time of its installation in 1967 the statue named "The Motherland Calls on Mamayev Kurgan" formed the largest free-standing sculpture in the world, as of 2016 it is the tallest sculpture of a woman in the world.
Volgograd – Museum of the Battle of Stalingrad
The museum-panorama "The Battle of Stalingrad", Ulitsa Imeni Marshala V.i. Chuykova, Volgograd, Russia
The Museum displays the bloodiest battle in the history of warfare. The Battle of Stalingrad was the largest confrontation of World War II, in which Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad, now called Volgograd. In the battle, the Red Army, with the victory over Nazi Germany, achieved a turning point in World War II. The capitulation of German troops, led by General Friedrich Paulus, is considered to be the greatest defeat of Nazi Germany. Even nowadays Russians believe that the Battle of Stalingrad is the most important event of the World War II. The battle lasted from August 23, 1942, until February 2, 1943. It is considered the bloodiest battle in the history of warfare. It claimed from 1.7 to 2 million dead, wounded or trapped. The strategically and ideologically important industrial city of Stalingrad, which was named after the leader of the former Soviet Union, Josip Stalin, from 1925 to 1961, was completely destroyed in the battle and later almost completely rebuilt. With the help of Romanian military units, the German army launched an offensive on Stalingrad in late August 1942. By mid-November, it managed to conquer 90 % of the city. At that time, the Red Army launched a large counteroffensive, causing the German army to remain trapped in the city. Stalingrad became, in the winter of 1942/43, when the temperature dropped below - 30°C, a scene of many-month street battles between the two sides. In addition to the fighting, the soldiers of both sides, as well as civil people, how we're still in the city, were caught by famine. At the beginning of 1943, the Red Army offered capitulation to the German army, but it initially rejected it, also because of Hitler's strong opposition, and then accepted it on January 31st. On February 2, 1943, tens of thousands of German and Romanian soldiers surrendered to the opposite side. The long-running battles for a significant transit centre on the way to the Caucasus, rich with oil and gas stocks, were over after five months, a week, and three days. The museum contains military exhibits, militaries, documents, weapons and military equipment, vehicles, dioramas and the largest panoramic display of the battle.
Volgograd – Pavlov’s House
Dom Pavlova, Ulitsa Sovetskaya, Volgograd, Russia
Pavlov's House was a fortified apartment building which Red Army defenders held for 60 days against a heavy Wehrmacht offensive during the Battle of Stalingrad. The siege lasted from 27. 09 to 25. 11. 1942 and eventually the Soviet forces managed to relieve it from the siege. It gained its name from Sergeant Yakov Pavlov, who commanded the platoon that seized the building and defended it during the long battle.
Volgograd – Museum Headquarters Generalfeldmarschall Paulus
Pamyat', Ploshchad' Pavshikh Bortsov, Volgograd, Russia
This museum is devoted to the battle of Stalingrad and is established in the former field headquarters of General Feldmarschall Friedrich Paulus, commander of the German 6th Army. It owns many documents, photographs and maps related to this battle.
Volgograd – Alley of the Heroes
Alleya Geroyev, 1, Volgograd, Russia
On both sides of the Alley of the Heroes are the names of all the heroes of the Soviet Union and the recipients of all three types of "Order of the Glory of Volgograd". We can also find the names of heroes of the Soviet Union, who were rewarded for heroism in the Battle of Stalingrad.
Château Pignerolle Kriegsmarine Bunkers
Château de Pignerolle, Saint-Barthélemy-d'Anjou, Francija
Following the amphibious operation “Chariot” the German Navy commander decided the risk to risk to certain units of seaborne attack was high and decided to relocate the command center for U-boats to Pignerolle. The Chateau was chosen as it was far enough from the sea to be safe, whilst the radio communications in the area were good. In the Chateau park Nazis built bunkers, that were finished in 1942, when Pignerolle became an official command center. All communications with U-Boats in the Atlantic were routed from Berlin through the Pignerolle command and communications center. Nowadays the chateau is also a museum of communication.
Le Grand Blockhouse Museum
Batz-sur-Mer, Francija
Le Grand Blockhaus Museum was an Observation Post built as part of the Atlantic Wall defenses in the area around Saint-Nazaire following the raid. Later the bunker was the eyes of a major coastal battery. The museum display tells a story of the sinking of the Lancastria, the Saint-Nazaire raid and the Atlantic Wall. You can also climb into the upper tier of the observation bunker using an original metal ladder.
Escoublac-La-Baule – Britain Cemetary
Escoublac, La Baule, Francija
On March 28, 1942, the British troops attacked the heavily defended dry dock at Saint Nazaire. The “Saint Nazaire Raid” or “Operation Chariot” was a successful amphibious attack. Saint-Nazaire was targeted because the loss of its dry dock would force any large German warship to return to home waters via a different route, rather than having a port available on the Atlantic coast. With this amphibious attack, the allies’ forces disabled German navy at the Atlantic. With the attack, they also protected Allied naval convoys that were vital for the United Kingdom. The fallen soldiers are buried at the Escoublac-La-Baule cemetery. The cemetery that begun with the burial of 17 British soldiers during 1940, is now the place of rest for 325 Commonwealth soldiers, that were killed in the line of duty during the II. World War.
Saint Nazaire – Atlantic Wall (Defence Bunkers)
Saint-Nazaire, Francija
The Atlantic Wall was an extensive system of coastal defense and fortifications built by Nazi Germany along the coast of continental Europe as a defense against an anticipated Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied during II. World War. The manning and operation of the Atlantic Wall was administratively overseen by the German Army, with some support from Luftwaffe ground forces. The German Navy maintained a separate coastal defense network, organized into a number of sea defense zones.
Saint Nazaire – U-boat Base
Boulevard Georges Charpak, Saint-Nazaire, Francija
During the II. World War the port of Saint Nazaire was strategically important. Because the Germans build here one of the largest fortified U-boat pen. The U-boat base was built between 1941 and 1942. The construction of the base required more than 313,000 cubic meters of concrete. The part of the U-boat base were also army workshops, which were later destroyed.
Saumur Tank Museum
1-99 Rue Fricotelle, 49400 Saumur, Francija
During the Battle of France, in World War II, Saumur was the site of the Battle of Saumur (1940) where the town and south bank of the Loire were defended by the teenage cadets of the cavalry school for the Honor of France. In 1944 the town was a target bombing raids by Allied planes. In Tank Museum, the aim was to gather everything tank related, whether French or foreign and being of historical, technological and educational interest. The collection includes mementos from the "Father of the French Tank" and from Major Bossut, one of the first officers to be killed in action whilst commanding a Tank Unit.
Battle of Ortona Museum
Museo Battaglia di Ortona, Corso Garibaldi, Ortona, Chieti, Italija
Battle of Ortona Museum shows photos of the battle, arms, uniforms and different arm artifacts. The Battle of Ortona was a battle fought between a battalion of German Fallschirmjäger, paratroops from the German 1st Parachute Division, and assaulting Canadian troops from the Canadian 1st Infantry Division. It was the culmination of the fighting on the Adriatic front in Italy. The battle, known to those who fought it as the "Italian Stalingrad" for the deadliness of its close-quarters combat.
The Swiss Military Museum in Full
Schweizerisches Militärmuseum Full, Full-Reuenthal, Švica
The Swiss Military Museum in Full is a Swiss military museum, which is located in a village Full-Reuenthal, the canton Aargau. Museum has a collection of army gear and uniforms of a Swiss and foreign army forces, from the time of the II. World War and the Cold War. In addition of many tanks and cannons in the museum, there is also the entire collection of the former arms manufacturer Oerlikon. Also the German rockets VI and crashed British and American bombers, which are owned by the museum.
Fort Full-Reuenthal
Festungsmuseum Full-Reuenthal, Panoramaweg, Full-Reuenthal, Švica
Fort Reuenthal is a 20th century Swiss fortification located near the Swiss border with Germany. Built between 1937 and 1939, the fort overlooks the Rhine where it bends around the town of Full-Reuenthal. It is armed with two artillery blocks for 75mm guns and two machine gun blocks. It was a component of the Swiss Border Line of defenses intended to prevent a crossing of the Rhine at the hydroelectric plant at Dogern.
Fort Ebersberg
festung ebersberg
Fort Ebersberg, also known as Fort Rüdlingen, was built 1938–1940 in the Swiss Canton of Zurich to guard the Rhine against a German invasion at the opening of II. World War. The fort was part of the Swiss Border Line defenses.
Crestawald Fortress Museum
Festungsmuseum Crestawald, Sufers, Švica
The contemporary witness of Swiss military history. Construction of the fortifications in Crestawald was started in September 1939, and by 1940 the huge artillery guns were ready for action. For a long time, the bunkers were kept under the strictest of secrecy. With the restructuring of the army, the artillery fortresses near the state borders were decommissioned. In 2000 the secrecy was lifted and the fortress was turned into a public museum by the Verein Festungsmuseum Crestawald.
Toblerone Line
Route Suisse 8, Gland, Švica
The Toblerone line is a 10 km (6 miles) long defensive line made of dragon's teeth that were built during the II. World War between Bassins and Prangins, in the Canton of Vaud, Switzerland. These lines of defensive blocks can be found all over Switzerland, but more predominantly in border areas. Their purpose was to stop tank invasions. The 2.700 9-ton concrete blocks that make up the defenses are similar to the shape of the chocolate bar "Toblerone", which gave its name to the line. Since the line has been left to nature since its construction, it was decided to keep these concrete blocks and to make a hiking trail along their route. The line was built along twelve fortresses, the most well known being the "Villa Rose" in Gland, which was transformed into a museum and opened to the public in 2006.
Military History Institute Prague
Vojenský historický ústav Praha: Armádní muzeum Žižkov, U Památníku, Žižkov, Praga-Praha 3, Češka republika
The Army Museum is located in Prague-Žižkov, in the historic facilities of the National Liberation Monument. The first section is dedicated to the period of the I World War, the involvement of Czech and Slovak people in the war, and the political and military events that resulted in the constitution of the independent Czechoslovak Republic. The second section is dedicated to the Czechoslovak republic and its armed forces between the world wars, and the third section maps the period of the II. World War, and the involvement of the Czech and Slovak people in the military operations, home resistance and other events aimed at restoring the independence of Czechoslovakia. In addition to weapons, the exhibitions show many unique uniforms, banners, marks of distinction, and also personal memorabilia of the Czechoslovak presidents and leading army representatives.
Operation Anthropoid Memorial
Památník Operace Anthropoid, 182 00 Praha 8, Češka republika
The Operation Anthropoid Memorial is a memorial in Prague that commemorates Operation Anthropoid, the code name refers to the assassination of senior Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich by Czechoslovakian partisans on 27 May 1942.
Syrmian Front
Adaševci, Vojvodina
The Syrmian Front saw some of the most difficult fighting in Yugoslavia in II. World War. It lasted for almost six months. As the bulk of the Red Army involved in the Belgrade operation continued their offensive in Hungary, the Yugoslav Army, accustomed to guerrilla warfare in the mountainous terrain of the Dinaric Alps, remained to fight the entrenched front line heavily contested by the Axis on the flat ground of the Pannonian plain. Young men from Vojvodina and Central Serbia, many from freshly liberated regions, were drafted en masse and sent to the front, and the amount of training they received and their casualty levels remain in dispute. Although mostly stationary, the front moved several times, generally westward, as the Axis forces were pushed back. The fighting started east of Ruma and stabilized in January 1945 west of Šid after the town changed hands due to Axis counterattacks. In late March and early April 1945, Yugoslav Army units mounted a general offensive on all fronts. The Yugoslav First Army, commanded by Peko Dapčević, broke through German XXXIV Corps defenses in Syrmia on 12 April, quickly capturing the cities of Vukovar, Vinkovci, and Županja, and enabling further advances through Slavonia toward Slavonski Brod and Zagreb in the last month of the war.
Belgrade – Military Museum
Vojni Muzej, Beograd
The Belgrade Military Museum is intended on the military history of Serbia, since Antiquity until the civil war in 90. years of 20th century. A large number of tanks, armored vehicles, and artillery, they are all a part of outside exhibition.
Belgrade – Museum of Aviation
Airport Nikola Tesla Belgrade, Beograd
The Museum of Aviation was founded in 1957 in Belgrade. It is located adjacent to Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport, with 6.000 m2 (1,2 acre) of exhibition space. It owns over 200 aircraft previously operated by the Yugoslav Air Force, Serbian Air Force, and others, as well as aircraft previously flown by several civil airliners and private flying clubs. The museum also displays wreckage of a downed USAF F-117 Nighthawk and F-16 Fighting Falcon, both shot down during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.
Military Museum of Slovenian Armed Forces
15 Engelsova ulica, Maribor, Slovenija
The Military Museum collects, documents, preserves, studies, examines and presents museum material related to the life and work of the Slovenian army. The Museum portrays different historical periods that shaped the present image of Slovenia, its inhabitants, and army. It also monitors and documents the Slovenian army development. Collections include museum objects, archive and library material, visual artworks, videothequeunit, and photographs.
Memorial Room in Topolšica
54 Ljubljanska cesta, Velenje, Slovenija
A memorial room in Topolšica is consecrated to the signing of one of four partial capitulations of the German army. With this document the II. World War ended for the Slovenians. A memorial room that represents partial German capitulation of the army troop E and German forces in southeast Europe. It was signed by General Aleksander Löhr. You can see a short film about the events occurring in these parts in May 1945. Behind the glass wall is a reconstruction of the signing of capitulation that was one of the most important events on our territory during the II. World War. One of the main curiosities of the collection is also a gun of general Löhr that was confiscated only a few days after the signing.
Teharje Camp
Teharje, Celje, Slovenija
Teharje camp was a prison camp near Teharje, Slovenia, during the II. World War, organized by Nazi Germany and used after the war by the Partisans. In 1943, Nazi forces built a military camp for approximately 500 people in Teharje, including six residential barracks and ten other buildings. Towards the end of the war, Nazis used the camp to hold prisoners that had participated in the defense of the city Celje, and the camp was abandoned for a short time after the war. The camp was reactivated by the Yugoslav communists at the end of May 1945 to accommodate former members of the Slovene Home Guard and others that had collaborated with the Germans, as well as civilians that had fled before the advancing Yugoslav People's Army to Allied camps in Austrian Carinthia. On 31 May 1945, the entire 2nd Assault Battalion headed by Vuk Rupnik was brought to Teharje, the battalion was known by the name Rupnik's battalion. In the first days of June 1945, approximately 3.000 members of the Slovene Home Guard joined them. It is estimated that the postwar authorities executed approximately 5.000 internees of Teharje without trial during the first month or two after the II. World War ended in Europe.
Mauthausen Ljubelj Concentration Camp
Podljubelj 310, 4290 Tržič, Slovenija
National Liberation Struggle Memorial
Cvibelj, Žužemberk, Novo mesto, Slovenija
Memorial with a tomb in which are buried the mortal remains of those who fell. The memorial was built in memory 1140 Partisans, who fell in a battle for Suha Krajina. Around the monument are the public announcements of the executions of some 667 people who were condemned to death by the German forces. The memorial as well pays tribute for foreigners, who fought in Slovene National Liberation Struggle. The memorial was built 1961 and is a work of Marjana Tepine. Large spherical bronze memorial where are photos of a group of people.
Rupnik Line
2 Tabor, Žiri, Slovenija
Rupnik Line named after the Slovene general in the Yugoslav army, Leon Rupnik, was a line of fortifications and weapons installations that Yugoslavia constructed along its terrestrial western and northern border. The construction of the line was a safety measure taken in order to counter the construction of Alpine Wall, a line built by the bordering country Italy, as well as against imposing danger of a German invasion. Yugoslavia's Rupnik line was inspired by various other fortification systems built along borders. It was established to provide good positions to enforce the existing border, as well as to repel a potential invasion. Although there were troops manning the fortifications at its peak, the line was never used to full potential, as it was largely unprepared and abandoned by the time Yugoslavia was invaded in April 1941 by Italy, Germany, and Hungary.
Trail of Remembrance and Comradeship Ljubljana
Pot spominov in tovarištva, Ljubljana, Slovenija
The Trail of Remembrance and Comradeship also referred to as the Trail Along the Wire, is a gravel-paved recreational and memorial walkway almost 33 km (21 mi) long and 4 m (13 ft) wide around the city of Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. The walkway leads past Koseze Pond and across the Golovec Hill. During II. World War, the Province of Ljubljana, annexed by Fascist Italy, was subjected to brutal repression after the emergence of resistance and the Italian forces erected a barbed wire fence around Ljubljana in order to prevent communication between the city's underground Liberation Front activists in Ljubljana and the Slovene Partisans in the surrounding countryside. The trail was built since 1974 and it was completed in 1985. It is marked by signposts, information boards with the map of the trail, plaques, and metal markers, as well as signposts at the turn-offs. One hundred and two octagonal memorial stones have been installed at the former positions of the bunkers. Along the green area adjacent to it, 7.400 trees of 49 tree species have been planted. Since 1988, it has been protected as a designed nature monument.
Pohorje Battalion
Lukanja 19, 2317 Oplotnica, Slovenija
The battlefield of Pohorje Battalion is located at "Three Nails", 30 minutes on a footpath from Osankarica home. At "Three Nails" there is a main local and municipal monument from the National Liberation Struggle when on this spot fell whole Pohorje Battalion. The Osankarica home has a museum collection in its extension, an exhibition named "Partisan Pohorje". It presents developments in the wider area of the Pohorje mountain range, the cradle of partisan resistance in Štajerska during the Second World War. Special attention is paid to the last standby fighters of the Pohorje Battalion at Osankarica on 8 January 1943. After fighting overwhelmingly superior German forces for two and a half hours, 69 fighters, including women, lost their lives. Only one partisan was captured alive by the Germans and he was later shot as a hostage. The Pohorje Battalion became a legend in the resistance of the Slovenes against the occupation.
Park of Military History Pivka
Park vojaške zgodovine, Kolodvorska cesta, Pivka, Slovenija
The Park of Military History in Pivka, Slovenia, is a museum and adventure center, which is located in a former Italian barracks. An exhibition is composed of tanks and artillery collection. It also includes the Italian fortress on Rapallo border.
Museum of Hostages
Katzenstein - Begunjski grad, Begunje na Gorenjskem, Slovenija
Museum of Hostages in an idyllic village named Begunje, in Gorenjska Region, Slovenia, is a reminder of the horrors of II. World War. The mighty Katzenstein Castle in the middle of the settlement served as a Gestapo prison during the time of Nazi occupation. A part of the former prison cells in the extension of the castle has been converted into a memorial museum, nearby in a park, near village Draga, there is a mass grave of hostages.
National Liberation Museum Maribor
Muzej narodne osvoboditve Maribor, Maribor, Slovenija
The Museum of National Liberation of Maribor has been functioning as an autonomous museum since 1958. It is a historical museum dealing primarily with museological and historiographical analyses of the recent history of the North-Eastern parts of Slovenia. The new collection will present the major turning points of the 20th century – I. and II. World War, Independence War, lives of local inhabitants, the misery of simple people whose lives, though residing in the same city, were totally different from those of the wealthier classes.
Lokev Military Museum
Vojaški muzej Tabor, Lokev, Slovenija
The Lokev Military Museum represents the biggest private collection this sort in Europe. All the artifacts are unique. The most interesting artifacts are military uniforms, among which stands out an artfully red uniform from the period of Maria Theresa and the uniform of Svetozar Barojevič the general of the Soča front. One of the few instances has a special place a sword with a gold handle, such as Adolf Hitler giving its officers for special merits. It is preserved only 11 such swords. Also one of the rarest artifacts is a child's gas mask and a soap from the Dachau concentration camp.
National Museum of Contemporary History Ljubljana
Muzej novejše zgodovine Slovenije, Celovška cesta, Ljubljana, Slovenija
The Museum of Contemporary History in Slovenia is a national museum, dedicated to heritage of contemporary history from the start of the 20th century until today. The museum's collections from the I. and the II. World War, collections from an era between the wars, an era of communism and about the liberated country of Slovenia.
Šeškov Home
šeškov dom kočevje
Šeškov home is an important monumental building even from the pre-war era. During the II. World War here was the first Assembly of the emissaries of the Slovene nation in the building, from 1 till 4 October 1943. They were the first directly elected representation of an occupied nation in Europe during II. World War. The assembly was the largest political gathering during the national liberation war and with its declarative rather that constitutional meaning it is an important cornerstone in the development of the national liberation fight on Slovene territory. The assembly was captured in the paintings by Božidar Jakec. The collection is exhibited in a hall and it means a unique show of historical events.
Commander Stane
41 Spodnje Pirniče, Slovenija
Franc Rozman, with the Partisan name Stane or Stane Mlinar, was a Slovene Partisan commander in II. World War. He was one of the most important actors of National Liberation Struggle. After his death he became a national hero, there is a song to honor him, a lot of elementary schools are named after him, also the barracks was named in his honor: The Barracks of Franc Rozman - Stane.
Battle of Dražgoše
Dražgoše, Škofja Loka, Slovenija
The Battle of Dražgoše was the II. World War battle between the Slovene Partisans and Nazi Germany armed forces, which took place between 9 January and 11 January 1942, in the village of Dražgoše, Slovenia. This battle was the first direct confrontation between the two. Fighting (both numerically and equipment-wise) vastly superior Germans the Partisan Cankar Battalion (numbering 240 combatants) suffered eight casualties throughout the entire battle. German forces suffered 26 casualties according to German documents. After three days of fighting, the Partisans were forced to leave the village. After the battle, the Partisans were pursued and killed by the Germans. More recent publications have cast the events in a different light, stating that the Partisans selected Dražgoše as a scene to challenge the German forces. On the one hand, the Battle of Dražgoše was lauded as a heroic act of defiance during the Communist era. It was also highly praised after Slovenia declared independence and introduced democracy.
Gestapo Prison in Dravograd
7 Trg 4. julija, Slovenija
A museum collection is on display in the cellar of the Dravograd municipal building, depicting the horrors of the Gestapo based in Dravograd during II. World War. The imprisoned partisans, their associates, and supporters, as well as mere suspects, were brutally tortured there, and some even died as a result. The survivors were shot as hostages in nearby forests or transported to concentration camps. Several houses and farm buildings were burnt down in the Dravograd area, with the locals killed or burnt alive.
The Gorge Dovžanova Soteska
Dovžanova soteska, Čadovlje pri Tržiču, Tržič, Slovenija
Partisan techniques were secret printeries, that reproduced partisan journal. In the year 1942, they start working in Gorenjska region. They print, radio reports, leaflets with slogans, flyers and other propaganda material. The Partisan techniques Carinthian partisan detachment has issued a journal of Gorenjska Partisan Detachment named Goremkslo Partisan. The Partisan press played an important role in the fight against occupation. It encouraged the population to join forces of the National Liberation Struggle.
Dolenjska Museum
Dolenjski muzej Novo mesto, Novo mesto, Slovenija
The Museum of Dolenjska’s permanent contemporary history exhibition was set up in 1981. The exhibition covers the time from the first organized proletarian activity before II. World War to the liberation of Novo mesto on 8 May 1945, with the main focus on the activities during the war, the National Liberation Struggle in this part of Slovenia. An extra feature of the exhibition is photo albums and the memorial hall with the names of almost 3.000 fallen partisans, activists, and victims of the occupation from the inner Dolenjska area. The venue of the exhibition is one of the few museum buildings that were built specifically for that purpose in Slovenia after II. World War.
Exile Museum Bučka
2 Bučka, Slovenija
On the premises of the Culture House in Bučka village, there is a memorial room in the local collection of materials on the expulsion of its inhabitants during the war in Yugoslavia from 1941 to 1945. The exhibition shows moments of despair when people are leaving their homes, their stay in the German concentration camps and happy returns to the home village. A number of documents, letters, postcards, maps and some items that are used by people in exile, are on display. Also, the museum has a memorial book of testimonies of those who survived the horrors of the German concentration camps. Also, it displays collected works that describe the happenings during II. World War.
The Pauček Partisan Hospital
Legen, Slovenija
The covert partisan hospital complex comprised six units and was being built on the western Pohorje Hills from April 1944 until the end of the war by Dr. Ivan Kopač – Pauček (1916–1988), a partisan doctor, with the help of local activists, partisans, and the Liberation Front associates. Around 300 wounded people were treated in the hospital units. Despite German strongholds in the valley and numerous field searches, the occupation forces never found the hospital units. The preserved hospital unit with the secret name of Trška Gora in Legen, 10 kilometers (6 miles) from Slovenj Gradec, is a cultural monument of national importance.
The Jesen Partisan Hospital
29 Veliko Tinje, Slovenija
The Jesen Partisan Hospital is the only renovated partisan hospital on the eastern Pohorje. In the second half of October 1944, they started to build the hospital, that is how the hospital got the name Jesen, which means Autumn. The first wounded were taken care on the 6. January 1945. Those were the fighters of Šercerjeve brigade. The transfer of the wounded to the hospital was very tough because they have to take the victims over long distances and cover the tracks so that the enemy would not find them. The hospital has preserved documents showing that 25 wounded were treated there. According to the statements of the medical team, there were many more patients. At the end of May 1945, they left the hospital and the wounded were transferred to a military hospital in the Maribor Gosposvetska road.
The Franja Partisan Hospital
Partizanska bolnica Franja, Dolenji Novaki, Slovenija
The Franja Partisan Hospital was a secret II. World War hospital at the Dolenji Novaki near Cerkno. It was run by the Slovene Partisans from December 1943 until the end of the war as part of a broadly organized resistance movement against the Fascist and Nazi occupying forces. Built in difficult and rugged terrain in the remote Pasica Gorge. The hospital was located deep inside German-occupied Europe, only a few hours from Austria and the central parts of the Third Reich. German military activity was frequent in the general region throughout the operation of the hospital. The hospital's entrance was hidden in the forest, and the hospital could only be reached by bridges. The bridges could be retracted if the enemy was in the vicinity. In order to preserve the secrecy necessary for a clandestine hospital to operate, the patients were blindfolded during transportation to the facility. The hospital was named after its manager and physician, Franja Bojc Bidovec, who began working there in February 1944. Extremely well equipped for a clandestine partisan operation, the hospital remained intact until the end of the war. It was designed to provide treatment to as many as 120 patients at a time. Most of its patients were wounded anti-Nazi resistance fighters, who could not go to regular hospitals because they would be arrested. Among its patients were many nationalities, including one wounded German enemy soldier who, after being treated, remained in the hospital as a member of the hospital staff. The hospital operated until 5 May 1945. It became a part of the Cerkno Museum in 1963. In 1997, an American Association of Air Force Veterans issued an award to Franja Hospital for saving and treating downed American pilot Harold Adams.
The Bela Krajina Museum
Belokranjski muzej Metlika, Metlika, Slovenija
The Bela Krajina Museum is located in Metlika Castle. The collection recalls important events in the first half of the 20th century. At the turn of the century, though economic conditions forced thousands of Bela Krajina people to emigrate in different countries, most of them in the United States of America. In former Yugoslavia, Bela Krajina was only slowly picking from backwardness. There was no industry, there was just a few craft workshops and coal mine Kanižarica. On the outbreak of II. World War Bela Krajina fell into the Italian occupation zone. After the capitulation of Italy in 1943, the area between the Kolpa river and Gorjanci mountains became a free partisan territory, this was a unique phenomenon, not only in the II. World War, but also in the entire history of warfare.
Base 20 Memorial Site
baza 20 kočevski rog
Near a village Dolenjske Toplice between karst doline and densely planted pine trees, the National Liberation Movement hid the partisan hospitals, printer shops, and workshops. They chose the location for the Command Headquarters of National Liberation Movement. The Base 20 was the main base of Central Commission Communistic Party of Slovenia and Executive Committee Liberation Front during II. World War in Kočevski Rog, from 1942 until 1944.
German Army Cemetery in Hunkovce
Hunkovce, Slovaška
The town Hunkovce is located near the main road across the Dukla Pass. It has a German II. World War cemetery, the place of the last rest for more than 3,000 German soldiers who died between 1944-45.
Memorial and Cemetery of Soviet Soldiers
Čsl. armády 364/7, 089 01 Svidník, Slovaška
Memorial and Cemetery of Soviet Soldiers in Svidnik, stands on a hill near the Battle of Dukla Museum. It is dedicated in honor the deaths of Russian soldiers during the Battle of Dukla in autumn 1944.
Memorial and Cemetery of Czech and Slovak Soldiers
Čsl. armády 364/7, 089 01 Svidník, Slovaška
Memorial and Cemetery of Czech and Slovak Soldiers is located on the main road across Dukla pass on the Polish-Slovakian border. Nearby is also a cemetery 563 soldiers of 1st Czechoslovak army.
Dukla Observation Tower
Dukla Observation Tower
The Observation Tower was built on the altitude 655 in the original place as the commander's observation post of General Ludvik Svoboda celebrating the 30th anniversary of Carpathian-Dukla Operation. It is 49 m high and was built on the site of an original wooden observation tower.
Open-Air Army Museum
Svidnik Open-Air Army Museum, Bardejovská, Svidník, Slovaška
The Dukla Pass is a strategically significant mountain pass in the Laborec Highlands of the Outer Eastern Carpathians, on the border between Poland and Slovakia. Today a peaceful rural area on the Slovak-Polish border, the Dukla Mountain Pass witnessed one of the biggest and most bloody battles of II. World War on the Eastern Front - The Battle of Dukla Pass, officially known as the “Carpathian Operation”. Three months after the Allies landed in Normandy, on the other side of Europe burst a frantic battle between the Soviet Red Army supported by the Czechoslovak Corps and the defending German and Hungarian forces fortified in the Carpathian Mountains on the Slovak-Polish border. In a small town of Svidnik, there is an open-air museum. Here you will touch and see war machines, cannons, and vehicles, with most interesting exhibits being the Soviet Katyusha rocket launcher, the tank T 34, the German armored carrier D-7, the soviet infantry mortar M-13 and the soviet transport airplane.
Valley of Death, Battle of Dukla Pass
Dukla Pass, Dukla, Poljska
The Valley of Death is located in the Dukla Pass just outside the village of Svidnik in the northeastern corner of Slovakia. In this valley several tanks and other remains from one of the great tank battles of II. World War, the Battle of the Dukla Pass, can still be seen. Some of the tanks are left almost where they stopped during the battle, while other have been turned into monuments. Most of the tanks are Russian model T-34.
Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad
Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad
This small but extremely moving museum commemorates perhaps the most harrowing period of the city's history, the 900-day Blockade of Leningrad which lasted from 8 September 1941 to 17 January 1944. For two-and-a-half years, the citizens of Leningrad suffered chronic privations and constant bombardment. Although the precarious Road of Life brought supplies across the ice of Lake Ladoga in the winter months, the food was woefully short, fuel was scarce in winter, and in summer the dire state of sanitation spread disease at epidemic levels. In all, over 700.000 civilians died during the Blockade. Their sacrifice and the extraordinary endurance of the survivors is etched on the conscience of the city, a source of immense pride and profound sorrow.
Central Museum of Armored Vehicles
Central Museum of armored vehicles, Moskovska, Rusija
The Kubinka Tank Museum is a military museum in Kubinka, near Moscow. The museum consists of open-air and indoor permanent exhibitions of many famous tanks and armored vehicles. It is also known to house and display many unique and one-of-a-kind military vehicles, such as the Nazi German Panzer VIII Maus super-heavy tank, the Troyanov heavy tank and a Karl-Gerät heavy self-propelled artillery, amongst other single or limited-production prototypes from the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
Monument to Heroic Defenders of Leningrad
Monument to Heroic Defenders of Leningrad, ploshchad' Pobedy, Sankt Peterburg, Rusija
The Memorial to Heroic Defenders of Leningrad on Victory Square was unveiled solemnly on Victory Day: 9th May 1975. To commemorate the heroic efforts of the residents of Leningrad and the soldiers on the Leningrad Front to the repel the Nazis in the 900-day Siege of Leningrad during II. World War. Leningrad was never occupied by Germans.
Road of Life Museum
Kokkorevo, oblast Leningrad, Russia
The Road of Life was the ice road winter transport route across the frozen Lake Ladoga, which provided the only access to the besieged city of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) while the perimeter in the siege was maintained by the German Army Group North and the Finnish Defence Forces. The siege lasted from 8 September 1941 to 27 January 1944. Over one million citizens of Leningrad died from starvation, stress, exposure and bombardments. In addition to transporting thousands of tons of munitions and food supplies each year, the Road of Life also served as the primary evacuation route for the millions of Soviets trapped within the starving city. The road today forms part of the World Heritage Site.
Moscow Red Square
Red Square, Moscow, Rusija
Red Square is a city square in Moscow, Russia. The square itself is around 330 meters (1,080 feet) long and 70 meters (230 feet) wide, It separates the Kremlin, the former royal citadel and currently the official residence of the President of Russia, from a historic merchant quarter known as Kitai-gorod. The Kremlin and Red square were together recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1990. During the Soviet era, Red Square maintained its significance, becoming a focal point for the new state. Besides being the official address of the Soviet government, it was renowned as a showcase for military parades from 1919 onward. Lenin's Mausoleum would from 1924 onward be a part of the square complex, and also as the grandstand for important dignitaries in all national celebrations. In the 1930s, Kazan Cathedral and Iverskaya Chapel with the Resurrection Gates were demolished to make room for heavy military vehicles driving through the square. The buildings surrounding the Square are all significant in some respect. Nearby is a memorial for all fallen soldiers during the II. World War with an eternal flame, along the wall of the Kremlin, are ceramic cubes filled with the soil of Soviet cities Heroes.
Central Naval Museum
Central Naval Museum, Sankt Peterburg, Rusija
Central Naval Museum is a naval museum in St. Petersburg. It is one of the first museums in Russia and one of the world’s largest naval museums, with a large collection of artifacts, models, and paintings reflecting the development of Russian naval traditions and the history of the Russian Navy. During the three centuries of its existence, the museum has collected more than 700.000 objects that reflect the most important events in the history of the fleet. There are over 13.000 items of naval equipment, 11.000 weapons and firearms, 62.000 works of art, 56.000 uniforms, awards and decorations, flags and banners, and 44.000 documents and manuscripts, together with around 300,000 photographs and negatives, and sheets of drawings. The museum has one of the world's richest collections of model ships, about 2,000 models, covering the history of Russian and foreign military shipbuilding.
Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery
Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery
The memorial complex was opened on 9 May 1960. About 420.000 civilians and 50.000 soldiers of the Leningrad Front (now St. Petersburg) were buried in 186 mass graves. Near the entrance, an eternal flame is located. A marble plate affirms that from 4 September 1941 to 22 January 1944 107.158 air bombs were dropped on the city, 148.478 shells were fired, 16.744 men died, 33.782 were wounded and 641.803 inhabitants died of starvation.
Museum of the Great Patriotic War
пл. Победы, 3, Moskva, Rusija, 121096
The Museum of the Great Patriotic War is a history museum located in Moscow at Poklonnaya Gora. The museum features exhibits and memorials concerning II. World War, known in Russia as "The Great Patriotic War". In the center of the museum is the Hall of Glory, a white marble room which features the names of over 11.800 of the recipients of the Hero of the Soviet Union distinction. A large bronze sculpture, the "Soldier of Victory," stands in the center of this hall. The upper floors feature numerous exhibits about the war, including dioramas depicting major battles, photographs of wartime activities, weapons and munitions, uniforms, awards, newsreels, letters from the battlefront, and model aircraft. In addition, the museum maintains an electronic "memory book" which attempts to record the name and fate of every Russian soldier who died in II. World War. The museum is set in Victory Park, a 2,424-hectare park on Poklonnaya Hill. The park features a large, paved plaza, fountains, and open space where military vehicles, cannons, and other apparatus from II. World War are displayed.
The Central Armed Forces Museum
The Central Armed Forces Museum
The Central Armed Forces Museum also is known as the Museum of the Soviet Army, is located in northern Moscow. Over its history the museum has managed to accumulate the most prominent and important military relics of the Soviet period, creating a record of its military past. In total, more than seven hundred thousand individual exhibits are now stored at the museum. The most valuable are displayed in the 25 halls of the main building. The period of the Russian Civil War includes a photocopy of the original decree outlining the creation of the RKKA which includes Lenin's corrections; a banner of the 195th infantry regiment into which Lenin was officially conscripted; weapons, documents, awards and personal belongings of famous Red Army men. The most prized display is that dedicated to the Great Patriotic War, which includes the Victory Banner as well as all of the front banners and the captured Nazi ones that were used during the Victory Parade in 1945. The Great Patriotic War differs from II. World War in that it began on 22 July 1941 with the German invasion of the Soviet Union. II. World War started on 1 September 1939 with the co-ordinated attacks on Germany and the Soviet Union on Poland. Part of the Great Patriotic War section is devoted to the Soviet Union's allies on the Western Front. There are examples of Soviet propaganda posters depicting Germany being crushed between the two fronts and maps of the Allied advance from Normandy into Germany. British and American small arms and uniforms are displayed. The last halls display the post-war and modern developments of the Soviet Army and Navy, the Cold War section contains wreckage from the U-2 spy-plane that was piloted by Gary Powers and the involvement of Soviet forces in Cold War conflicts. A special display is dedicated to the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan and recent combat operations in Chechnya.
The State Museum of the Defence of Moscow
Muzey oborony Moskvy, Moskva, Rusija
The State Museum of the Defence of Moscow was founded on 25 December 1979. It is located in the immediate vicinity of the site of the former villages Troparevo-Nikulino, where was in October-November 1941 a defensive line of the Moscow volunteer division. The main goal is to reenact the battle of Moscow as an intense historical event through the perception the ones involves and victims. It shows their sacrifice and heroic actions.
Museum of Artillery St. Petersburg
Museum of Artillery, Engineers and Signals, Sankt Peterburg, Rusija
Artillery Museum is a state-owned military museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Its collections, consisting of Russian military equipment, uniforms, and decorations, are hosted in the Kronverk of the Peter and Paul Fortress situated on the right bank of the Neva near Alexander Park.
Mayakovskaya Moscow Metro Station
Mayakovskaya, Triumfalnaya Square, Moscow, Rusija
Mayakovskaya is a Moscow Metro station. Considered to be one of the most beautiful in the system, it is a fine example of pre-II. World War Stalinist Architecture and one of the most famous Metro stations in the world. Located 33 meters beneath the surface, the station became famous during II. World War when an air raid shelter was located in the station. On the anniversary of the October Revolution, on 7 November 1941, Joseph Stalin addressed a mass assembly of party leaders and ordinary Muscovites in the central hall of the station. During II. World War, Stalin took residence in this place.
Cruiser Aurora
Cruiser Aurora, Petrogradskaya embankment, Sankt Peterburg, Rusija
Aurora is a 1900 Russian protected cruiser, currently preserved as a museum ship in St. Petersburg. During the II. World War, the guns were taken from the ship and used in the land defense of Leningrad. The ship herself was docked in Oranienbaum port and was repeatedly shelled and bombed. On 30 September 1941, she was damaged and sunk in the harbor. In 1957 she became a museum ship.
The Moscow Kremlin
The Moscow Kremlin, Moskva, Rusija
The Moscow Kremlin usually referred to as the Kremlin, is a fortified complex at the heart of Moscow, overlooking the Moskva River to the south, Saint Basil's Cathedral and Red Square to the east, and the Alexander Garden to the west. It is the best known of the kremlins, Russian citadels and includes five palaces, four cathedrals, and the enclosing Kremlin Wall with Kremlin towers. Also within this complex is the Grand Kremlin Palace. The complex serves as the official residence of the President of the Russian Federation. The Soviet government moved from Petrograd to Moscow on 12 March 1918. Vladimir Lenin selected the Kremlin Senate as his residence. Joseph Stalin also had his personal rooms in the Kremlin. He was eager to remove all the "relics of the tsarist regime" from his headquarters. Golden eagles on the towers were replaced by shining Kremlin stars, while the wall near Lenin's Mausoleum was turned into the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. From three entrance doors, only one serves as an entrance for visitors.
National Military Museum Bucharest
National Military Museum, Strada Mircea Vulcănescu, Bucharest, Romunija
The National Military Museum in Bucharest, Romania, is one of the main historical museums in Romania. With its chronological rundown of how the country defended itself through the history from country's beginning until today. The museum shows us the most important battles for independents and freedom in Romanian history. It includes army documents, trophies and a great collection of firearms, including artillery, tanks, and air crafts.
Galicia Jewish Museum
Galicia Jewish Museum, Dajwór, Krakov, Poljska
Jewish Historical Institute
Jewish Historical Institute, Tłomackie, Varšava, Poljska
The Jewish Historical Institute was created in 1947 as a continuation of the Central Jewish Historical Commission. Primarily dealing with the history of Jews in Poland. The institute is a repository of documentary materials relating to the Jewish historical presence in Poland. It is also a center for academic research, study and the dissemination of knowledge about the history and culture of Polish Jewry. The most valuable part of the collection is the Warsaw Ghetto Archive, known as the Ringelblum Archive. It contains about 6.000 documents, about 30.000 individual pieces of paper. Other important collections concerning II. World War include testimonies (mainly of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust), memoirs and diaries, documentation of the Joint and Jewish Self-Help, and documents from the Jewish Councils. The section on the documentation of Jewish historical sites holds about 40 thousand photographs concerning Jewish life and culture in Poland.
Museum of Independence
Museum of Independence, aleja Solidarności, Varšava, Poljska
Pawiak was a prison built in 1835 in Warsaw, Poland. The Pawiak prison got the name after aa street named Pawia, which in polish means "Peacock Street". Following the German invasion of Poland in 1939 it was turned into a German Gestapo prison, and then part of the Nazi extermination camp system. Approximately 100.000 men and 200.000 women passed through the prison, mostly members of the Armia Krajowa, political prisoners and civilians taken as hostages in street round-ups. An estimated 37.000 were executed and 60.000 sent to German death and concentration camps. On August 21 an unknown number of remaining prisoners were shot and the buildings burned and blown up by the Nazis.
Underground Szczecin
Kolumba 1/16, Szczecin, Poljska
The shelter was built by the Germans in 1941 as an anti-aircraft shelter for civilians. Shelter is 5 floor deep. Its ferroconcrete walls are 3 meters thick, a ceiling is 2,80 meters thick. The longest corridor is about 100 meters long. The total surface of shelter is 2.500 m2 and 1.900 m2 useful surface. There was enough space for 5.000 inhabitants. After the war, the shelter could be used as a nuclear shelter.
Wolf’s Lair
Wolf's Lair, Kętrzyn, Poljska
Wolf's Lair was Adolf Hitler's first Eastern Front military headquarters in II. World War. The complex, which would become one of Führer Headquarters. It was built for the start of Operation Barbarossa (Invasion of Soviet Union) in 1941. Despite the security, the most notable assassination attempt against Hitler was made at Wolf's Lair on 20 July 1944. In the summer of 1944, work began to enlarge and reinforce many of the Wolf's Lair original buildings. However, the work was never completed because of the rapid advance of the Red Army during the Baltic Offensive in autumn 1944. On 25 January 1945, the complex was blown up and abandoned 48 hours before the arrival of Soviet forces.
Westerplatte
Westerplatte, Gdansk, Poljska
The Battle of Westerplatte was the first battle in the Invasion of Poland and marked the start of the II. World War in Europe. Beginning on 1 September 1939, German naval forces and soldiers and Danzig police assaulted the Polish Military Transit Depot on the peninsula of Westerplatte, in the harbor of the Free City of Danzig. The site is one of Poland's official national Historic Monuments.
Lubuskie War Museum
Lubuskie Muzeum Wojskowe, Świdnica, Poljska
Lubuskie War Museum has an enormous collection polish war gear from II. World War. The collection includes more than 30 airplanes/helicopters and more than 100 pieces heavy army gear as tanks, rocket systems, guns, etc. Museum also has a collection of old handguns and uniforms.
Warsaw Memorial Route of Jewish Martyrdom and Struggle
Zamenhofa 10, Warszawa, Poljska
The Memorial Route of Jewish Martyrdom and Struggle in Warsaw is located the Muranów district to commemorate people, events and places of the Warsaw Ghetto during the German occupation of Poland.
Warsaw Museum of The Polish Army
Museum of the Polish Army, Aleje Jerozolimskie, Varšava, Poljska
Museum of the Polish Army is a museum in Warsaw documenting the military aspects of the history of Poland. It occupies a wing of the building of the Polish National Museum. It's Warsaw's second largest museum and the largest collection of military objects in Poland. The collection illustrates a thousand years of Polish military history - from the 10th century to the II. World War.
Warsaw Uprising Museum
Warsaw Uprising Museum, Grzybowska, Varšava, Poljska
The Warsaw Uprising was a major II. World War operation by the Polish resistance Home Army to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. The uprising was timed to coincide with the Soviet Union's Red Army approaching the eastern suburbs of the city and the retreat of German forces. However, the Soviet advance stopped short, enabling the Germans to regroup and demolish the city while defeating the Polish resistance, which fought for 63 days with little outside support. The Uprising was the largest single military effort taken by any European resistance movement during II. World War. The Uprising began on 1 August 1944, as part of a nationwide plan, Operation Tempest, when the Soviet Army approached Warsaw. The main Polish objectives were to drive the German occupiers from the city and help with the larger fight against Germany and the Axis powers. Secondary political objectives were to liberate Warsaw before the Soviets, to underscore Polish sovereignty by empowering the Polish Underground State before the Soviet-backed Polish Committee of National Liberation could assume control.
Warsaw Ghetto
Warsaw Ghetto Street, Ramla, Izrael
The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of all the Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe during II. World War. It was established in the Muranów neighborhood of the Polish capital between October and 16 November 1940, within the new General Government territory of German-occupied Poland. There were over 400.000 Jews imprisoned there, at an area of 3,4 km2 (1,3 sq mi). Mass deportations started in the summer of 1942. Earlier that year, during the Wannsee Conference, the Final Solution was set in motion. About 254.000 Warsaw Ghetto inmates were sent to Treblinka to be murdered.
Treblinka Extermination Camp
Muzeum Walki i Męczeństwa w Treblince, Kosów Lacki, Poljska
Treblinka was an extermination camp, built by Nazis in occupied Poland during II. World War. The camp operated between 23 July 1942 and 19 October 1943 as part of Operation Reinhard, the deadliest phase of the Final Solution. During this time, it is estimated that around 800.000 Jews were killed.
Stutthof Concentration Camp
Muzeum Stutthof, Muzealna, Sztutowo, Poljska
Stutthof was a German concentration camp built in a secluded, wet, and wooded area near the small town of Stutthof, 34 km (21 mi) east of the city of Gdańsk. Stutthof was the first concentration camp outside German borders, in operation from 2 September 1939, and the last camp liberated by the Allies on 9 May 1945. More than 85.000 victims died in the camp out of as many as 110.000 inmates deported there.
Sobibór Extermination Camp
Muzeum Byłego Obozu Zagłady w Sobiborze, Włodawa, Poljska
Sobibór was a Nazi extermination camp located on the outskirts of the village of Sobibór. Its official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibór. Jews from Poland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, as well as few not-Jewish Soviet prisoners-of-war, were transported to Sobibór by rail. Most were suffocated in gas chambers fed by the exhaust of a large petrol engine. Up to 200.000 people were murdered at Sobibór.
Majdanek Concentration Camp
The State Museum of Majdanek, Lublin, Poljska
Majdanek or KL Lublin was a Nazi German Extermination camp established on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland in II. World War. Although initially proposed for forced labor rather than extermination, the camp was used to kill people on an industrial scale during Operation Reinhard, the German plan to murder all Jews within their own General Government territory of Poland.
Gross-Rosen Concentration Camp
Muzeum Gross-Rosen w Rogoźnicy, Rogoźnica, Poljska
Gross-Rosen concentration camp was a Nazi German network of Nazi concentration camps built and operated during II. World War. The main camp was located in the village of Gross-Rosen not far from the border with occupied Poland, in the modern-day Rogoźnica in Poland directly on the rail line between the towns of Jawor and Strzegom. At its peak activity in 1944, the Gross-Rosen complex had up to 100 subcamps located in eastern Germany, Czechoslovakia, and on the territory of occupied Poland. The population of all Gross-Rosen camps at that time accounted for 11% of the total number of inmates trapped in the Nazi concentration camp system.
Chełmno Extermination Camp
Chełmno 59A, 62-660 Chełmno, Poljska
Chełmno extermination camp built during II World War, was a Nazi German extermination camp situated 50 kilometers (31 mi) north of the metropolitan city of Łódź, near the Polish village of Chełmno nad Nerem. Following the invasion of Poland in 1939, Germany annexed the area into the new territory of Reichsgau Wartheland, aiming at its complete "Germanization", the camp was set up specifically to carry out ethnic cleansing through mass killings. It operated from 8 December 1941 parallel to Operation Reinhard during the most deadly phase of the Holocaust, and again from 23 June 1944 to 18 January 1945 during the Soviet counter-offensive. Polish Jews of the Łódź Ghetto and the local inhabitants of Reichsgau Wartheland (Warthegau) were exterminated there. In 1943 modifications were made to the camp's killing methods because the reception building was already dismantled. At a very minimum 152.000 people were killed in the camp, though the West German prosecution, citing Nazi figures during the Chełmno trials of 1962–65, laid charges for at least 180.000 victims. The Polish official estimates, in the early postwar period, have suggested much higher numbers, up to a total of 340.000 men, women, and children. The victims were killed with the use of gas vans. Chełmno was a place of early experimentation in the development of Nazi extermination program, continued in subsequent phases of the Holocaust throughout occupied Poland. Chełmno was set up by SS-Sturmbannführer Herbert Lange, following his gas van experiments in the murder of 1.558 Polish prisoners of the Soldau concentration camp. Russian troops captured the town of Chełmno on 17 January 1945. By then, the Nazis had already destroyed evidence of the camp's existence leaving no prisoners behind. One of the camp survivors who was fifteen years old at the time testified that only three Jewish males had escaped successfully from Chełmno. In June 1945 two survivors testified at the trial of camp personnel in Łódź. The three best-known survivors testified about Chełmno at the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Two survivors testified also at the camp personnel trials conducted in 1962–65 by West Germany.
Bełżec Extermination Camp
Muzeum – Miejsce Pamięci w Bełżcu, Bełżec, Poljska
Bełżec was the first of the Nazi extermination camps created for the purpose of implementing the secretive Operation Reinhard, the plan to eliminate Polish Jewry, a key part of the "Final Solution" which entailed the murder of some 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. The camp operated from 17 March 1942 to the end of December 1942. It was situated about 0.5 km (0.31 mi) south of the local railroad station of Bełżec in German-occupied Poland. The burning of exhumed corpses on five open-air grids and bone crushing continued until March 1943. Between 430.000 and 500.000 Jews are believed to have been murdered by the SS at Bełżec. Only seven Jews performing slave labor with the camp's Sonderkommando survived II. World War and only one of them, became known from his own postwar testimony submitted officially. The lack of viable witnesses who could testify about the camp's operation is the primary reason why Bełżec is so little known despite the enormous number of victims.
Auschwitz Extermintaion Camp
Więźniów Oświęcimia 20, Oświęcim, Poljska
Auschwitz concentration camp was a network of German Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II. It consisted of: Auschwitz I (the original camp), Auschwitz II–Birkenau (a combination concentration/extermination camp), Auschwitz III–Monowitz (a labor camp to staff an IG Farben factory), 45 satellite camps Auschwitz I was first constructed to hold Polish political prisoners, who began to arrive in May 1940. The first extermination of prisoners took place in September 1941, and Auschwitz II–Birkenau went on to become a major site of the Nazi Final Solution to the Jewish Question. From early 1942 until late 1944, transport trains delivered Jews to the camp's gas chambers from all over German-occupied Europe, where they were killed with the pesticide Zyklon B. An estimated 1.3 million people were sent to the camp, of whom at least 1.1 million died. Around 90 percent of those killed were Jewish; approximately 1 in 6 Jews killed in the Holocaust died at the camp. Others deported to Auschwitz included 150.000 Poles, 23.000 Romani and Sinti, 15.000 Soviet prisoners of war, 400 Jehovah's Witnesses, and tens of thousands of others of diverse nationalities, including an unknown number of homosexuals. Many of those not killed in the gas chambers died of starvation, forced labor, infectious diseases, individual executions, and medical experiments. One hundred forty-four prisoners are known to have escaped from Auschwitz successfully, and on 7 October 1944, two Sonderkommando units, prisoners assigned to staff the gas chambers, launched a brief, unsuccessful uprising. As Soviet troops approached Auschwitz in January 1945, most of its population was evacuated and sent on a death march. The prisoners remaining at the camp were liberated on 27 January 1945, a day now commemorated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The camp became a dominant symbol of the Holocaust. In 1947, Poland founded the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum on the site of Auschwitz I and II, and in 1979.
Schindler’s Factory in Krakow
Lipowa 4E, 30-702 Kraków, Poljska
Oskar Schindler's Enamel Factory a former metal item factory in Kraków is now host to two museums: the Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków, on the former workshops, and a branch of the Historical Museum of the City of Kraków, situated at ul. Lipowa 4 in the administrative building of the former enamel factory known as Oskar Schindler's Deutsche Emailwarenfabrik (DEF). Operating here before DEF was the first Malopolska factory of enamelware and metal products limited liability company, instituted in March 1937. On 1 September 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland and the II. World War broke out. On 6 September, German troops entered Kraków. It was also probably around that time in which Oskar Schindler, a Sudeten German who is a member of the NSDAP and an agent of the Abwehr, arrived in Kraków. Using the power of the German occupation forces in the capacity of a trustee, he took over the German kitchenware shop on ul. Krakowska, and in November 1939, on the power of the decision of the Trusteeship Authority he took over the receivership of the "Rekord" company in Zablocie. He also produced ammunition shells, so that his factory would be classed as an essential part of the war effort. He managed to build a subcamp of the Płaszów forced labor camp in the premises where "his" Jews had scarce contact with camp guards. In the face of the Soviet Red Army's advances, Schindler relocated, with the blessing of the German authorities, his munitions business, and its workforce in late 1944 to the branch of Gross-Rosen Concentration Camp in Bohemia’s Brunnlitz. About 1,200 Jewish prisoners from Krakow survived there to be liberated by the Soviets on 8 May 1945.
Project Riese
Owl Mountains, Bielawa, Poljska
Riese is the code name for a construction project of Nazi Germany in 1943–1945, consisting of seven underground structures located in the Owl Mountains and Książ Castle in Lower Silesia. None of them were finished, all are in different states of completion with only a small percentage of tunnels reinforced by concrete. In the presence of the increasing Allied air raids, Nazi Germany relocated a large part of its strategic armaments production into safer regions including the District of Sudetenland. Plans to protect critical infrastructure also involved a transfer of the arms factories to underground bunkers and construction of the air-raid shelters for government officials.
Miedzyrzecz Underground Fortifications
Miedzyrzecki Fortified Region, Międzyrzecz, Poljska
Międzyrzecki Rejon Umocniony or Międzyrzecz Fortification Region was a fortified military defense line of Nazi Germany between the Oder and Warta rivers. Built in 1934–44, it was the most technologically advanced fortification system of Nazi Germany and remains one of the largest and the most interesting systems of this type in the world today. It consists of around 100 concrete defense structures partially interconnected by a network of underground tunnels. Some of the forts and tunnels are available for visiting. The most interesting part is the central section, which begins in the south with the so-called Boryszyn Loop near the village of Boryszyn and extends about 12 km (8 mi) to the north. In the central section, the bunkers are interconnected with an underground system of tunnels, 32 kilometers (19 mi) long and up to 40 meters (34 yd) deep. In the underground system, there are also railway stations, workshops, engine rooms, and barracks.
Museum of Allied Prisoners-of-War Martyrdom
Muzeum Obozów Jenieckich, Lotników Alianckich, Żagań, Poljska
From the autumn of 1939 until autumn 1942 there was a complex of prisoner-of-war Nazi camps in Zagan and its neighborhood. The camp known as Stalag VIIIC was the biggest camp in the 8th Military Divison of Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht. From the autumn of 1939 until autumn 1942 there was a complex of prisoner-of-war Nazi camps in Zagan and its neighborhood. The camp known as Stalag VIIIC including its branches was the biggest camp in the 8th Military Divison of Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht. Among its prisoners were: French, Russian, Belgian, Italian, Yugoslavian and Polish war prisoners. In May 1942 Stalag Luft III, a prisoner-of-war camp for the British and American airmen, was opened in the neighborhood of Stalag VI-IIC. The prisoners of this camp attempted to escape. The greatest flight happened at night on March 24/25, 1944. However, only three prisoners managed to escape and the remaining 73 were captured. As soon as Hitler got to know about it, he had a briefing with Keitel, Himmler, and Goering. A decision was madê to shoot the fifty fugitives captured. The epilog of the "great runaway" took place before the British Military Court of Justice in Hamburg in 1947, Fourteen of the accused were sentenced to death, whereas the remaining four were sentenced to imprisonment of many years. In front of the museum, there is a sculpture from 1961 by Mieczysław Walter which commemorates the victims of crimes by German Nazi Wehrmacht soldiers.
Sochaczew Museum
Museum of Sochaczew's area and Battle on Bzura, Plac Tadeusza Kościuszki, Sochaczew, Poljska
The museum is located in Sochaczew town 60 kilometers west of Warsaw. It own the greatest collection of weapons, equipment, uniforms and other relics from September Campaign of 1939, especially connected with the Bzura River Battle, the biggest Ally offensive engagement against Wehrmacht in early years of II. World War.
Museum of the History of Polish Jews
Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Anielewicza, Varšava, Poljska
The Museum stands in what was once the heart of Jewish Warsaw an area which the Nazis turned into the Warsaw Ghetto during II. World War. Occupying around 4.000 m2 (ca. 43.000 ft2), the Museum’s Core Exhibition will immerse visitors in the world of Polish Jews, from their arrival in Po-lin as traveling merchants in medieval times until today. The history of the Jews is shown in 8 galleries. One of the gallery shows the tragedy of the Holocaust during the German occupation of Poland, which resulted in the deaths of approximately 90% of the 3.3 million Polish Jews. The gallery also covers the horrors experienced by the non-Jewish majority population of Poland during II. World War as well as their reactions and responses to the extermination of Jews.
Polish Resistance Home Army Museum
Wita Stwosza 12, Krakov, Poljska
The Polish resistance movement in II. World War, with the Polish Home Army at its forefront, was the largest underground resistances in all of Nazi-occupied Europe, covering both German and Soviet zones of occupation. The Polish defense against the Nazi occupation was an important part of the European anti-fascist resistance movement. It is most notable for disrupting German supply lines to the Eastern Front, providing military intelligence to the British, and for saving more Jewish lives during the Holocaust than any other Allied organization or government. It was a part of the Polish Underground State. The permanent exhibition presents the history of Polish Underground State and Home Army in their complexity. The main section of the exhibition begins with the so-called September Campaign (Invasion of Poland). The division of Poland into two occupied zones, German and Soviet, consists of several sections and are well documented with photographic displays. Day-by-day life, both civilian and military, and the policy of both occupants is shown in the rich narrative scenography of the exhibition, based on documents and artifacts such as uniforms, munitions, many documents, and decorations.
The Museum of Coastal Defence
Helska, 84-150 Hel, Poljska
The Museum of Coastal Defence in Hel was established in buildings formerly occupied by the German "Schleswig-Holstein" 406 mm battery: the B2 gun emplacement and the range-finder tower. The aim of the museum is to show the military history of Hel and the Polish Navy. A number of thematic exhibitions show the heroism of the defense of Hel in 1939, and the development of the Polish Navy through history. The development of naval armaments and communications over the last fifty years is shown in detail.
Dukla Museum
Muzeum Historyczne - Pałac w Dukli, Trakt Węgierski, Dukla, Poljska
The historical museum in a palace of Dukla is a combination of small local heritage and II. World War with a highlight of the year 1944 and the Battle of Dukla Pass. This was one of the last major tank battles of II. World War, which concluded the full liberation of Ukraine. The museum includes a huge collection of artillery weaponry and a collection of weapons small caliber, uniforms and army gear.
Memorial Katyn
Świętokrzyskie Mountains, Bodzentyn, Poljska
The Katyn massacre was a series of mass executions of Polish nationals carried out by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, a Soviet secret police organization (NKVD) in April and May 1940. Though the killings took place at several different locations, the massacre is named after the Katyn Forest, where some of the mass graves were first discovered. The massacre was prompted by NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria's proposal to execute all captive members of the Polish officer corps, dated 5 March 1940, approved by the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, including its leader, Joseph Stalin. The number of victims is estimated at about 22,000. The victims were executed in the Katyn Forest in Russia, the Kalinin and Kharkiv prisons, and elsewhere. Of the total killed, about 8,000 were officers imprisoned during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, another 6,000 were police officers, and the rest were arrested Polish intelligentsia that the Soviets deemed to be intelligence agents, gendarmes, landowners, saboteurs, factory owners, lawyers, officials, and priests.
Mauerwald Mamerki Bunkers
Mamerki Bunkry, Węgorzewo, Poljska
Command and Communication Center Mauerwald (OKH) was a headquarters of a German Army Supreme Command, not far from Mamry Lake. OKH Mauerwald is a system of bunkers and military posts belonging to German Supreme Command during the years 1941 and 1944. It was built around 20 km northeast from Wolfschanze by organization Todt. Similar as Wolfschanze, but bigger, the area covered more than 200 structures with more than 30 reinforced buildings and bunkers. When Adolf Hitler was in Wolfschanze, the Wehrmacht and other Chiefs of General Staff were in Mauerwald. You can read more about most famous locations of II. World War in northern Poland in our trip book.
Lviv
Lvov, Lviv Oblast, Ukrajina
Lviv is an administrative center in western Ukraine with more than a millennium of history as a settlement and over seven centuries as a city. Prior to the creation of the modern state of Ukraine, Lviv had been part of numerous states and empires, including, under the name Lwów, Poland and later the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, under the name Lemberg, the Austrian and later Austro-Hungarian Empires, the short-lived West Ukrainian People's Republic after I. World War, Poland again and the Soviet Union. After signing a neutrality pact (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), Nazi Germany invaded Poland on 1. September 1939. The German 1st Mountain Division reached the suburbs of Lviv on 12 September and began a siege. The city's garrison was ordered to hold out at all cost since the strategic position prevented the enemy from crossing into the Romanian Bridgehead. Also, a number of Polish troops from Central Poland were trying to reach the city and organize a defense there to buy time to regroup. Thus a 10-day-long defense of the city started and later became known as yet another Battle of Lwów. On 19 September an unsuccessful Polish diversionary attack under was launched. Soviet troops, part of the force which had invaded on 17 September under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, replaced the Germans around the city. On 21 September Polish troops formally surrendered to Soviet troops under Marshal Semyon Timoshenko. On 22 September 1939 Poland officially capitulated. Germans and Soviets divided Poland into two parts, the Eastern part fell in Soviet part and the Western part became a part of the Third Reich. German and Soviet soldiers gazed into their eyes and celebrated the victory with a cigarette.
Central Prisoner-of-War Museum Lambinowice
Centralne Muzeum Jeńców Wojennych, Muzealna, Łambinowice, Poljska
Stalag VIII-B Lamsdorf was a notorious German Army prisoner of war camp, later renamed Stalag-344, located near the small town of Lamsdorf, now called Łambinowice, in Silesia. The camp initially occupied barracks built to house British and French prisoners in I. World War. At this same location, there had been a prisoner camp during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. After the war, the camp was used for German prisoners-of-war and it renamed in Łambinowice Camp. The museum collection includes archives and artifacts, also a great collection of books. The collection is really rich and connected to polish prisoners-of-war.
Field Cathedral of the Polish Army
Katedra Polowa Wojska Polskiego, Długa, Varšava, Poljska
The Field Cathedral of the Polish Army, also known as the Church of Our Lady Queen of the Polish Crown, is the main garrison church of Warsaw and the representative cathedral of the entire Polish Army. During the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, the cathedral was one of the churches frequently targeted by the Luftwaffe. Heavy fighting was also fighting for the ruins, as the preserved western tower was used as an observation post. At the same time, the cellars of the monastery and the crypts beneath the church were used as a provisional field hospital. The remnants of the church, along with the hospital, were destroyed by German aerial bombardment on 20 August 1944.
Gliwice
Dolnych Wałów, Glivice, Poljska
The Gleiwitz incident was a false flag operation by Nazi forces posing as Poles on 31 August 1939, against the German radio station Sender Gleiwitz in Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia, Germany (since 1945: Gliwice, Poland) on the eve of II. World War in Europe. The goal was to use the staged attack as a pretext for invading Poland. This provocation was the best-known of several actions in Operation Himmler, a series of unconventional operations undertaken by the SS in order to serve specific propaganda goals of Nazi Germany at the outbreak of the war. It was intended to create the appearance of Polish aggression against Germany in order to justify the subsequent invasion of Poland.
Gdansk
Gdansk, Poljska
Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 after having signed a non-aggression pact (Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact) with the Soviet Union in late August. The German attack began in Gdansk, with a bombardment of Polish positions at Westerplatte by the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein, and the landing of German infantry on the peninsula.
Hoek Fort 1881
Fort 1881, Stationsweg, Hoek van Holland, Nizozemska
The museum is located in ex-fort Hoek van Holland. This fort was primarily built as a defensive system for the new waterway against enemies. More than 100 years old building with many hallways, staircases, and rooms, which gives a visitor a good look into a life of soldiers in the fort.
Westerbork Transit Camp
Herinneringscentrum Kamp Westerbork, Oosthalen, Hooghalen, Nizozemska
The Westerbork transit camp was a II. World WarNazi refugee, detention, and transit camp in Hooghalen, ten kilometers (6.2 miles) north of Westerbork. It functions during the II. World War was to assemble Romani and Dutch Jews for transport to other Nazi concentration camps.
Herzogenbusch Vught Concentration Camp
Nationaal Monument Kamp Vught, Lunettenlaan, Vught, Nizozemska
Herzogenbusch concentration camp was a Nazi concentration camp located in Vught near the city of 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands. Herzogenbusch was, with Natzweiler-Struthof in occupied France, the only concentration camp run directly by the SS in western Europe outside of Germany. The camp was first used in 1943 and held 31.000 prisoners. 749 prisoners died in the camp, and the others were transferred to other camps shortly before the camp was liberated by the Allied Forces in 1944. After the war, the camp was used as a prison for Germans and Dutch collaborators. Today there is a museum with exhibitions and a national monument remembering the camp and its victims.
Amersfoort Concentration Camp
Nationaal Monument Kamp Amersfoort, Loes van Overeemlaan, Bosgebied, Leusden, Nizozemska
Amersfoort concentration camp was a Nazi concentration camp in Amersfoort, Netherlands. The official name was Police Transit Camp Amersfoort. During the years of 1941 to 1945, over 35.000 prisoners were kept here. Amersfoort was a transit camp, where prisoners were sent to places like Buchenwald, Mauthausen, and Neuengamme. It was on July 15, 1942, that the Germans began deporting Dutch Jews from Amersfoort, Vught, and Westerbork to concentration camps and death camps such as Auschwitz, Sobibor, and Theresienstadt.
Rotterdam War and Resistance
Museum Rotterdam '40-'45 NU, Coolhaven, Rotterdam, Nizozemska
The city of Rotterdam played important role in the II. World War. It became unrecognized on 14 May 1940, when it was bombed by Nazi forces. Called Rotterdam Blitz was the aerial bombardment by the Luftwaffe. Later Germans occupied the Netherlands and Allied forces carried out a number of operations over Rotterdam. These included bombing strategic installations, leaflet dropping and during the last week of the war, the dropping off emergency food supplies. The city was burst in shreds. 850 people lost their lives, 25.000 homes and 11.000 buildings were razed to the ground, and more than 80.000 inhabitants without the roof over their head. The museum is not just a monument but also serves as a reminder of injustice that is happening in the world today.
Arnhem Oosterbeek War Cemetery
Arnhem Oosterbeek War Cemetery, Van Limburg Stirumweg, Oosterbeek, Nizozemska
The Arnhem Oosterbeek War Cemetery, more commonly known as the Airborne Cemetery, is a cemetery in Oosterbeek, near Arnhem. The cemetery is home to 1.759 graves from the II. World War. In Operation Market-Garden Allies lost between 15.130 and 17.200 soldiers. Allied victims are buried in Arnhem Oosterbeek War Cemetery.
Overloon
Museumpark 1A, 5825 AM Overloon, Nizozemska
The Battle of Overloon was a battle fought in the II. World War battle between Allied forces and the German Army which took place in and around the village of Overloon in the southeast of the Netherlands between 30 September and 18 October 1944. Operation Aintree resulted in an Allied victory. The Allies went on to liberate the town of Venray. The museum contains many vehicles, tanks, warcraft, documentation, all connected with the Battle of Overloon.
Netherlands American Cemetery
Netherlands American Cemetery, Margraten, Nizozemska
The II. World War Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial is a war cemetery which lies in the village of Margraten six miles (10 km) east of Maastricht, in the most southern part of the Netherlands. The tall memorial tower can be seen before reaching the cemetery which covers 65.5 acres (26.5 ha). From the cemetery entrance through the Court of Honor with its pool reflecting the chapel tower. There is visitors' building and the museum with its three engraved operations maps describing the achievements of the American Armed Forces in the area during II. World War.
National Liberation Museum
Nationaal Bevrijdingsmuseum 1944-1945, Wylerbaan, Groesbeek, Nizozemska
The Liberation Museum is set in the beautiful landscape near Nijmegen, Arnhem and the German border. Operation Market-Garden, the largest airborne operation in history took place here in September 1944 and Operation Veritable, the Rhineland Offensive, the final road to freedom in Europe, started from here in February 1945. The museum brings the historical events of the liberation by the American, British, Canadian and Polish troops back to life. In the museum, you live through the period preceding the war, experience the occupation, celebrate the liberation and witness the rebuilding of the Netherlands and Europe after the war. The museum with its presentations, models, movies and audio recordings, brings the war back to life and offers a unique exhibition.
Wings of Liberation Museum
Bevrijdende Vleugels Museum, Sonseweg, Best, Nizozemska
On 17. September 1944 this area was a place of Operation Market-Garden, also here, 101st American paratroopers landed. The museum exhibits a liberation of south Limburg, Operation Market-Garden, Operation Barbarossa in Russia. An exhibition contains war gear and vehicles, including an airplane Dakota and Lockheed TF-104g Starfighter.
Dutch Resistance Museum
Verzetsmuseum, Plantage Kerklaan, Amsterdam, Nizozemska
The Dutch Resistance Museum, chosen as the best historical museum of the Netherlands, tells the story of the Dutch people in II. World War. From 14 May 1940 to 5 May 1945, the Netherlands were occupied by Nazi Germany. Permanent exhibit of the museum recreates the atmosphere of the streets of Amsterdam during the German occupation. Big photographs, old posters, objects, films and sounds from that horrible time, help to recreate the scene. The background of the Holocaust is visualized to the visitor. This is an exhibition about the everyday life during that time, but also about exceptional historical events, the ·resistance of the population against the Nazis and heroism.
Nijmegen Bridge
Valkhofpark, Nijmegen, Nizozemska
Following D-day invasion and slow progress of Allied forces. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, began to contemplate the Allies' next move. General Omar Bradley, commander of the 12th Army Group in the Allied center, advocated in favor of a drive into the Saar to pierce the German Westwall or Siegfried Line defenses and open Germany to invasion. Field Marshal Montgomery's strategic goal was to encircle the heart of German industry, the Ruhr, in a pincer movement. The northern end of the pincer would circumvent the northern end of the Siegfried Line giving easier access into Germany. The aim of Operation Market Garden was to establish the northern end of a pincer ready to project deeper into Germany. Allied forces would project north from Belgium, 60 miles (97 km) through the Netherlands, across the Rhine and consolidate north of Arnhem on the Dutch/German border ready to close the pincer. The operation made massed use of airborne forces, whose tactical objectives were to secure the bridges and allow a rapid advance by armored ground units to consolidate north of Arnhem. The operation required the seizure of the bridges across the Maas (Meuse River), two arms of the Rhine (the Waal and the Lower Rhine) together with crossings over several smaller canals and tributaries. At the furthest point of the airborne operation at Arnhem, the British 1st Airborne Division encountered initial strong resistance. The delays in capturing the bridges at Son and Nijmegen gave time for German forces, including the 9th and 10th SS panzer divisions who were present at that time, to organize and retaliate. In the ensuing battle, only a small force managed to capture the north end of the Arnhem road bridge and after the ground forces failed to relieve them, the paratroopers were overrun on 21 September. The remainder of the 1st Airborne Division were trapped in a small pocket west of the bridge, having to be evacuated on 25 September. The Allies had failed to cross the Rhine and the river remained a barrier to their advance into Germany until offensives at Remagen, Oppenheim, Rees and Wesel in March 1945. The failure of Market Garden to form a foothold over the Rhine ended Allied expectations of finishing the war by Christmas 1944. The 82nd Airborne Division's assault on the Nijmegen bridge in September 1944 received the nickname "Little Omaha" due to the heavy casualties and became a significant turning point in the battle. War reporter Bill Downs described it as: "A single, isolated battle that ranks in magnificence and courage with Guam, Tarawa, Omaha Beach. A story that should be told to the blowing of bugles and the beating of drums for the men whose bravery made the capture of this crossing over the Waal possible."
John Frost Bridge
John Frost Bridge, Arnhem, Nizozemska
Following D-day invasion and slow progress of Allied forces. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, began to contemplate the Allies' next move. General Omar Bradley, commander of the 12th Army Group in the Allied center, advocated in favor of a drive into the Saar to pierce the German Westwall or Siegfried Line defenses and open Germany to invasion. Field Marshal Montgomery's strategic goal was to encircle the heart of German industry, the Ruhr, in a pincer movement. The northern end of the pincer would circumvent the northern end of the Siegfried Line giving easier access into Germany. The aim of Operation Market Garden was to establish the northern end of a pincer ready to project deeper into Germany. Allied forces would project north from Belgium, 60 miles (97 km) through the Netherlands, across the Rhine and consolidate north of Arnhem on the Dutch/German border ready to close the pincer. The operation made massed use of airborne forces, whose tactical objectives were to secure the bridges and allow a rapid advance by armored ground units to consolidate north of Arnhem. The operation required the seizure of the bridges across the Maas (Meuse River), two arms of the Rhine (the Waal and the Lower Rhine) together with crossings over several smaller canals and tributaries. At the furthest point of the airborne operation at Arnhem, the British 1st Airborne Division encountered initial strong resistance. The delays in capturing the bridges at Son and Nijmegen gave time for German forces, including the 9th and 10th SS panzer divisions who were present at that time, to organize and retaliate. In the ensuing battle, only a small force managed to capture the north end of the Arnhem road bridge and after the ground forces failed to relieve them, the paratroopers were overrun on 21 September. The remainder of the 1st Airborne Division were trapped in a small pocket west of the bridge, having to be evacuated on 25 September. The Allies had failed to cross the Rhine and the river remained a barrier to their advance into Germany until offensives at Remagen, Oppenheim, Rees and Wesel in March 1945. The failure of Market Garden to form a foothold over the Rhine ended Allied expectations of finishing the war by Christmas 1944.
Bunker Museum
Badweg 38, IJmuiden, Nizozemska
All around the city of Ijmuiden are bunkers from the II. World War, built by German forces as a part of huge defensive system Atlantic Wall.
Arnhem War Museum
Kemperbergerweg, Arnhem, Nizozemska
The Arnhem War Museum is a private museum dedicated to battle of Arnhem. This collection consists of Allied and German documents, uniforms, weapons, and many non-military objects, for example, newspapers, which give an impression of the daily life of that time.
Airbone Museum Hartenstein
Airborne Museum 'Hartenstein', Utrechtseweg, Oosterbeek, Nizozemska
The Airborne Museum ‘Hartenstein’ is dedicated to the Battle of Arnhem in which the Allied Forces attempted to form a bridgehead on the northern banks of the Rhine river in September 1944. Hartenstein served as the headquarters of the British 1st Airborne Division. Operation Market Garden, 17–25 September 1944, was an unsuccessful Allied military operation, fought in the Netherlands and Germany in the II. World War. Operation Market Garden, which includes the Battle of Arnhem, in September 1944, was the largest airborne battle in history. It was also the only real attempt by the Allies to use airborne forces in a strategic role in Europe. It was a massive engagement, with its principal combatants being 21 Army Group under Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery for the Allies and Army Group B under Generalfeldmarschall Walter Model for the Germans. It involved thousands of aircraft and armored vehicles, and hundreds of thousands of troops and was the only major Allied defeat of the Northwest European campaign.
Hartenstein Airborne Monument
Airborne Museum 'Hartenstein', Utrechtseweg, Oosterbeek, Nizozemska
Operation Market Garden, 17–25 September 1944, was an unsuccessful Allied military operation, fought in the Netherlands and Germany in the II. World War. Operation Market Garden, which includes the Battle of Arnhem, in September 1944, was the largest airborne battle in history. It was also the only real attempt by the Allies to use airborne forces in a strategic role in Europe. It was a massive engagement, with its principal combatants being 21 Army Group under Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery for the Allies and Army Group B under Generalfeldmarschall Walter Model for the Germans. It involved thousands of aircraft and armored vehicles, and hundreds of thousands of troops and was the only major Allied defeat of the Northwest European campaign.
Anne Frank House
Anne Frank Huis, Prinsengracht, Amsterdam, Nizozemska
Annelies Marie Frank was a German-born diarist and writer. One of the most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust, she gained fame posthumously following the publication of her diary, with documents of her life in hiding from 1942 to 1944, during the German occupation of the Netherlands in II. World War. The museum preserves the hiding place, has a permanent exhibition on the life and times of Anne Frank, and has an exhibition space about all forms of persecution and discrimination.
Westwall Museum
Westwallmuseum, Irrel, Nemčija
The museum on the french-german border between the cities Metz, Saarbrücken, Karlsruhe and Strasbourg. This was the place of bloody clashes in the 19th and 20th century. Before and during the II. World War the line was focused on the defensive line "Ligne Maginot" and on the German site "Siegfried line" or "Westwall".
Torgau
Torgau, Nemčija
Torgau is a town on the banks of the Elbe in northwestern Saxony, Germany. The town is the place where during the II. World War, United States Army forces coming from the west met the forces of the Soviet Union coming from the east during the invasion of Germany on 25 April 1945, which is now remembered as "Elbe Day". marking an important step toward the end of II. World War in Europe. This contact between the Soviets, advancing from the East, and the Americans, advancing from the West, meant that the two powers had effectively cut Germany in two.
Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp
Memorial and Museum Sachsenhausen, Straße der Nationen, Oranienburg, Nemčija
Sachsenhausen was a Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used primarily for political prisoners from 1936 until the end of the Third Reich. After II. World War, when Oranienburg was in the Soviet Occupation Zone, the structure was used as an NKVD special camp until 1950. The remaining buildings and grounds are now open to the public as a museum. Sachsenhausen was the site of Operation Bernhard, one of the largest currency counterfeiting operations ever recorded. The Germans forced inmate artisans to produce forged American and British currency, as part of a plan to undermine the United Kingdom's and United States' economies. There were over one billion pounds in counterfeit banknotes. The Germans introduced fake British £5, £10, £20 and £50 notes into circulation in 1943. Furthermore, the Bank of England never found them. A major user of Sachsenhausen labor was Heinkel, the aircraft manufacturer, using between 6,000 and 8,000 prisoners on their He 177 bomber. Prisoners also worked in a brick factory, which some say was supposed to supply the building blocks for Hitler's dream city, Germania, which was to be the capital of the world once the Nazis took over.
Ravensbrück Concentration Camp
Mahn- u. Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück |Stiftung Brandenburgische Gedenkstätten, Straße der Nationen, Fürstenberg/Havel, Nemčija
Ravensbrück was a women's concentration camp during II. World War, near the village of Ravensbrück, north Germany. Construction of the camp began in November 1938 and was unusual in that the camp was intended to hold exclusively female inmates. The facility opened in May 1939 and underwent major expansion following the invasion of Poland. Between 1939 and 1945, some 130.000 to 132.000 female prisoners passed through the Ravensbrück camp system. Many of the slave labor prisoners were employed by the German electrical engineering company.
Neuengamme Concentration Camp
Neuengamme concentration camp Memorial, Neuengammer Hausdeich Brücke, Hamburg, Nemčija
The Neuengamme concentration camp was a German concentration camp, established in 1938 by the SS near the village of Neuengamme in the district of Hamburg, Germany. It was operated by the Nazis from 1938 to 1945. Over that period an estimated 106,000 prisoners were held at Neuengamme and at its subcamps. 14.000 perished in the main camp, 12.800 in the subcamps and 16.100 during the last weeks of the war on evacuation marches or due to the bombing. The verified death toll is 42.900. After Germany's defeat in 1945, the British Army used the site until 1948 as an internment camp. In 1948, the facility was transferred to the Hamburg prison authority which tore down the camp huts a
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The 56th Division (1st London Territorial Division)
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The 56th Division (1st London Territorial Division)
Author: C. H. Dudley Ward
Author of introduction, etc.: Henry Horne
Release date: November 4, 2015 [eBook #50379]
Language: English
Credits: E-text prepared by Brian Coe, Carol Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE 56TH DIVISION (1ST LONDON TERRITORIAL DIVISION) ***
E-text prepared by Brian Coe, Carol Brown,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)
Transcriber's Note:
This text includes characters that require UTF-8 (Unicode) file encoding. If the œ (oe ligature) or the apostrophes and quotation marks appear as garbage, make sure your text reader’s “character set” or “file encoding” is set to UTF-8 (Unicode). You may also need to change the default font.
Additional notes are at the end of the book.
THE 56th DIVISION
All Rights Reserved
TO THE MEMORY
OF
MAJOR-GENERAL
SIR CHARLES PATRICK AMYATT HULL,
K.C.B.
Born July 3rd, 1865
Died July 24th, 1920
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Corps 1
The Western front's theatres of operations In early 1916 the Western front was divided into two parts: the first, from the North Sea to the Somme, was the Anglo-Franco-Belgian sector, which included 39 British, 18 French and six Belgian divisions. The British Expeditionary Corps made up most of the forces. General Douglas Haig replaced Marshal French as commander on 19 December 1915. The entirely French sector, stretching from the Somme to the Swiss border, included most of the French army, with 87 line and reserve divisions. It was made up of three army groups: the North, the East and the Centre, on which the Région Fortifiée de Verdun (R.F.V.) depended. They were under the command of Generals Foch, Langle de Cary and Dubail, respectively. On 6 December 1915 the Allies met at General Joffre's general headquarters (GHQ) in Chantilly to spell out their military objectives. Closing ranks, they decided to keep the Germans guessing with partial local actions and to break through their lines. To achieve those goals, in late December Haig and Joffre agreed on a sweeping Franco-British offensive on the Somme under General Foch's command. But the German attack on Verdun changed the implementation of those objectives.
Corps 2
Verdun
Why Verdun? Von Falkenhayn, the German chief of staff, was in a position of strength and decided to launch the army of the Kronprinz, the Prussian prince and heir to the German empire, in an attack on Verdun.
At Verdun the front formed a salient, making it easier to launch converging attacks from two sides. What's more, the River Meuse cut the battlefield in half, making it harder for the French to defend their position. To make matters worse, the forts of the Verdun Fortified Region were badly organised, without liaison and coverage works between them. The general staff, no longer believing in the virtues of permanent fortifications after the Germans crushed and took the forts of Liège, Namur and Manonvillers in 1914, had stripped them of nearly all their artillery pieces. In August 1915, 43 heavy batteries with nearly 130,000 shells and 11 batteries of light artillery left Verdun for the Champagne front. On the eve of the attack, the German forces faced an enemy whose means of defence had been weakened and whose forts had been stripped of their artillery. In addition to those tactical advantages, the Germans had a key asset: a major communications network (seven railways and the proximity of the formidable entrenched camp in Metz). In contrast, the French could only use three supply routes: two railways-the one from Sainte-Ménehould that was cut off at the beginning of the fighting and the small, narrow-gauge "Meusien"-and the departmental road from Bar-le-Duc to Verdun. The defence of Verdun was therefore severely lacking in artillery and means of communication, whereas the German forces enjoyed overwhelming tactical and logistical superiority. Verdun was also important for psychological reasons. On 14 February 1916 the Kaiser issued a proclamation to his troops glorifying the imminent attack: "I, William, see the German Fatherland forced to go on the offensive. The people want peace; but to establish peace a decisive battle must conclude the war. Verdun, the heart of France, is where you shall harvest the fruit of your efforts...". Another goal of the taking of Verdun, then, was the collapse of the French army's morale for, as Marshal Pétain wrote later, "Verdun was not just a big fortress in the East intended to block an invasion, it was the moral boulevard of France". (1) General von Falkenhayn's initial objective was to take the town in order to clear the way for an invasion. It is highly unlikely that he anticipated waging a battle of attrition. In fact, the failure of his first attempts to break through the French lines and the battle's overall conditions are what led him adopt a strategy of wearing down the enemy. The German general staff had the advantage in attacking Verdun and Falkenhayn pulled out all the stops to prepare his decisive offensive. In front of Verdun the Germans concentrated the heavy artillery pieces that had crushed the Allies' fortified positions in 1914: the 5th Army's twenty-five 305 and 420mm mortars, three 380mm navy guns and 1,200 cannons. The Germans had 600,000 shells, the French 6,400. The German artillery was poised to unleash a bombardment the likes of which had never been seen. It was carefully organised so that all the infantry had to do was occupy already-conquered ground.
The German attack: the right bank, 21 February-5 March At dawn on 21 February the Germans unleashed a bombardment on an unprecedented scale that lasted until 5:15pm French time(2). On the right bank, 80,000 Germans, believing that nothing could stand in their way after such a deluge of fire and steel, stormed the French positions. Much to their surprise, some French units, like Lieutenant-Colonel Driant's 56th and 59th infantry battalions at Caures Wood, put up fierce resistance.
The Germans' advance was weak and uneven until 24 February, but the French front cracked on the 25th. The enemy suddenly broke through between Meuse and Woëvre. At the end of the day Douaumont Fort, stripped of most of its artillery pieces and defended by just 58 men, easily fell into the hands of Second Lieutenant Brandis's and Captain Haupt's 24th Brandenburg regiment, making them national heroes in Germany overnight. On the evening of the 25th, France lost its most modern fort and, above all, a key observatory. The Germans were just 5km from Verdun. Joffre gave General de Castelnau full powers and urgently sent him to Verdun to prevent a complete break in the French lines and a catastrophic retreat. On 24 February he ordered the right bank of the Meuse, north of Verdun, to hold out: "Any officer who under the present circumstances gives an order to retreat will be court-martialled". (3) Then he decided to dissolve the R.F.V. and replace it with the 2nd army, which he put under the command of General Pétain (4) with the mission of organising the defence of Verdun.
Pétain and the organisation of defence As soon as General Pétain reached his new headquarters in Souilly, 20km from Verdun, he set about planning for the battle. The first steps involved the forts, which became the main centres of resistance. Each had its own command, garrison and large stocks of material reserves. It was absolutely forbidden to surrender in case of an enemy attack. Then Pétain mobilised the artillery, which was to relieve the infantry by concentrating its fire on the German positions but also played a defensive role by crushing the enemy's attacks. Throughout the Battle of Verdun, Pétain never stopped saying, "the artillery must give the infantrymen the impression that it supports them and that it is not being dominated".
But the main achievement was the organisation of logistical transport and means of replenishing supplies. After an article by Maurice Barrès, the departmental road from Bar-le-Duc to Verdun became known as the "Sacred Way" because it was the main link between Verdun and the rear. In order to keep 2,900 lorries moving on the road in both directions every day, Pétain had quarries opened up alongside it. Teams of territorial troops and Indochinese auxiliaries ceaselessly threw shovelfuls of stones under the wheels of the lorries, which passed by at the rate of one every five seconds. Some 70,000 tonnes of stones were used without interrupting traffic. Replenishing Verdun's supplies on the Sacred Way was a huge undertaking: every day the 300 officers, 8,000 men, 2,000 cars, 200 buses and 800 ambulances of the Commission Régulatrice Automobile carried an average of 13,000 men, 6,400 tonnes of equipment and 1,500 tonnes of munitions, consuming two tonnes of grease, 20,000 litres of oil and 200,000 litres of fuel. The little "Meusien" railway also supplied the 2nd Army. Every day the Saint-Dizier regulating station sent 21 trains of foodstuffs, seven of munitions, nine of equipment and two of troops to Verdun, as well as evacuated five to seven trains of wounded. Altogether, 119,000 railroad cars travelled the route between 21 February and 1 June(5). The defence of Verdun organised by Pétain foiled Falkenhayn's plans. He stopped the right-bank offensive on 5 March. The next day, the German troops launched a massive attack on the left bank: the battle of attrition was under way. It took on a character unique in history.
The course and original characteristics of the Battle of Verdun (March-July 1916) From 5 March to 15 July the Germans remained in strategic control of the battle by regularly alternating its offensives on both banks of the Meuse. On the left bank, German troops took Goose Hill, Avocourt, Malancourt and Béthincourt in the 6 March attack; on the 10th General Pétain issued his famous order of the day to the troops: "Courage! We'll get them...". On 9 April the German army dug in on the north flanks of Hill 304 and Mort-Homme. The French front held the main points of resistance set by General Pétain only at the price of very heavy casualties. Pétain stood out by his caution. In La France et son armée, General de Gaulle wrote that he was "excellent at grasping the essentials" and avoided useless casualties as much as possible." But on 1 May General Nivelle replaced him as commander of the Second Army and he became head of the group of armies of the Centre. Joffre wanted that promotion because it was actually a means of pushing Pétain aside by taking direct responsibility for operations away from him.
The Germans were still in control of the terrain and thwarting the French army's deep counter-thrusts, such as the one on 22 May when General Mangin's 5th Infantry Division stormed Douaumont Fort. The French infantrymen did not have the resources they needed to take the fort. Taking heart from that failure, the Germans pursued their offensives. They began an atrocious five-day siege of Vaux Fort, which they totally encircled. After Major Raynal's men ran out of munitions, food and water-some were so thirsty they drank their own urine-the Germans attacked them with gas and flame-throwers. The fort surrendered on 7 June. The Germans launched offensives during the rest of the summer. After extremely violent fighting, they took the right bank, Thiaumont farm and defence works, village of Fleury and Froideterre defence works (6). The Germans were just three km from Verdun and the French had to send in a steady stream of reinforcements to hold the front. By late June 70 divisions making up three-fourths of the French army had fought or were fighting at Verdun. Pétain was short of men and had to organise the "tourniquet"-quick, frequent changes of units- "so that the same men do not stay on the battlefield too long, at the risk of seeing both their numbers and their morale collapse."(7). France had an ambiguous perception of the unimaginably fierce fighting. On the one hand, newspapers, but also other sources, manufactured an idealistically heroic aura around the battle intended for popular consumption. On the other, eyewitness accounts and letters to families from the men on leave who were doing the actual fighting painted a grim, heart-wrenching picture. The horrors of Verdun actually drove a deep wedge between combatants and non-combatants. French soldiers scarcely appreciated the image they were being given and resented the home front's inability to measure their suffering, which they themselves could find no words to describe. Nevertheless the rear gradually became more accurately informed about the appalling reality of life at the front. In a sign that perceptions were shifting, Henri Barbusse's book Under Fire won the 1916 Goncourt Prize.
From a tactical standpoint, the Battle of Verdun was unique in the Great War's history. Verdun was a crucible, a furnace, a steamroller with no front, trenches or shelters. The lines of defence were nothing more than scattered positions constantly under attack or isolated units completely left to their own devices because they had lost most of their officers. They knew there was only one solution: "to hold on". They had to fight day and night, covered in mud at the bottom of foxholes, broiling in the heat or freezing in the cold, usually without food or water.
French soldiers at Verdun fought in conditions of unprecedented ghastliness. The bodies of two out of three who died there were never found because, on a battlefield where one shell fell for every square meter, the victims were soon pulverised or buried. The well-organised defence and soldiers' high morale enabled the French army to hold out. By early July the 5th German army was exhausted by the great June offensive (the battles of Hill 304 and Mort-Homme on the left bank; the taking of Vaux Fort, the Thiaumont farm and the village of Fleury on the right bank) and had lost nearly as many men as the French. The German assault units seem to have melted away. For example, the 2nd Bavarian division lost 80% of its infantry. Bled white, the Germans launched their final attack on 11 July but ran out of steam and failed in front of Souville Fort, the last French bulwark before Verdun. The next day, Falkenhayn had to give up on the idea of an offensive, especially since he had to shift regiments and artillery to the Somme, Russia and Romania. The relief of Verdun (October-December 1916) The German divisions' exhaustion at Verdun and troop transfers to other fronts stopped the enemy offensive in mid-July. The German general staff lost control of the situation. Later, General Ludendorff described Verdun in his memoirs as "a gaping wound that ate away at our forces". In early September Nivelle and Pétain developed plans to break through the German positions on the right bank. They focused on strengthening the artillery's firepower, in particular by using French 370 and 400mm howitzers for the first time at Verdun. The French pounded the right bank from 20 to 23 October. At dawn on the 24th four divisions commanded by General Mangin stormed Douaumont. The failure to take back the fort on 22 May served as a lesson: this time, the offensive focused not just on that sector but also on a much wider area. The colonial infantry regiment of Morocco and parts of the 321st R.I. overran the ruins and held onto them. A week later the Germans evacuated Vaux Fort, which French troops reoccupied. On 15 December a new operation pushed back the German front 5km north of the Côte du Poivre-Louvemont-Bois des Caurières-Bezonvaux line. By late 1916 French troops had taken back the ground lost since 21 February on the right bank of the Meuse north of Verdun: the town was relieved. From February to December 162,000 Frenchmen perished in the Battle of Verdun, which also cost the lives of 143,000 Germans.
Note:
(1) Maréchal Pétain, La Bataille de Verdun. Paris, Payot, 1929, p. 9 (2) 4:15pm, German time (3) Text quoted in Jules Poirier, La Bataille de Verdun. Paris, 1922. Chiron (4)In 1914 the 58-year-old, about-to-retire Pétain was an almost totally unknown colonel commanding an infantry regiment. The war changed his plans by quickly making him a general. The Battle of Verdun made him one of the Great War's most famous generals. (5) In order to supply the troops with so much equipment, the French had to set up many munitions dumps. Some of them exploded, causing terrible tragedies on both sides. For example, the Tavannes tunnel fire on the night of 4-5 September killed over 500 French soldiers, who were burned alive or asphyxiated. On 8 May a grenade dump blew up in Douaumont Fort, which was then in German hands, killing nearly 680 soldiers, who lie buried in a casemate transformed into a funerary chapel. (6) Fleury and the Froideterre fortification works changed hands 16 times. (7) Marshal Pétain, op. ci
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https://profilpelajar.com/article/3rd_Landwehr_Division_(German_Empire)
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3rd Landwehr Division (German Empire)
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3rd Landwehr Division (3. Landwehr-Division)Active1914-1919CountryGermanyBranchArmyTypeInfantrySizeApprox. 15,000EngagementsWorld War I: Gorlice-Tarnów OffensiveMilitary unit The 3rd Landwehr Division (3. Landwehr-Division) was an infantry division of the Imperial German Army during World War I.
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https://profilpelajar.com/images/varico.ico
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https://profilpelajar.com/article/3rd_Landwehr_Division_(German_Empire)
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3rd Landwehr Division (3. Landwehr-Division)Active1914-1919CountryGermanyBranchArmyTypeInfantrySizeApprox. 15,000EngagementsWorld War I: Gorlice-Tarnów Offensive
Military unit
The 3rd Landwehr Division (3. Landwehr-Division) was an infantry division of the Imperial German Army during World War I. It was formed on the mobilization of the German Army in August 1914 under the "Higher Landwehr Commander 3" (Höherer Landwehr-Kommandeur 3). The Landwehr was the third category of the German Army, after the regular Army and the reserves. Thus Landwehr divisions were made up of older soldiers who had passed from the reserves, and were intended primarily for occupation and security duties rather than heavy combat. While the division was a Landwehr formation, at the beginning of the war it also had an attached Ersatz infantry brigade, made up of cadres from various regimental replacement battalions (this brigade was dissolved in September 1914). The division was primarily raised in the Prussian provinces of Posen, Lower Silesia, and West Prussia. The division was disbanded in 1919 during the demobilization of the German Army after World War I.
Combat chronicle
The 3rd Landwehr Division fought on the Eastern Front in World War I. It was on the front in Poland from the early days, and participated in the Gorlice-Tarnów Offensive, crossing the Vistula in July and advancing toward the Bug, and eventually reaching the line between the Servech and Shchara rivers, where the front stabilized. It remained in the line there until the armistice on the Eastern Front in December 1917. Thereafter, the division served in the Ukraine and in the German occupation forces in Russia until late September 1918, when it went to the Western Front, serving in the Flanders area until the end of the war. Allied intelligence rated the division as fourth class and of mediocre combat value.[1][2]
Order of battle on mobilization
The order of battle of the 3rd Landwehr Division on mobilization in August 1914 was as follows:[3]
17.Landwehr-Infanterie-Brigade
Landwehr-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 6
Landwehr-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 7
18.Landwehr-Infanterie-Brigade
Landwehr-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 37
Landwehr-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 46
17.Ersatz-Infanterie-Brigade
Brigade-Ersatz-Bataillon Nr. 17
Brigade-Ersatz-Bataillon Nr. 18
Brigade-Ersatz-Bataillon Nr. 19
Brigade-Ersatz-Bataillon Nr. 20
Brigade-Ersatz-Bataillon Nr. 77
Landwehr-Kavallerie-Regiment Nr. 1
1.Landsturm-Batterie/V.Armeekorps
2.Landsturm-Batterie/V.Armeekorps
Ersatz-Abteilung/1. Posensches Feldartillerie-Regiment Nr. 20
Ersatz-Abteilung/2. Niederschlesisches Feldartillerie-Regiment Nr. 41
Ersatz-Kompanie/Niederschlesisches Pionier-Bataillon Nr. 5
On September 25, 1914, the 17th Ersatz Infantry Brigade was dissolved and its constituent units used to replace losses suffered by the 4th Landwehr Division in the Battle of Tarnawka (7–9 September 1914) as follows:[4]
17th Brigade Ersatz Battalion absorbed into III Battalion, 23rd Landwehr Infantry Regiment
18th Brigade Ersatz Battalion absorbed into III Battalion, 51st Landwehr Infantry Regiment
19th Brigade Ersatz Battalion absorbed into III Battalion, 22nd Landwehr Infantry Regiment
20th Brigade Ersatz Battalion absorbed into III Battalion, 22nd Landwehr Infantry Regiment
77th Brigade Ersatz Battalion absorbed into III Battalion, 11th Landwehr Infantry Regiment
Order of battle on March 18, 1918
The division underwent several structural changes as the war progressed. It was triangularized in September 1916, sending the 18th Landwehr Infantry Brigade to the 217th Infantry Division. The cavalry was reduced, pioneers were increased to a full battalion, and an artillery command and a divisional signals command were created. The division's order of battle on March 18, 1918, was as follows:[3]
17.Landwehr-Infanterie-Brigade
Landwehr-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 6
Landwehr-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 7
Landwehr-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 46
1.Eskadron/Dragoner-Regiment von Bredow (1. Schlesisches) Nr. 4
Artillerie-Kommandeur 130
Landwehr-Feldartillerie-Regiment Nr. 3
1.Ersatz-Kompanie/Niederschlesisches Pionier-Bataillon Nr. 5
Divisions-Nachrichten-Kommandeur 503
Notes
References
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Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 23, 2023
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ISW is publishing a special edition campaign assessment today, April 23. This report outlines the current Russian order of battle (ORBAT) in Ukraine, assesses the offensive and defensive capabilities of Russian force groupings along the front, and
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https://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/themes/isw/isw.ico
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Institute for the Study of War
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https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-april-23-2023
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Karolina Hird, George Barros, and Frederick W. Kagan
April 23, 8:15pm ET
Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain maps that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.
ISW is publishing a special edition campaign assessment today, April 23. This report outlines the current Russian order of battle (ORBAT) in Ukraine, assesses the offensive and defensive capabilities of Russian force groupings along the front, and discusses major factors that may complicate Russian defensive operations in the event of a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
This report is based on a number of assumptions about Ukrainian capabilities that ISW does not, as a matter of policy, attempt to assess or report on. It assumes, in particular, that Ukraine will be able to conduct a coordinated multi-brigade mechanized offensive operation making full use of the reported nine brigades being prepared for that operation. That task is daunting and larger than any offensive effort Ukraine has hitherto attempted (four Ukrainian brigades were reportedly used in the Kharkiv counter-offensive, for example). It also assumes that Ukraine will have integrated enough tanks and armored personnel carriers of various sorts into its units to support extended mechanized maneuver, that Ukrainian mechanized units will have sufficient ammunition of all sorts including artillery, and that Ukraine will be able to conduct long-range precision strikes with HIMARS and other similar systems integrated with and supporting maneuver operations as it has done before. It further assumes that Ukrainian forces will have the mine-clearing and bridging capabilities needed to move relatively rapidly through prepared defensive positions. ISW sees no reason to question any of these assumptions given the intensity with which Ukraine has reportedly been preparing for this operation and the time it has taken to do so, as well as the equipment reportedly delivered to Ukrainian forces by Western countries. If any significant number of these assumptions prove invalid, however, then some of the assessments and observations below will also be invalid, and the Russians’ prospects for holding their lines will be better than presented below. ISW offers no assessment of or evidence for these assumptions, and thus offers no specific forecast for the nature, scale, location, duration, or outcome of the upcoming Ukrainian counter-offensive. Ukraine has attractive options for offensive operations all along the line, and ISW does not assess that the information presented in this report or any observations ISW has made below lead obviously to the conclusion that Ukrainian forces will attack in one area or another.
Russian forces in Ukraine are operating in decentralized and largely degraded formations throughout the theater, and the current pattern of deployment suggests that most available units are already online and engaged in either offensive or defensive operations. ISW assesses that Russian forces are currently operating along seven axes: Kupyansk; Luhansk Oblast; Bakhmut; Avdiivka-Donetsk City; western Donetsk/eastern Zaporizhia; western Zaporizhia; and Kherson Oblast. Russian forces are pursuing active offensive operations on at least five of these axes (Kupyansk, Luhansk, Bakhmut, Avdiivka-Donetsk City, and western Donetsk/eastern Zaporizhia) and predominantly pursuing defensive operations on the western Zaporizhia Oblast and Kherson Oblast axes. The forces currently committed to both offensive and defensive operations in Ukraine are both regular (doctrinally consistent based on Russian pre-war units) and irregular (non-standard and non-doctrinal) forces, and it is highly likely that the majority of Russian elements throughout Ukraine are substantially below full strength due to losses taken during previous phases of the war. This report will discuss “elements” of certain units and formations deployed to certain areas, but it should not be assumed that any of these units or formations are operating at full strength.
Kupyansk Axis (Northeastern Kharkiv Oblast)
Russia has committed elements of previously damaged Western Military District (WMD) formations to the Kupyansk area. Russian forces have been pursuing limited offensive operations on the Kupyansk axis in the first few months of 2023, but have failed to make operationally significant gains towards Kupyansk and have made only occasional and localized tactical gains. ISW has observed mentions of unknown units of unspecified echelon of the 1st Guards Tank Army (1st GTA)’s 47th Tank Division operating in the Kupyansk direction.[1] The 1st GTA notably suffered major manpower and equipment losses during the Russian offensive in Chernihiv Oblast early in the war in 2022, and then once again during Ukraine’s Kharkiv Oblast counteroffensive in fall 2022.[2] The 1st GTA’s 4th Tank Division, particularly its 12th and 13th Tank Regiments, lost nearly 100 tanks in a few days in September 2022, so any constituent elements of the 1st GTA that are currently operating near Kupyansk are likely short of tanks and other critical systems.[3] The commitment of damaged and understrength 1st GTA elements to this line likely suggests that the Russian military command is not immediately prioritizing this as an axis of advance or defense. Geolocated footage from February 2023 additionally shows that the WMD’s 6th Combined Arms Army (CAA) has committed unknown units of unspecified echelon near the Fyholivka-Novomlynsk area, about 19km directly north of Kupyansk.[4] A Russian milblogger additionally indicated that elements of the 6th CAA’s 138th Separate Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade are operating in Kharkiv Oblast, likely near Kupyansk.
Based on the pattern of deployment of WMD formations on the Kupyansk and Luhansk axes, the WMD’s 2nd Motor Rifle Division (1st GTA) has likely deployed toward along the Kharkiv-Luhansk Oblast border. ISW has previously noted that it has not yet observed explicit confirmation that the 2nd MRD has come online but considering that unnamed 1st GTA elements are deployed near Kupyansk and that it is highly unlikely that Russia can afford to hold a division in reserve while trying to pursue offensive and defensive operations, the 2nd MRD has likely deployed near Kupyansk.[5]
Observed elements:
1st Guards Tank Army [6]
o 47th Tank Division [7]
6th Combined Arms Army [8]
o 138th Separate Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade [9]
Svatove/Kreminna line
Russia has committed elements of two military districts and two airborne (VDV) divisions to an unsuccessful offensive in Luhansk Oblast that has operationally culminated. ISW assessed in February that WMD elements had been committed to decisive offensive operations along the Svatove-Kreminna line in Luhansk Oblast but forecasted that this offensive was extraordinarily unlikely to achieve meaningful gains. This offensive has now operationally culminated and has made only a few localized tactical gains. Elements of the WMD’s 20th Combined Arms Army (20th CAA); the Central Military District (CMD)’s 41st Combined Arms Army (41st CAA); VDV forces; the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU); forces of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR), and various ad hoc irregular formations have been fighting along the Svatove-Kreminna line since early 2023. ISW has observed a heavy commitment of the 20th CAA’s 144th and 3rd Motor Rifle Divisions (MRDs) along the Svatove-Kreminna line, including all three of the 144th MRD’s constituent regiments (the 254th and 488th Guards Motor Rifle regiments and the 59th Guards Tank Regiment) and two of the 3rd MRD’s motorized rifle regiments (the 752nd and 252ndMotorized Rifle Regiments).[10] Considering that most of these elements have been actively engaged in offensive operations along an active front for the greater part of four months they are likely exhausted and substantially degraded.
Russia has also committed elements of the CMD to the Svatove-Kreminna line, particularly in the area west of Kreminna. Geolocated footage posted in late February shows that elements of the 35th Separate Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade of the 41st Combined Arms Army (41st CAA) conducted a failed vehicle borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) attack against Ukrainian positions near Chervonopopivka, 6km north of Kreminna.[11] The 6th Tank Regiment of the 90th Tank Division is likely also engaged near Svatove, and a Russian milblogger noted in early January that mobilized servicemen of this regiment have been fighting in this area without rotation since October 2022, which suggests that the CMD largely lacks other forces with which to conduct necessary troops rotations.[12] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) additionally refers to the “Central Group of Forces” (another name for the CMD grouping in Ukraine) operating in the Lyman direction west of Kreminna in its daily situation reports.[13] The CMD under Colonel General Alexander Lapin was responsible for the major Russian operational defeat following the Ukrainian liberation of Lyman on October 1, 2022.[14] CMD elements were likely severely degraded during the fall of Lyman and subsequent Ukrainian counteroffensive pushes, and the current CMD grouping near Kreminna is therefore likely comprised of partially reconstituted remnants of the October withdrawal. The exact hierarchy of command and control on this sector of the front is unclear-- Lapin was dismissed following the fall of Lyman but then apparently reappointed as commander of the Luhansk axis as of April 18.[15]
VDV forces are also actively engaged near Kreminna. ISW has observed mentions of the 237th Guards Air Assault Regiment of the 76th VDV Division and the 331st Guards Airborne Regiment of the 98th VDV Division operating in the forested area to the west and southwest of Kreminna.[16] The Russian military command notably appears to be increasing the prominence of VDV forces, and the Russian MoD reported on April 3 that VDV units received TOS-1A “Solntsepek” thermobaric artillery systems for the first time in history.[17] Geolocated footage confirms that Russian forces have used TOS-1A systems near Kreminna as recently as April 1.[18] TOS-1A systems are military district-level assets that are not tied to specific formations, so their use around Kreminna by VDV elements is noteworthy and suggests that the Russian military command may be trying to empower VDV units to conduct further offensive operations on this front. However, the commitment of a single type of artillery asset is unlikely to lend VDV forces a decisive offensive edge on this axis and does not replace the core requirement for better (and more) Russian infantry capabilities, as ISW has previously assessed.[19]
The Main Directorate of the Russian General Staff (GRU) has also deployed limited special forces (Spetsnaz) elements along the Svatove-Kreminna line, likely to offset the lack of needed infantry capabilities. Russian milbloggers have posted footage claiming that the 24th Separate Special Purpose Brigade and 3rd Guards Special Purpose Brigade are operating near Makiivka (22km northwest of Kreminna) and around Kreminna itself.[20] The Russian military continues to use Spetsnaz units to conduct ground attacks and infantry maneuvers instead of for their primary sabotage and targeting missions, as ISW has previously observed.[21] The apparent increased prominence of Spetsnaz units in this area is likely part of the Russian military command’s effort to mitigate losses to ground assault elements by committing elite formations that traditionally have different functions to regular combat missions.[22]
Several irregular Russian formations have additionally been playing a supplementary role along the Svatove-Kreminna line. LNR, BARS (Russian Combat Reserve), Chechen “Akhmat” Spetsnaz, and the “Don” Cossack Regiment appear to be participating in hostilities in this area, albeit to a much more limited extent than more conventional units.[23] ISW has observed two BARS detachments—BARS “Kaskad” and BARS-13—engaged near Kreminna, and the 4th LNR Brigade and 3rd LNR Battalion additionally have been fighting alongside Chechen “Akhmat” elements south of Kreminna near Bilohorivka.[24]
Russian forces have failed to make meaningful advances in Luhansk Oblast in 2023, despite the heavy commitment of elements of at least three armies of two military districts, elements of two VDV divisions, and the support of numerous irregular formations. The forces that have been fighting along this line for at the better part of four months are likely exhausted and substantially degraded. They have continued to attack, have not rotated to rest and refit, and do not appear to have prepared themselves to receive a Ukrainian offensive.
Observed elements:
Spetsnaz
o 24th Separate Special Purpose Brigade [25]
o 3rd Guards Special Purpose Brigade [26]
VDV
o 76th VDV Division
§ 237th Air Assault Regiment [27]
o 98th VDV Division [28]
§ 331st Airborne Regiment [29]
20th Combined Arms Army
o 144th Motor Rifle Division [30]
§ 254th Guards Motor Rifle Regiment [31]
§ 488th Guards Motor Rifle Regiment [32]
§ 59th Guards Tank Regiment [33]
o 3rd Motor Rifle Division [34]
§ 752nd Motorized Rifle Regiment [35]
§ 252nd Motorized Rifle Regiment [36]
Central Military District
o 41st Combined Arms Army
§ 35th Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade [37]
§ 90th Tank Division
§ 6th Tank Regiment [38]
o Other unspecified echelons in the Lyman direction
2nd Luhansk Army Corps elements
o 4th Brigade [39]
§ TF SURRICATS anti-drone unit [40]
o 3rd Battalion [41]
Irregulars
o BARS
§ BARS-13 [42]
§ BARS “Kaskad” [43]
o Chechen “Akhmat” Spetsnaz [44]
o Don Cossacks [45]
Bakhmut
The current Russian pattern of commitment around Bakhmut suggests that the Russian military leadership is increasingly prioritizing the completion of the capture of the city before the start of the Ukrainian counteroffensive if possible. The Wagner Group continues to take heavy losses. It may well be able to complete the seizure of the city at some point. Sustaining Wagner’s advance beyond its culmination required the Russian MoD to commit VDV formations to allow Wagner to concentrate almost entirely on the urban fight. Wagner financier and chief Yevgeny Prigozhin ceded the northern and southwestern flanks to the Russian MoD and confirmed that VDV elements are supporting the Wagner main effort in Bakhmut in this way. VDV support in this area will likely enable Wagner to make more gains within the city and may persuade Ukrainian forces to withdraw. VDV units near Bakhmut are likely further removed from direct, highly attritional urban combat than Wagner elements, and will thus likely emerge from the battle for Bakhmut in substantially better shape than Wagner.
Russian milbloggers have noted that elements of the 106th VDV Division are defending the line near Yakovlivka, about 17km northeast of Bakhmut.[46] The announcement of Wagner and the VDV working together around Bakhmut suggests that the Russian military leadership is seeking to cooperate with Prigozhin despite previously growing frictions in order to expedite the capture of Bakhmut. The Russian MoD’s apparent desire to reduce friction with Wagner over Bakhmut is also evidenced by the apparent reappointment of former VDV commander and Wagner affiliate Colonel General Mikhail Teplinsky to an unspecified but “major” role in Ukraine after alleged previous disagreements with the MoD and Chief of the Russian General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov.[47] These efforts on the command level are additionally having tactical impacts--Russian milbloggers noted that Wagner is now operating T-90 tanks in Bakhmut, which suggests that the Russian military leadership has allocated more modern assets to Wagner in an attempt to expedite the capture of the city.
Certain irregular Russian formations are also engaged near Bakhmut, although in a notably much more limited capacity than Wagner. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on February 25 that around 200 Chechen “Akhmat” special purpose police arrived in Bakhmut to combat desertion and sabotage by other Russian forces in the area.[48] “Akhmat” forces are unlikely to have engaged in actual combat, however. The “Lystan” volunteer detachment, part of the “Don” Cossack” formation, claimed to be fighting near Bakhmut as of March 18.[49]
Observed elements:
Wagner [ISW does not attempt to maintain a detailed order of battle of Wagner forces]
o 11th Reconnaissance and Assault detachment [50]
VDV
o 106th VDV Division [51]
Irregulars/ volunteer battalions
o Chechen “Akhmat” Spetsnaz for military law enforcement within Bakhmut [52]
o Lystan volunteer battalion [53]
Avdiivka-Donetsk City axis
The Russian military command has heavily committed a variety of Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) elements to the Avdiivka-Donetsk City frontline, alongside some Southern Military District (SMD) and Northern Fleet units. These elements have made no operationally significant progress on this axis in 2023 beyond marginal tactical advances around Avdiivka and within Marinka. DNR forces have notably been active along this axis since 2014, and the current frontline in this area is within kilometers of the line that has held for eight years.
DNR elements in this area have particularly suffered from poor and abusive command culture, which has been greatly exacerbated by the Russian MoD’s recent campaign to officially integrate and formalize DNR forces within the Russian military. The Russian military formally integrated and acknowledged control of the existing 1st and 2nd Army Corps (forces of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, respectively), and these formations are now officially operationally subordinated to the 8th Combined Arms Army (Southern Military District).[54] This official subordination has caused widespread issues for DNR forces, however. Russian sources have circulated reports that the DNR command is sending mobilized servicemen from throughout Russia to fill out DNR units with minimal training and that DNR commanders badly mistreat mobilized servicemen and force them into attritional assaults with no preparation.[55] The Russian MoD’s desire to rapidly integrate DNR and Russian forces by staffing DNR units with Russian mobilized personnel has likely degraded the combat capabilities of forces on this front.[56]
DNR brigades, regiments, battalions, and other constituent elements notably are not manned or equipped in accord with normal Russian tables of organization and equipment. DNR forces initially started as militia-style proxy forces in 2014 and have maintained much of that irregularity within their formations despite their formal integration into the 8th CAA. The DNR calls certain formations “brigades,” “regiments,” or “battalions,” but these elements are not equivalent to Russian formations with the same echelon designation.
ISW has observed numerous DNR elements near Avdiivka and on the northwestern outskirts of Donetsk City. The DNR has heavily committed all eight of its known “brigades”—the 1stSlavic, 3rd Horlivka, 5th, 9th, 14thKalmius, 100th, 114th, and 132nd—to the area north and northwest of Donetsk City.[57] The 56th and 58th Separate Special Purpose Battalions, 10thTank Battalion, as well as the “Sparta” Separate Guards Reconnaissance Battalion and “Somalia” Separate Guards Assault Battalion have been prominent in DNR operations around Avdiivka and in the Vodyane area just southwest of Avdiivka.[58] A number of other DNR regiments are additionally engaged in this sector of the front.[59]
The SMD’s 8thCombined Arms army (8th CAA) has committed elements of both of its two motorized rifle divisions to operations in the Marinka area on the southwestern outskirts of Donetsk City. The 150th Motorized Rifle Division’s two tank regiments (68th and 163rd) and the 20th Guards Motorized Rifle Division’s 255th Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment have been fighting in Marinka since at least February 2023.[60] Mobilized servicemen from Krasnodar Krai posted a video appeal on March 9 in which they reported that they are serving in the 2nd Motorized Rifle Company (1st Motorized Rifle Battalion, 255th Motor Rifle Regiment) and that their command threw them into attritional assaults near Donetsk City (likely near Marinka) in late February.[61]
Elements of the Northern Fleet’s 14th Army Corps were also active in the Avdiivka-Donetsk City area but have likely withdrawn further into the rear due to high combat losses. Russian milbloggers claimed on March 22 that the 200th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade (14th Army Corps, Northern Fleet) attacked Ukrainian positions near Tonenke, 7km west of Avdiivka.[62] Ukrainian Joint Press Center of the Tavriisk Direction Head Colonel Oleksiy Dmytrashkivskyi, however, reported on April 3 that the 200th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade withdrew from the frontline in order to refit and recover.[63]
Several volunteer battalions are also reportedly fighting on the Avdiivka-Donetsk City axis. Russian sources have reported that the Perm Oblast “Molot” Tank Battalion, the “Wolves” Sabotage and Reconnaissance Battalion, and the “Nevsky” volunteer detachment are fighting near Avdiivka and in the Donetsk City area.[64] Dmytrashkivskyi noted on March 5 that the “Steppe” Cossack Battalion arrived at an unspecified area in the Donetsk City direction but reported that the “Steppe” Battalion was very distrustful of command and in panic.[65] Former Russian proxy commander and prominent critical milblogger Igor Girkin revealed on April 7 that the “Nevsky” volunteer detachment, which he enthusiastically advertised on his Telegram account, is essentially a sham that threw recruits into attritional assaults with no training or equipment and that its total complement is 1,186 despite the fact that it was advertised as a brigade (typically numbering approximately 3,200 to 3,600 personnel) .[66] Reports from both Russian and Ukrainian sources on irregular Russian formations operating in the Avdiivka-Donetsk City area suggest that these units are faced with pervasive issues of morale, organization, and command and are likely not particularly combat effective.
A reportedly captured Russian military manual offers insight into how 8th CAA and DNR forces are utilizing company-sized units in urban combat to mitigate limitations on the combat effectiveness of these formations as they fight along the Donetsk City line. A Ukrainian reserve officer released a captured Russian manual on April 6 that details the formation of “Storm Z” companies, which are staffed with recruits and created within elements of the 8th CAA and DNR.[67] These ”Storm Z” companies are staffed with 100 personnel (divided into four capture squads, four fire support squads, a command element, a combat engineering group, reconnaissance group, medevac group, and UAV crew) and are created outside the conventional army unit structure and attached to existing regiments and brigades.[68] These formations are meant to conduct urban combat operations or operations in challenging geographic areas with the intent of capturing strategic objects and are likely being employed in urban combat in highly fortified small settlements near Donetsk City. Their existence suggests that 8th CAA and DNR elements are so badly damaged that they need this sort of irregular tactical arrangement. Such ad hoc tactical formations integrated into already disorganized units are unlikely to lend Russian forces on this axis a significant offensive advantage.[69]
Observed elements:
1st Donetsk Army Corps elements
o 1st Slavic Brigade [70]
§ 1453rd Regiment [71]
§ 1439th Regiment [72]
o 3rd (Horlivka) Brigade [73]
o 9th Brigade [74]
§ 6th Rifle Battalion [75]
o 5th Brigade [76]
o 14th “Kalmius” Brigade [77]
o 110th Separate Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade [78]
§ 2nd Battalion [79]
§ Pyatnashka Battalion [80]
o 132nd Separate Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade [81]
o 9th Separate Naval Infantry Regiment [82]
o 10th Tank Battalion [83]
o 114th Brigade (formerly 11th Regiment) [84]
o 87th Regiment (formerly 9th Regiment) [85]
o 1454th Self-Propelled Artillery Regiment [86]
o 23rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Division [87]
o “Somalia” battalion [88]
o “Sparta battalion”[89]
o 56th Separate Special Purpose Battalion [90]
o 58th Special Purpose Battalion (previously 3rdSeparate DNR Special Purpose Brigade) [91]
o Unspecified DNR Spetsnaz elements [92]
Southern Military District
o 8th Combined Arms Army
§ 150th Motorized Rifle Division [93]
§ 68th Tank Regiment [94]
§ 163rd Tank Regiment [95]
§ 20th Guards Motorized Rifle Division
§ 255th Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment [96]
§ 1st Motorized Rifle Battalion [97]
Northern Fleet
o 14th Army Corps
§ 200th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade [98]
Irregulars
o 3rd Army Corps
§ 72nd Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade [99]
o Volunteer battalions
§ Perm “Molot” Tank Battalion [100]
§ 1st Sabotage and Reconnaissance Battalion “Wolves” [101]
§ Nevsky Volunteer Detachment [102]
§ Steppe Cossack Battalion [103]
Southern Donetsk/Eastern Zaporizhia axis
Eastern Military District (EMD) elements have been committed to western Donetsk Oblast near Vuhledar since fall 2022 and have suffered continued losses during repeated failed attempts to take Vuhledar. The EMD’s 29th and 36th Combined Arms Armies (CAAs) and Pacific Fleet have been pursuing offensives towards Vuhledar over the course of the first few months of 2023.[104] An obituary posted on March 23 indicates that the 36th Separate Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade (29th CAA) fought in Mykilske, 4km southeast of Vuhledar.[105] Geolocated footage shows that a 36th CAA unit of unspecified echelon actively stormed Ukrainian positions near Mykilske in late February.[106] The 36th CAA’s 37th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade and 5th Separate Guards Tank Brigade are also likely operating near Vuhledar.[107] Pacific Fleet elements, particularly the 40th and 155th Naval Infantry Brigades, have been the most actively engaged in this area since fall 2022.[108]
EMD elements in the Vuhledar area have been restaffed in various iterations with poorly trained and disciplined mobilized personnel to compensate for overall unit degradation. Following another notorious failed offensive on Vuhledar in early February 2023, Dmytrashkivskyi reported that naval infantry elements were losing 150 to 300 personnel per day and that the 155thBrigade therefore needed to be entirely restaffed for a third time.[109] Ukrainian intelligence also noted that elements of the 98th VDV Division arrived to support the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade around Vuhledar, further highlighting the destruction of this formation.[110] The failures of EMD units in this area have additionally been reflected on the strategic level—Russian sources speculated in late March that the Russian MoD dismissed EMD Commander Colonel General Rustam Muradov for command failures leading to operational disaster in western Donetsk Oblast.[111]
Limited DNR elements, a GRU brigade, several volunteer battalions, and a BARS detachment are also operating near Vuhledar. The “Kaskad” operational-combat tactical formation, comprised of DNR internal ministry and law enforcement personnel, has claimed that it is active in the Vuhledar direction.[112] A Russian milblogger posted a picture purportedly of a fighter from the GRU’s 14th Separate Special Purpose Brigade near Vuhledar.[113] The “Hispaniola,” “Alga,” and “Steppe/Tigr” battalions and BARS-23 detachment are also fighting in the area.[114] The “Hispaniola” Battalion is notably comprised of Russian sports fans and reportedly has been coordinating with the DNR “Vostok” Battalion, a militant formation formed in 2014 under the command of Alexander Khodakovsky.[115] “Alga” Battalion volunteers reported that they were charged with desertion after trying to leave the Vuhledar area upon the completion of their contracts, and the Ukrainian General Staff similarly reported that the Russian command has “lost control” over the “Steppe/Tigr” detachment near Vuhledar.[116] These reports suggest that volunteer elements near Vuhledar are likely poorly disciplined and are therefore combat ineffective.
Observed elements:
Eastern Military District
o 29th Combined Arms Army [117]
§ 36th Separate Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade [118]
o 36th Combined Arms Army [119]
§ 37th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade [120]
§ 5th Separate Guards Tank Brigade [121]
o Pacific Fleet
§ 40th Naval Infantry Brigade [122]
§ 155th Naval Infantry Brigade [123]
o VDV
§ 98th VDV Division [124]
GRU
o 14th Separate Special Purpose Brigade [125]
DNR elements
o OBTF “Kaskad” [126]
Irregulars
o Volunteer battalions
§ “Hispaniola” sports fans [127]
§ “Alga” battalion [128]
§ “Steppe/Tigr” Cossack battalion [129]
o BARS elements
§ BARS-23 [130]
Zaporizhia Oblast
Russia has committed SMD elements and several irregular formations to defensive operations in western Zaporizhia axis. Russian sources claimed that elements of the 58th Combined Arms Army (CAA)’s 42nd Guards Motorized Rifle Division—specifically its 70th and 291st Motorized Rifle Regiments—repelled a series of Ukrainian reconnaissance-in-force operations in the Zaporizhia direction on March 19.[131] A Russian milblogger noted that elements of the 291st Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment, including its 2nd Battalion, repelled Ukrainian attacks near Robotyne, about 55km southeast of Zaporizhzhia City.[132] Geolocated footage posted on March 20 confirms that a 291st Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment tank moved through Robotyne towards the frontline.[133] Russian milbloggers claimed that elements of GRU’s 22nd Separate Guards Special Purpose Brigade also defended against Ukrainian attacks on this sector of the front alongside 58th CAA elements, likely also near Robotyne.[134] Ukraine’s Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) released an audio intercept on February 24 in which a Russian serviceman of the 19th Motorized Rifle Division’s 503rd Motorized Rifle Regiment says that his command ordered his unit to attack Shcherbaky, 33km southeast of Zaporizhzhia City.[135] Russian milbloggers have also highlighted the operations of the Black Sea Fleet’s 810th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade in the Zaporizhia direction.[136] One milblogger claimed that the 60th Motorized Rifle Brigade (EMD) is also active in this area.[137] However, the 60th Motorized Rifle Brigade became the 143rd Motor Rifle Regiment (127th Motorized Rifle Division, 5th CAA) in 2019, and it is unclear if the milblogger erroneously referred to the 143rd Motor Rifle Regiment as the 60th Brigade. The presence of EMD elements on this sector of the front is therefore low confidence.[138]
Numerous irregular formations are also present in Zaporizhia Oblast but are mainly engaged in defensive actions further in the rear. ISW has observed discussions about at least three volunteer battalions in the Zaporizhia direction. Zaporizhia Oblast occupation head Yevgeny Balitsky has notably formed his own “Sudoplatov” volunteer battalion, mainly comprised of foreign volunteers and individuals forcibly mobilized from occupied Zaporizhia Oblast.[139] The “Sudoplatov” battalion is active in Zaporizhia Oblast, but likely operating deeper in the rear. Russian sources have also claimed that the “Crimea” Battalion and the Ossetian “Storm” Battalion are active in the Zaporizhia direction.[140] Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov stated on April 2 that personnel of the Chechen “South-Akhmat” Battalion are using UAVs to conduct reconnaissance of Ukrainian positions in the Zaporizhia direction.[141] A Russian milblogger reportedly visited a Bashkort mobilized regiment conducting defensive preparations in Zaporizhia Oblast on March 14 and claimed that the regiment had already built 37km of trenches in the rear.[142]
Russian forces in western Zaporizhia Oblast are likely less exhausted and degraded than forces elsewhere on the front due to the largely defensive nature of operations on this front so far in 2023.
While limited SMD and GRU elements have reportedly seen some active combat, most Russian forces in Zaporizhia Oblast are preparing for defense in depth. These troops are predominantly comprised of mobilized recruits and volunteers and are therefore likely to face some problems with poor training and discipline. They have, however, had more time on whole to rest and reconstitute following Ukraine’s 2022 southern counteroffensive.
Observed elements
Southern Military District
o 58th Combined Arms Army
§ 42nd Guards Motorized Rifle Division
§ 70th Motorized Rifle Regiment [143]
§ 291st Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment [144]
§ 2nd Battalion[145]
§ 19th Motorized Rifle Division
§ 503rd Motorized Rifle Regiment [146]
o Black Sea Fleet
§ 810th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade [147]
Eastern Military District
o 5th Combined Arms Army
§ 127th Motorized Rifle Division
§ 143rd Motor Rifle Regiment (formerly the 60th Motorized Rifle Brigade)[148]
Spetsnaz GRU
o 22nd Separate Guards Special Purpose Brigade[149]
Irregulars
o Volunteer battalions
§ Yevgeny Balitsky’s “Sudoplatov” battalion [150]
§ “Crimea” battalion [151]
§ Ossetian “Storm” battalion [152]
o Random Wagner personnel[153]
o Chechen “Akhmat” forces [154]
Kherson axis
The Russian grouping in Kherson Oblast is likely the most disorganized and undermanned in the entire theater. Prior to the Russian withdrawal from the west (right) bank of Kherson Oblast on November 9-11, 2022, elements of the 76th and 106th VDV Divisions and 22nd Army Corps were committed to the area.[155] These elements have since been reconstituted and redeployed to other areas of the front. It is highly likely that the remaining grouping on the east (left) bank is mainly comprised of badly understrength remnants of mainly mobilized units. These elements have been removed from combat since the withdrawal in fall 2022, so they may be slightly fresher than elements elsewhere on the frontline. However, morale issues and poor training and discipline are likely common in this area, especially since more competent conventional elements are engaged elsewhere.
The information space in Kherson Oblast is notably very opaque, largely because this sector of the front has been mostly static since the Russian withdrawal from west bank Kherson in November 2022. The corps of military correspondents who report on frontline activities are elsewhere in Ukraine, so available information on the Russian grouping here is substantially limited. ISW has observed the presence of the 126th Coastal Defense Brigade of the Black Sea Fleet’s 22nd Army Corps near Velykyi Potemkin Island in the Dnipro River delta south of Kherson City.[156] Geolocated footage from February 18 additionally confirms that the 205th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade (49th Combined Arms Army, SMD) was operating in Nova Kakhovka.[157] Crimean occupation head Sergey Aksyonov’s 300-person Wagner Group-affiliated “Convoy” private military company is also reportedly operating somewhere in Kherson Oblast.[158] It appears that the SMD has general responsibility for the Kherson sector of the front, but is less engaged here than it is in western Zaporizhia Oblast. Russian troops in Kherson Oblast, as in western Zaporizhia, are likely relatively less exhausted than forces elsewhere in theater and instead are preparing for defense in depth. However, the Russian grouping in Kherson is evidently scattered and undermanned.
Observed elements:
Black Sea Fleet
o 22nd Army Corps
§ 126th Coastal Defense Brigade [159]
Southern Military District
o 49th Combined Arms Army
§ 205th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade [geolocated to Nova Kakhovka] [160]
Black Sea Fleet Naval Capabilities
The Russian military command may commit ships of the Russian Black Sea Fleet (BSF) to supporting Russian troops attempting to defend in southern Ukraine, especially as operations move toward the coast. The BSF is unlikely to make a material difference in ground operations, however. Ukrainian forces have damaged all three Admiral Grigorovich-class BSF frigates: “Admiral Grigorovich, “Admiral Essen,” and “Admiral Makarov,” and the immediate status of the “Essen” and “Grigorivich” is unclear.[161] Satellite imagery from February 10, 2023, may suggest that the “Grigorovich” sailed to Sevastopol.[162] Krivak-class patrol ships “Ladnyi” and “Pytlivyi” have been participating in exercises in the Black Sea in 2023.[163] The BSF’s 197th Assault Ship Brigade is comprised of two Alligator-class, three Ropucha-I, and one Ropucha-II landing ships, all of which have been reported as active as of summer 2022.[164] These landing ships are the most relevant asset in terms of direct strike capabilities because they carry ground attack missile systems. The BSF also has an assortment of corvettes, minesweepers, antisubmarine ships, missile boats and landing ships in the Black Sea. These ships are unlikely to provide Russia a substantial defensive edge against any future Ukrainian counteroffensives into southern Ukraine, however, as they would likely need to move close enough to the coastline that they would make themselves attractive targets. Russian ships are primarily focused on anti-air, anti-ship, and anti-submarine missions, moreover, and generally do not carry many munitions appropriate for defending against mechanized counter-offensive operations.
The Russian obsession with continuing small-scale tactical offensive operations past the point of operational culmination has left Russian forces ill-prepared to respond to a large-scale mechanized counter-offensive. Russian forces have been prioritizing small-scale frontal assaults in order to make incremental tactical gains and reinforce small-scale tactical successes on limited areas of the front. These small-scale attacks do not require particularly involved command and control capabilities as local commanders can likely choose particular units or groups of individuals for attacks at times and places of their choosing and then focus their attention on those localized operations. Defensive maneuvers against a large-scale counter-offensive are much more complicated and will require involved and careful exercise of command and control over large units and large areas. Attacking Ukrainian forces will determine the times and places at which fighting occurs and will likely press across much wider areas than the attack sectors Russian commanders have typically focused on. Russian commanders will likely have to rely on all their units and sub-units fighting, not a chosen few, and will likely have to coordinate the defensive operations of all their units at the same time, rather than concentrating on a sector of their choice. The experience of combat that most Russian tactical and even operational commanders have is thus unlikely to prepare them well for the challenges they are likely to face.
The majority of the Russian units in important sectors of the front have been filled out with mobilized servicemen who were called up following Ukraine’s successful Kherson and Kharkiv Oblast counteroffensives and have not had experience defending against or withdrawing from a mechanized, multi-brigade advance, moreover. They are unlikely to be emotionally or intellectually prepared to respond to such an assault regardless of combat experience they have gained in the offensive operations of which they have hitherto been part. Sound defense and retrograded withdrawal will also likely be complicated by pervasive and endemic issues with morale and discipline of Russian forces. ISW has reported on many previous instances of servicemen in different areas of the front complaining about conditions within their units, abuse at the hands of commanders, dismissive command attitudes towards casualties, and desertion.[165] These factors are detrimental to unit cohesion and will likely further degrade overall Russian defensive capabilities.
The array of Russian fortifications throughout the theater is indicative of the defensive maneuvers Russian forces may have prepared to conduct. Russian forces have constructed a hard line of fortifications along the Kharkiv-Luhansk Oblast line at a distance of between 5 and 20 kilometers behind the front line with the bulk of Russian combat power deployed forward of its fortification lines all along the front. This array suggests that Russian forces intend to withdraw from the frontline to the fortification line and defend there in case of a Ukrainian breakthrough. Similarly, the lines of fortifications in the Bakhmut and Donetsk City area are 5 to 20 kilometers behind the current line of contact, in principle leaving Russian forces space to withdraw through a buffer zone and man a system of defenses behind the line. Defensive lines in southern Ukraine, however, look very different. Russian forces in southern Ukraine have ostensibly prepared for defense in depth, with multiple lines of fortifications that go further into the rear. These defensive lines are mostly likely not all heavily manned—Russian forces simply do not have the personnel to properly man fortifications in areas far removed from the frontline at force densities sufficient to withstand a determined mechanized attack. Successful Russian defense in depth will likely require that Russian forces instead coordinate multiple retrograde maneuvers to fall back on each subsequent line of defense, which will require a high level of motivation and discipline among troops and sound command and control to oversee the complex and dangerous operation. Russian forces also suffer from significantly degraded mechanized maneuver capabilities and would likely be retrograding to secondary defensive lines largely by foot in the face of any potential mechanized Ukrainian counteroffensive push.
The current Russian ORBAT in Ukraine suggests that there are very few Russian units that are not actively online in the theater and emphasizes the widespread losses that Russian conventional elements have suffered throughout the war so far. The Russian military has 12 combined arms armies. ISW has observed reports of elements of all but two armies in operations so far in 2023—the EMD’s 35th CAA and the CMD’s 2nd CAA. Russian milbloggers reported that the 35th CAA was essentially completely destroyed by Ukrainian forces near Izyum in June 2022, and remnants of the 35th CAA reportedly deployed to west (right) bank Kherson Oblast to defend against Ukrainian counteroffensives in the summer of 2022.[166] It is therefore likely that remnants of the 35th CAA are scattered throughout southern Ukraine (particularly in rear Kherson Oblast and around critical areas in rear Zaporizhia Oblast) or even elsewhere in the theater and have likely been deployed in formations that are neither doctrinal nor at effective combat capability. The 2nd CAA has likely suffered losses similar to those of the 35th CAA. Ukrainian sources reported in April 2022 that elements of the 2nd CAA redeployed to Russia following the Russian withdrawal from Kyiv Oblast.[167] Elements of the 2nd CAA thereafter deployed in more piecemeal formations to the Izyum area in Kharkiv Oblast and likely suffered substantial losses during Ukraine’s autumn 20222 Kharkiv Oblast counteroffensive and around Lyman, Donetsk Oblast, in early October.[168] The Russian MoD’s daily situation reports mention CMD formations in the Lyman direction, which may mean that elements of the 2nd CAA and other CMD units are operating in this area but are so understrength that they cannot be counted as formal elements.
The pattern of Russian deployments throughout Ukraine strongly suggests that most of the available maneuver elements of all military districts, as well as major surviving Airborne forces, are already committed to either active offensive or defensive operations in Ukraine. Russia will need to commit significant reserves to any discrete axis in order to conduct effective offensive operations, and the generally exhausted condition of troops and the apparently disorganized and fragmented deployment pattern in some areas will likely pose significant obstacles to Russia’s prospects for defending critical sectors of the frontline.
Key inflections in ongoing military operations on April 23:
Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed that he ordered Wagner Group personnel not to capture Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) but instead only kill Ukrainian personnel on the battlefield.[169]
The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces did not conduct offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on April 23.[170] Ukrainian Severodonetsk Raion Administration Head Roman Vlasenko reported that Russian forces are building fortifications around Severdonetsk and other large cities in Luhansk Oblast.[171]
The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian servicemen and Wagner personnel engaged in a shootout in Stanytsia Luhanska, Luhansk Oblast following a dispute about responsibility for tactical miscalculations and losses.[172]
Russian forces continue to conduct ground attacks in and around Bakhmut and along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City front.[173] Ukrainian Joint Press Center of the Tavriisk Defense Forces Spokesperson Colonel Oleksiy Dmytrashkivskyi reported on April 23 that Russian forces concentrated most of their efforts in the Avdiivka direction and conducted 28 assaults in the Donetsk direction.[174]
Geolocated footage published on April 23 indicates that Ukrainian forces are operating in areas northwest of Oleshky on the east (left) bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast.[175] Kherson Oblast Occupation Administration Head Vladimir Saldo denied that Ukrainian forces have established a bridgehead on the east (left) bank as of April 23.[176]
The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on April 23 that Russian forces are planning to mobilize migrants from Central Asia by threating to deport migrants and revoke their Russian citizenship if they do not fight in the war.[177]
Ukrainian Kherson Oblast Administration Advisor Serhiy Khlan stated on April 22 that Wagner Group fighters are helping Russian occupation officials assert control over the civilian population on the east (left) bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast.[178]
A Belarusian military news outlet claimed that Belarusian forces plan to deploy Russian tactical nuclear weapons to bases where mobile launch complexes were previously located before the withdrawal of nuclear weapons from Belarus from 1993 to 1996.[179]
[1] https://t.me/mod_russia/25226; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-19-2023
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2023/01/28/beaten-twice-in-ukraine-russias-elite-1st-guards-tank-army-is-poised-to-attack-yet-again/?sh=f8d8ab310551; https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-tank-force-repeatedly-beaten-appears-ready-for-another-try-2023-2; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-19-2023
[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/09/13/a-hundred-wrecked-tanks-in-a-hundred-deadly-hours-heavy-losses-gut-russias-best-tank-army/?sh=7924f05127a3
[4] https://twitter.com/GeoConfirmed/status/1628437457199833092?s=20; https://t.me/obtf_kaskad/1736
[5] https://isw.pub/UkrWar031523; https://isw.pub/UkrWar021923
[6] https://t.me/mod_russia/25226; https://tass dot ru/proisshestviya/17312897
[7] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-19-2023
[8] https://tass dot ru/proisshestviya/17312897; https://t.me/mod_russia/24829; https://t.me/mod_russia/24826; https://t.me/readovkanews/54717; https://twitter.com/GeoConfirmed/status/1628437457199833092?s=20; https://t.me/obtf_kaskad/1736
[9] https://t.me/boris_rozhin/81332
[10] https://t.me/vysokygovorit/10907; https://t.me/anna_news/46975; https://t.me/sashakots/38674; https://t.me/vysokygovorit/10843; https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1627788702905778178; https://orel-adm dot ru/ru/rss/?ELEMENT_ID=78374; https://t.me/rybar/43228; https://t.me/anna_news/46036 ; https://t.me/vysokygovorit/10526; https://t.me/vysokygovorit/10668; https://t.me/vysokygovorit/10684; https://t.me/wargonzo/10658 ; https://t.me/wargonzo/10667; https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19758; https://t.me/anna_news/47150; https://t.me/sashakots/38842; https://t.me/anna_news/47150 ; https://t.me/vysokygovorit/10864; https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/22653; https://t.me/notes_veterans/7312; https://t.me/readovkanews/54874
[11] https://twitter.com/HKaaman/status/1628799468840648704?s=20; https://twitter.com/EjShahid/status/1628812241792368646; https://twitter.com/HKaaman/status/1628435340758339584?s=20
[12] https://t.me/harry_homolsky/3185
[13] https://t.me/mod_russia/25761; https://t.me/mod_russia/25760; https://t.me/mod_russia/25721; https://t.me/mod_russia/25693
[14] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-1
[15] https://isw.pub/UkrWar041823
[16] https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1627440354914975747?s=20; https://t.me/milinfolive/97153; https://t.me/DKulko/234; https://t.me/wargonzo/11222; https://t.me/milinfolive/97370; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/81405; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/81160; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/80174
[17] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-april-3-2023; https://t.me/mod_russia/25340; https://t.me/rian_ru/198717; https://t.me/readovkanews/56045
[18] https://twitter.com/auditor_ya/status/1642866101309566982
[19] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-april-3-2023
[20] https://t.me/kremlinprachka/23767; https://t.me/kommunist/16723; https://t.me/kremlinprachka/23731
[21] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-april-20-2023
[22] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-april-20-2023
[23] https://t.me/sons_fatherland/10315; https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/20118; https://t.me/stepnoy_veter/732; https://t.me/sons_fatherland/10224; https://t.me/RKadyrov_95/3397; https://vk.com/wall-167477743_1106; https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1635025017451978754?s=20; https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1631626650226925569; https://t.me/adirect/15199’; https://t.me/RKadyrov_95/3366; https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/22487 ; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/81144; https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/20371 ; https://t.me/readovkanews/55916; https://t.me/rusmirBars13/356; https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1631906505594228737?s=20 ; https://t.me/wargonzo/10971; https://t.me/basurin_e/135 ; https://t.me/HersonVestnik/14646; https://t.me/DV_Sablin/1587; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/81030; https://t.me/RKadyrov_95/3459; https://t.me/AkhmatsilaVZ/1534; https://t.me/RKadyrov_95/3366; https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/22487; https://t.me/sashakots/38933; https://t.me/rostovdonbass/5916; https://t.me/evgeniy_lisitsyn/2442
[24] https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/20371 ; https://t.me/readovkanews/55916; https://t.me/rusmirBars13/356; https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1631906505594228737?s=20 ; https://t.me/wargonzo/10971; https://t.me/basurin_e/135 ; https://t.me/HersonVestnik/14646; https://t.me/DV_Sablin/1587; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/81030; https://t.me/RKadyrov_95/3459; https://t.me/AkhmatsilaVZ/1534; https://t.me/RKadyrov_95/3366; https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/22487; https://t.me/sons_fatherland/10315; https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/20118; https://t.me/stepnoy_veter/732; https://t.me/sons_fatherland/10224; https://t.me/RKadyrov_95/3397; https://t.me/RKadyrov_95/3366; https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/22487 ; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/81144; https://vk.com/wall-167477743_1106; https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1635025017451978754?s=20; https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1631626650226925569; https://t.me/adirect/15199
[25] https://t.me/kremlinprachka/23767; https://t.me/kommunist/16723
[26] https://t.me/kremlinprachka/23731
[27] https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1627440354914975747?s=20; https://t.me/milinfolive/97153; https://t.me/DKulko/234
[28] https://t.me/wargonzo/11222; https://t.me/milinfolive/97370
[29] https://t.me/boris_rozhin/81405; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/81160; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/80174
[30] https://t.me/vysokygovorit/10907; https://t.me/anna_news/46975
[31] https://t.me/sashakots/38674; https://t.me/vysokygovorit/10843; https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1627788702905778178; https://orel-adm dot ru/ru/rss/?ELEMENT_ID=78374
[32] https://t.me/rybar/43228; https://t.me/anna_news/46036 ; https://t.me/vysokygovorit/10526; https://t.me/vysokygovorit/10668
[33] https://t.me/vysokygovorit/10684; https://t.me/wargonzo/10658 ; https://t.me/wargonzo/10667
[34] https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19758; https://t.me/anna_news/47150; https://t.me/sashakots/38842; https://t.me/anna_news/47150 ; https://t.me/vysokygovorit/10864; https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/22653
[35] https://t.me/notes_veterans/7312
[36] https://t.me/readovkanews/54874
[37] https://twitter.com/HKaaman/status/1628799468840648704?s=20; https://twitter.com/EjShahid/status/1628812241792368646; https://twitter.com/HKaaman/status/1628435340758339584?s=20
[38] https://t.me/harry_homolsky/3185
[39] https://t.me/sons_fatherland/10315; https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/20118; https://t.me/stepnoy_veter/732; https://t.me/sons_fatherland/10224; https://t.me/RKadyrov_95/3397
[40] https://vk.com/wall-167477743_1106; https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1635025017451978754?s=20; https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1631626650226925569; https://t.me/adirect/15199
[41] https://t.me/RKadyrov_95/3366; https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/22487 ; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/81144
[42] https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/20371 ; https://t.me/readovkanews/55916; https://t.me/rusmirBars13/356; https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1631906505594228737?s=20 ; https://t.me/wargonzo/10971
[43] https://t.me/basurin_e/135 ; https://t.me/HersonVestnik/14646; https://t.me/DV_Sablin/1587
[44] https://t.me/boris_rozhin/81030; https://t.me/RKadyrov_95/3459; https://t.me/AkhmatsilaVZ/1534; https://t.me/RKadyrov_95/3366; https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/22487
[45] https://t.me/sashakots/38933; https://t.me/rostovdonbass/5916; https://t.me/evgeniy_lisitsyn/2442
[46] https://t.me/epoddubny/15538
[47] https://isw.pub/UkrWar041623; https://isw.pub/UkrWar031523
[48]https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0WHsQz1Z31Zyh6oyNSe95CdwyLrabYRTHMnFa7EmtG23cfLeDEC5gWWduYD2LgJq7l
[49] https://t.me/svolistan/374
[50] https://t.me/grey_zone/17487
[51] https://t.me/epoddubny/15538; https://www.kp dot ru/daily/27490.5/4749268/; https://t.me/sashakots/39341
[52]https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0WHsQz1Z31Zyh6oyNSe95CdwyLrabYRTHMnFa7EmtG23cfLeDEC5gWWduYD2LgJq7l
[53] https://t.me/svolistan/374
[54] https://ria dot ru/20221231/korpusa-1842655719.html
[55] https://t.me/Baikal_People/2025; https://t.me/Baikal_People/2029; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-20-2023; https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-8-2023; https://t.me/ostorozhno_novosti/14167;
[56] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-20-2023; https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-8-2023
[57] https://t.me/nm_dnr/10112; https://t.me/akashevarova/6223 ; https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/46251; https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/45912 ; https://t.me/milinfolive/97771; https://t.me/wargonzo/11106; https://t.me/kommunist/16836; https://t.me/nm_dnr/10133; https://t.me/nm_dnr/10108; https://t.me/nm_dnr/10070; https://t.me/BPLAROSTOV/69; https://twitter.com/AmamNgc/status/1638141465976078336?s=20; https://twitter.com/AmamNgc/status/1638141471420186624?s=20; https://t.me/milchronicles/1718; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/81656; https://t.me/voenacher/41743; https://t.me/nm_dnr/10045; https://t.me/nm_dnr/10009 ; https://t.me/nm_dnr/9949; https://t.me/nm_dnr/10052; https://t.me/voenacher/41743; https://t.me/nm_dnr/10045; https://t.me/nm_dnr/10031; https://iz dot ru/1485576/dmitrii-astrakhan/udarili-po-shtabu-tiazhelym-snariadom-i-razbili-ego; https://t.me/wargonzo/11274; https://t.me/basurin_e/316; https://t.me/wargonzo/11573; https://t.me/rybar/44992; https://t.me/rybar/44993; https://t.me/rybar/44990; https://t.me/rybar/44986; https://t.me/basurin_e/316; https://t.me/nm_dnr/9994; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/80190; https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19877; https://t.me/nm_dnr/9994; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/80190; https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19877; https://t.me/pushilindenis/3287; https://t.me/nm_dnr/10071; https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19795; https://t.me/rt_special/3138; https://t.me/wargonzo/11106
[58] https://t.me/wargonzo/11059; https://t.me/astrahandm/7919; https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/23821; https://t.me/kommunist/16602; https://interfax dot ru/russia/891708; https://suspilne dot media/425655-rosia-budue-aderne-shovise-u-bilorusi-minoboroni-ukraini-zaklikalo-do-informacijnoi-tisi-396-den-vijni-onlajn/; https://suspilne dot media/425853-aktivizuvalisa-v-napramku-avdiivki-rosijski-vijskovi-315-raziv-strilali-po-doneckomu-napramku-dmitraskivskij/
[59] https://t.me/TrenerDiaries/3129; https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1632387928356708354; https://suspilne dot media/425655-rosia-budue-aderne-shovise-u-bilorusi-minoboroni-ukraini-zaklikalo-do-informacijnoi-tisi-396-den-vijni-onlajn/; https://suspilne dot media/425853-aktivizuvalisa-v-napramku-avdiivki-rosijski-vijskovi-315-raziv-strilali-po-doneckomu-napramku-dmitraskivskij/; https://t.me/nm_dnr/10131 ; https://t.me/grey_zone/18024; https://t.me/nm_dnr/10113 ; https://twitter.com/EjShahid/status/1641902295737593857?s=20; https://t.me/nm_dnr/10114; https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/20373; https://t.me/nm_dnr/10048; https://t.me/epoddubny/15262; https://t.me/nm_dnr/10118
[60] https://t.me/nm_dnr/10101; https://t.me/MishaDonbass/511; https://t.me/nm_dnr/9942 ; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/78954; https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19759; https://t.me/readovkanews/54373; https://t.me/rybar/43903
[61] https://t.me/astrapress/22324
[62] https://t.me/sashakots/38980; https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/23522
[63] https://suspilne dot media/433569-na-doneckomu-napramku-zavilisa-specpriznacenci-dmitraskivskij/; https://armyinform dot com.ua/2023/04/03/na-donechchyni-nam-vdalosya-pokrashhyty-svoye-taktychne-polozhennya-oleksij-dmytrashkivskyj/
[64] https://www.newsko dot ru/news/nk-7631351.html; https://t.me/milinfolive/98462; https://t.me/DRO_Wolves/666; https://t.me/notes_veterans/8645; https://t.me/interbrigady2022/1681; https://t.me/izvestia/123474; https://t.me/astrahandm/7526 ; https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/22863
[65] https://suspilne dot media/404327-stvorenna-centru-z-rozsliduvanna-zlociniv-rf-u-gaazi-dodatkovi-tanki-vid-britanii-375-den-vijni-onlajn/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUTHgecoEnM
[66] https://isw.pub/UkrWar040723
[67] https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832673872363520?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832675596156928?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832676988735490?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832678247018497?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832679526281218?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832680893624320?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832682877526016?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832684366426112?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832685842841602?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832688107835393?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832689366016000?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832690880151552?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832692264271872?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832693627449344?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832695485612033?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832696785739778?s=20
[68] https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832673872363520?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832675596156928?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832676988735490?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832678247018497?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832679526281218?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832680893624320?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832682877526016?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832684366426112?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832685842841602?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832688107835393?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832689366016000?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832690880151552?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832692264271872?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832693627449344?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832695485612033?s=20;%C2%A0https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1643832696785739778?s=20
[69] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-april-6-2023
[70] https://t.me/nm_dnr/10112; https://t.me/akashevarova/6223 ; https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/46251; https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/45912 ; https://t.me/milinfolive/97771
[71] https://t.me/news_sirena/12268
[72] https://t.me/Baikal_People/2029; https://t.me/Baikal_People/2025
[73] https://t.me/wargonzo/11106
[74] https://t.me/kommunist/16836; https://t.me/nm_dnr/10133; https://t.me/nm_dnr/10108; https://t.me/nm_dnr/10070; https://t.me/BPLAROSTOV/69; https://twitter.com/AmamNgc/status/1638141465976078336?s=20; https://twitter.com/AmamNgc/status/1638141471420186624?s=20
[75] https://t.me/nm_dnr/10053
[76] https://t.me/milchronicles/1718; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/81656; https://t.me/voenacher/41743; https://t.me/nm_dnr/10045; https://t.me/nm_dnr/10009 ; https://t.me/nm_dnr/9949
[77] https://t.me/nm_dnr/10052; https://t.me/voenacher/41743; https://t.me/nm_dnr/10045; https://t.me/nm_dnr/10031; https://iz dot ru/1485576/dmitrii-astrakhan/udarili-po-shtabu-tiazhelym-snariadom-i-razbili-ego
[78] https://t.me/wargonzo/11274
[79] https://t.me/ButusovPlus/2401; https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1636481005828677632?s=20
[80] https://twitter.com/EjShahid/status/1638250997200875552?s=20; https://t.me/ttambyl/2313
[81] https://t.me/basurin_e/316; https://t.me/wargonzo/11573; https://t.me/rybar/44992; https://t.me/rybar/44993; https://t.me/rybar/44990; https://t.me/rybar/44986; https://t.me/basurin_e/316; https://t.me/nm_dnr/9994; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/80190; https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19877; https://t.me/nm_dnr/9994; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/80190; https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19877
[82] https://t.me/TrenerDiaries/3129; https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1632387928356708354
[83] https://suspilne dot media/425655-rosia-budue-aderne-shovise-u-bilorusi-minoboroni-ukraini-zaklikalo-do-informacijnoi-tisi-396-den-vijni-onlajn/; https://suspilne dot media/425853-aktivizuvalisa-v-napramku-avdiivki-rosijski-vijskovi-315-raziv-strilali-po-doneckomu-napramku-dmitraskivskij/
[84] https://t.me/pushilindenis/3287; https://t.me/nm_dnr/10071; https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19795; https://t.me/rt_special/3138; https://t.me/wargonzo/11106
[85] https://t.me/nm_dnr/10131 ; https://t.me/grey_zone/18024; https://t.me/nm_dnr/10113 ; https://twitter.com/EjShahid/status/1641902295737593857?s=20; https://t.me/nm_dnr/10114; https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/20373
[86] https://t.me/nm_dnr/10048; https://t.me/epoddubny/15262
[87] https://t.me/nm_dnr/10118
[88] https://t.me/wargonzo/11683; https://t.me/wargonzo/11679; https://t.me/pushilindenis/3287
[89] https://t.me/pushilindenis/3287
[90] https://t.me/wargonzo/11059
[91] https://t.me/astrahandm/7919; https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/23821; https://t.me/kommunist/16602
[92] https://interfax dot ru/russia/891708
[93] https://t.me/nm_dnr/10101; https://t.me/MishaDonbass/511; https://t.me/nm_dnr/9942 ; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/78954
[94] . https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19759
[95] https://t.me/readovkanews/54373
[96] https://t.me/rybar/43903
[97] https://t.me/astrapress/22324; https://notes.citeam.org/mobilization-mar-4-5
[98] https://suspilne dot media/433569-na-doneckomu-napramku-zavilisa-specpriznacenci-dmitraskivskij/; https://armyinform dot com.ua/2023/04/03/na-donechchyni-nam-vdalosya-pokrashhyty-svoye-taktychne-polozhennya-oleksij-dmytrashkivskyj/; https://armyinform.com dot ua/2023/03/27/na-napryamku-avdiyivka-maryinka-dvi-brygady-rf-zaznaly-velykyh-vtrat/; https://suspilne dot media/425655-rosia-budue-aderne-shovise-u-bilorusi-minoboroni-ukraini-zaklikalo-do-informacijnoi-tisi-396-den-vijni-onlajn/; https://suspilne dot media/425853-aktivizuvalisa-v-napramku-avdiivki-rosijski-vijskovi-315-raziv-strilali-po-doneckomu-napramku-dmitraskivskij/; https://t.me/sashakots/38980; https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/23522; https://suspilne dot media/404327-stvorenna-centru-z-rozsliduvanna-zlociniv-rf-u-gaazi-dodatkovi-tanki-vid-britanii-375-den-vijni-onlajn/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUTHgecoEnM
[99] https://armyinform.com dot ua/2023/03/27/na-napryamku-avdiyivka-maryinka-dvi-brygady-rf-zaznaly-velykyh-vtrat/
[100] https://www.newsko dot ru/news/nk-7631351.html
[101] https://t.me/milinfolive/98462; https://t.me/DRO_Wolves/666; https://t.me/notes_veterans/8645; https://t.me/interbrigady2022/1681
[102] https://t.me/izvestia/123474; https://t.me/astrahandm/7526 ; https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/22863
[103] https://suspilne dot media/404327-stvorenna-centru-z-rozsliduvanna-zlociniv-rf-u-gaazi-dodatkovi-tanki-vid-britanii-375-den-vijni-onlajn/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUTHgecoEnM
[104] https://t.me/boris_rozhin/79866; https://t.me/voin_dv/1779; https://twitter.com/fdov21/status/1628514167085838336?s=20; https://t.me/milinfolive/97586; https://t.me/supernova_plus/17896; https://twitter.com/auditor_ya/status/1630153826530390017?s=20; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02j2nQhZuoFMhtiNCqVDzX2oebTEKf4i91FgM3mHwmdJGp81qgR1p4KdH7Ra2fCqRVl
[105] https://t.me/mograinews/3831;https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1639006265941827592?s=20
[106] https://t.me/voin_dv/1779; https://twitter.com/fdov21/status/1628514167085838336?s=20
[107]https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02rSsCgHkAPqRixo3xVknEaeYEh4vRoFE2HwDTP5jrTCZM27hKTSxyrnDYVTVEa83xl ; https://vk.com/wall752314036_39; https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1635652170388307968?s=20; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/79399; https://t.me/zhivoff/8311; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/80465 ; https://t.me/garmaev_alexander/2863; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/79399; https://t.me/zhivoff/8311; https://t.me/grey_zone/17447; https://t.me/garmaev_alexander/2649
[108] https://t.me/milinfolive/97586; ttps://t.me/supernova_plus/17896; https://twitter.com/auditor_ya/status/1630153826530390017?s=20; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02j2nQhZuoFMhtiNCqVDzX2oebTEKf4i91FgM3mHwmdJGp81qgR1p4KdH7Ra2fCqRVl
[109] https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-may-have-lost-an-entire-elite-brigade-near-a-coal-mining-town-in-donbas-ukraine-says/
[110] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2023/03/19/pid-avdiyivkoyu-j-maryinkoyu-vorog-vysnazhenyj-ta-zaznaye-serjoznyh-vtrat-oleksij-dmytrashkivskyj/
[111] https://t.me/milinfolive/98547; https://t.me/operativnoZSU/87589; https://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/Russian%20Offensive%20Campaign%20Assessment%2C%20March%2028%2C%202023%20PDF.pdf
[112] ttps://t.me/RtrDonetsk/15950; https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/23469; https://t.me/obtf_kaskad/2007; https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/23468; https://t.me/obtf_kaskad/1898; https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/23097; https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19817; https://t.me/obtf_kaskad/1867
[113] https://t.me/kommunist/16651
[114] https://t.me/spainrus/648; https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/23565; https://t.me/istories_media/2259; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02Sd8dbuKmYrpZvdQoxyXoTygu1SvkGV9HLVDGFjGJn1MJGQ6Lyc5Uidds44Eqs1kLl; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/79377
[115] https://t.me/spainrus/648
[116] https://t.me/istories_media/2259; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02Sd8dbuKmYrpZvdQoxyXoTygu1SvkGV9HLVDGFjGJn1MJGQ6Lyc5Uidds44Eqs1kLl
[117] https://t.me/boris_rozhin/79866
[118]https://t.me/mograinews/3831;https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1639006265941827592?s=20
[119] https://t.me/voin_dv/1779; https://twitter.com/fdov21/status/1628514167085838336?s=20
[120] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02rSsCgHkAPqRixo3xVknEaeYEh4vRoFE2HwDTP5jrTCZM27hKTSxyrnDYVTVEa83xl ; https://vk.com/wall752314036_39; https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1635652170388307968?s=20; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/79399; https://t.me/zhivoff/8311
[121] https://t.me/boris_rozhin/80465 ; https://t.me/garmaev_alexander/2863; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/79399; https://t.me/zhivoff/8311; https://t.me/grey_zone/17447; https://t.me/garmaev_alexander/2649
[122] https://t.me/milinfolive/97586
[123] https://t.me/supernova_plus/17896; https://twitter.com/auditor_ya/status/1630153826530390017?s=20; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02j2nQhZuoFMhtiNCqVDzX2oebTEKf4i91FgM3mHwmdJGp81qgR1p4KdH7Ra2fCqRVl
[124] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2023/03/19/pid-avdiyivkoyu-j-maryinkoyu-vorog-vysnazhenyj-ta-zaznaye-serjoznyh-vtrat-oleksij-dmytrashkivskyj/
[125] https://t.me/kommunist/16651
[126] https://t.me/RtrDonetsk/15950; https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/23469; https://t.me/obtf_kaskad/2007; https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/23468; https://t.me/obtf_kaskad/1898; https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/23097; https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19817; https://t.me/obtf_kaskad/1867
[127] https://t.me/spainrus/648; https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/23565
[128] https://t.me/istories_media/2259
[129] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02Sd8dbuKmYrpZvdQoxyXoTygu1SvkGV9HLVDGFjGJn1MJGQ6Lyc5Uidds44Eqs1kLl
[130] https://t.me/boris_rozhin/79377
[131] https://t.me/readovkanews/53822; https://t.me/rybar/44807; https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19802; https://t.me/voinabogovz/392; https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19760
[132] https://t.me/rybar/44807; https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19802; https://t.me/voinabogovz/392; https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19760
[133] https://t.me/i_see_you_8/272; https://twitter.com/Goochslap/status/1637878108190547969?s=20; https://twitter.com/PauliusZaleckas/status/1638134749788004354?s=20; https://twitter.com/PauliusZaleckas/status/1638137489008279552?s=20; https://twitter.com/JonHallin/status/1638167239286300673?s=20; https://twitter.com/PauliusZaleckas/status/1638167134957195264?s=20
[134] https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/20080
[135] https://gur dot gov.ua/content/vrode-dolzhno-byt-u-nas-nastuplenye-a-dolbiat-po-nam.html
[136] https://t.me/milinfolive/97935; https://t.me/milinfolive/97950
[137] https://t.me/readovkanews/56830
[138] https://gfsis.org.ge/maps/russian-military-forces
[139] https://t.me/vrogov/8030; https://tass dot ru/politika/17215631; https://tass dot ru/politika/17202615
[140] https://t.me/Sladkov_plus/7392; https://t.me/milchronicles/1763; https://t.me/evgeniy_lisitsyn/2500; https://t.me/epoddubny/15243
[141] https://t.me/RKadyrov_95/3490
[142] https://t.me/Sladkov_plus/7332
[143] https://t.me/readovkanews/53822
[144] https://t.me/i_see_you_8/272; https://twitter.com/Goochslap/status/1637878108190547969?s=20; https://twitter.com/PauliusZaleckas/status/1638134749788004354?s=20; https://twitter.com/PauliusZaleckas/status/1638137489008279552?s=20; https://twitter.com/JonHallin/status/1638167239286300673?s=20; https://twitter.com/PauliusZaleckas/status/1638167134957195264?s=20; https://t.me/rybar/44807; https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19802; https://t.me/voinabogovz/392; https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/19760
[145] https://t.me/RtrDonetsk/16105; https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/23638
[146] https://gur dot gov.ua/content/vrode-dolzhno-byt-u-nas-nastuplenye-a-dolbiat-po-nam.html
[147] https://t.me/milinfolive/97935; https://t.me/milinfolive/97950
[148] https://t.me/readovkanews/56830
[149] https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/20080
[150] https://t.me/vrogov/8030; https://tass dot ru/politika/17215631; https://tass dot ru/politika/17202615
[151] https://t.me/Sladkov_plus/7392; https://t.me/milchronicles/1763
[152] https://t.me/evgeniy_lisitsyn/2500; https://t.me/epoddubny/15243
[153] https://t.me/ivan_fedorov_melitopol/1388
[154] https://t.me/RKadyrov_95/3490
[155] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-august-14; https://isw.pub/UkrWar110922
[156] https://t.me/voenacher/41268; https://t.me/dva_majors/10405; https://t.me/kommunist/16225
[157] https://t.me/boris_rozhin/78454; https://twitter.com/EjShahid/status/1627036526008848384?s=20; https://twitter.com/EjShahid/status/1627037183436636162?s=20
[158] https://isw.pub/UkrWar032423
[159] https://t.me/voenacher/41268; https://t.me/dva_majors/10405; https://t.me/kommunist/16225
[160] https://t.me/boris_rozhin/78454; https://twitter.com/EjShahid/status/1627036526008848384?s=20; https://twitter.com/EjShahid/status/1627037183436636162?s=20
[161] https://war.obozrevatel. Dot om/ot-mechtyi-o-zahvate-ukrainyi-do-trebovanij-garantij-bezopasnosti-na-more-kak-chernomorskij-flot-rf-poteryal-svoyu-mosch.htm; https://focus dot ua/voennye-novosti/511271-vsu-nanesli-udar-po-rossiyskomu-fregatu-admiral-essen-smi; https://uc dot od.ua/news/war/1244383; https://ru.krymr.com/a/news-sevastopol-chernoye-more/31859755.html; https://www.unian dot net/war/povrezhdenie-fregata-admiral-makarov-poyavilis-sputnikovye-snimki-sudna-rf-v-portu-sevastopolya-12032400.html
[162] https://twitter.com/CovertShores/status/1624146382058622987
[163] https://sevastopol dot su/news/storozhevoy-korabl-ladnyy-v-chernom-more-otrabotal-primenenie-reb; https://flot dot com/2023/%D0%A7%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9%D0%A4%D0%BB%D0%BE%D1%823/
[164] https://tass dot com/defense/1459969; https://tass dot com/defense/1279759
[165] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-april-16-2023; https://t.me/Baikal_People/2025; https://t.me/Baikal_People/2029; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-20-2023; https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-8-2023; https://t.me/ostorozhno_novosti/14167;
[166] https://kenigtiger.livejournal.com/?utm_medium=endless_scroll; https://t.me/strelkovii/2640; https://twitter.com/GirkinGirkin/status/1532585152186130433/photo/1
[167] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/286533730326379 ; facebook.com/koda.gov.ua/posts/285160917126266
[168] https://tsn dot ua/ru/video/video-novini/vsu-unichtozhili-dva-komandnyh-punkta-okkupantov-pod-izyumom.html; https://kp dot ua/incidents/a648776-pod-izjumom-vsu-unichtozhili-henerala-nachalnika-shtaba-vdv-rossii; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA9XVJ4lv1g;
[169] https://t.me/concordgroup_official/831
[170]https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0NvLxNmEnT5P5eNBssoobkH2EBdLwrEd2sbq5JyDBAn9c8TuAsRbSTFBaL6szr9Qnl; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02oZuPpTpVNvLThHEpUktkRaaKH3m1CmCf2MTh8VRLJEHe1EWfPxH5nATHQ8wepuKpl
[171] https://t.me/luhanskaVTSA/10019
[172]https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0NvLxNmEnT5P5eNBssoobkH2EBdLwrEd2sbq5JyDBAn9c8TuAsRbSTFBaL6szr9Qnl
[173]https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0NvLxNmEnT5P5eNBssoobkH2EBdLwrEd2sbq5JyDBAn9c8TuAsRbSTFBaL6szr9Qnl; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02oZuPpTpVNvLThHEpUktkRaaKH3m1CmCf2MTh8VRLJEHe1EWfPxH5nATHQ8wepuKpl; https://www.facebook.com/DPSUkraine/posts/pfbid02GXaLHV1mCtBrQEB2jdWT4AH1LYnBezKLvp1WgvpHw97b92aNWfCYpy4MeEHWeyZjl; https://suspilne dot media/453891-obstril-harkova-u-rf-stvorili-tabori-dla-utrimanna-ukrainskih-ditej-424-den-vijni-onlajn/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5vvrb1YsqU
[174] https://suspilne dot media/453891-obstril-harkova-u-rf-stvorili-tabori-dla-utrimanna-ukrainskih-ditej-424-den-vijni-onlajn/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5vvrb1YsqU
[175] https://t.me/supernova_plus/19488 ; https://twitter.com/Vaslav_Elie/status/1650099965539102722 ; https://twitter.com/fdov21/status/1650101253794418689 ; https://t.me/obtf_kaskad/2335 ; https://twitter.com/fdov21/status/1650104066448424960
[176] https://t.me/SALDO_VGA/711
[177] https://sprotyv.mod dot gov.ua/2023/04/23/rosiyany-planuyut-mobilizovuvaty-migrantiv-z-czentralnoyi-aziyi/
[178]https://www.facebook.com/sergey.khlan/posts/pfbid02atvKYWTFT8RmsKPQHRKTnZodqntmVPGc3yN9NcBTThTkGVSBMEybdNVBisymyAvRl
[179] https://t.me/boris_rozhin/83689
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kalvarija
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Battle of Kalvarija
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kalvarija
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A battle in 1915 during the First World War
The Battle of Kalvarija took place between the Imperial German and Russian armies in the spring of 1915 on the territory of modern Lithuania. The Russian 10th Army tried to re-break through the defenses of the German 10th Army after the unsuccessful March offensive.
Background
[edit]
The German 10th Army, after the March battles with the 10th Russian Army, entrenched itself in positions from the Baltic coast (Palanga) to the Bobr river. At the beginning of April, the German XXI Corps at Kalvarija was replaced by the XL Reserve Corps and occupied a new sector of the front between Rajgród and Wigry. Further to the Wigry Lake, the 77th and 78th Reserve Divisions were located, on the Šešupė River - 1st Cavalry Division, XL Reserve Corps and 16th Landwehr Division - to the Nemunas River. At the turn from Memel to Schmalleningken, holding Palanga and Tauragė on Russian territory, the 6th and 78th Reserve, 3rd, 6th and newly-arrived Bavarian Cavalry Divisions united in the XXXIX Reserve Corps strengthened.
Battle
[edit]
On April 5, Evgeny Radkevich ordered the completion of the operation to capture Marijampolė and Kalvarija. In the Russian 10th Army at that time there were 269,951 men versus 157,525 Germans. The Russians hoped to finally break the stubborn resistance of the Germans thanks to numerical superiority. The artillery was provided with ammunition at the rate of 252 light, 200 mortar and 209 heavy shells per barrel. But on the day of April 5, the Kovno's detachment near Marijampolė could not overcome the dense small arms and cannon fire and the stubborn resistance of the Germans. The 1st Guards Cavalry Division retreated under the onslaught of the Germans.[6][7]
On April 6, the German units of the 31st and 42nd Infantry Divisions, despite their small numbers (in the 31st - only 3,000 men), launched a counterattack on the Kovno's detachment. The brigade of the Russian 68th Infantry Division ("which stood for three days in the water versus the German's barriers") retreated from Marijampolė, and the 1st Guards Cavalry Division continued its retreat. The Russian 56th Infantry Division could not withstand the onslaught of the Germans. Only the Russian 73rd Infantry Division and a separate infantry brigade moved forward a little. An attempt to break into the rear of the Germans by the 2nd Guards and 3rd Cavalry Divisions failed. On the site of the Potapov's detachment, the Germans defeated the Ust-Dvinsk battalion (Russians lost 54 killed, 93 wounded, and 9 officers and 320 soldiers were missing). But the counterattack of the Germans did not receive development and was stopped by order of the staff of the Supreme Commander of All German Forces in the East.[8]
Since the beginning of the Easter battles, the Russian 10th Army has lost 646 killed, 2,894 wounded, 958 missing. But the German’s damage was tangible. Only in the XXI Army Corps, 287 men were killed, 724 wounded, 674 missing.[9]
On April 8-11, the fighting continued with varying success. The casualties of the Russian 10th Army for April 8-12 amounted to 1,202 killed, 3,680 wounded, 1,073 missing. 693 prisoners and 8 machine guns were captured.
Outcome
[edit]
After Easter battle at Kalvarija, on April 13, Radkevich ordered, referring to the "extremely difficult condition of the soil for movement", to stop the offensive and gain a foothold in their positions with the aim of their stubborn defense, and "it is possible for all commanders to personally check the service of their subordinate units more often, in order to weaken vigilance not allow the enemy to break through anywhere in the rear or flank".[10]
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https://kids.kiddle.co/Italian_front_(World_War_I)
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Italian front (World War I) facts for kids
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Learn Italian front (World War I) facts for kids
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en
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/images/wk/favicon-16x16.png
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https://kids.kiddle.co/Italian_front_(World_War_I)
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For other Italian campaigns, see Italian Campaign.
Quick facts for kids
Italian front Part of the European theatre of World War I
Clockwise: Italian soldiers listening to their General's speech; Austro-Hungarian trench on the Isonzo; Austro-Hungarian trench in the Alps; Italian trench on the Piave Belligerents Italy
United Kingdom
France
United States Austria-Hungary
German Empire Commanders and leaders Luigi Cadorna
Armando Diaz
Emanuele Filiberto
Rudolph Lambart
Jean César Graziani Conrad von Hötzendorf
Arz von Straußenburg
Svetozar Boroević
Otto von Below Strength Italy
1915 – up to 58 divisions
United Kingdom
1917 – 3 divisions
France
1918 – 2 divisions
Czechoslovak Legion
1918 – 5 regiments
Romanian Legion
1918 – 3 regiments
United States
1918 – 1 regiment Austria-Hungary
1915 – up to 61 divisions
German Empire
1917 – 5 divisions Casualties and losses 1,832,639:
316,789 killed
946,640 wounded
569,210 captured
6,700:
1,057 killed
4,971 wounded
670 missing/captured
2,872:
480 killed
(700 died indirectly)
2,302 wounded
unknown captured 1,386,327:
155,350 killed
175,041 missing 560,863 wounded
477,024 captured
N/A 589,000 Italian civilians died of war-related causes
The Italian front (Italian: Fronte italiano; German: Südwestfront) was one of the main theatres of war of World War I. It involved a series of military engagements in Northern Italy between the Central Powers and the Allies of World War I from 1915 to 1918. Following secret promises made by the Allies in the 1915 Treaty of London, the Kingdom of Italy entered the war on the Allied side, aiming to annex the Austrian Littoral, northern Dalmatia and the territories of present-day Trentino and South Tyrol.
Although Italy had hoped to gain the territories with a surprise offensive, the front soon bogged down into trench warfare, similar to that on the Western Front, but at high altitudes and with extremely cold winters. Fighting along the front displaced much of the local population, and several thousand civilians died from malnutrition and illness in Italian and Austro-Hungarian refugee camps.
The Allied victory at the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, the disintegration of Austria-Hungary and the Italian capture of Trento and Trieste ended all military operations on the front by November 1918. The armistice of Villa Giusti entered into force on 4 November 1918, when Austria-Hungary no longer existed as a unified entity. Some Italians subsequently referred to the conflict as the Fourth Italian War of Independence, as it completed the final stage of the unification of Italy.
History
Pre-war period
1908 - Bosnian Crisis: Italy expected compensations in the areas of "Italia Irredenta" ruled by Austria-Hungary in exchange for its recognition of the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, as was agreed upon in the Triple Alliance treaties with Austria-Hungary. However, this did not happen and this became one of the reasons for Italy to break its alliance with Austria-Hungary in 1915. The mutual compensation clause was Article 7 of the 1909 and of 5 December 1912 versions of the same treaty:
However, if, in the course of events, the maintenance of the status quo in the regions of the Balkans or of the Ottoman coasts and islands in the Adriatic and in the Aegean Sea should become impossible, and if, whether in consequence of the action of a third Power or otherwise, Austria-Hungary or Italy should find themselves under the necessity of modifying it by a temporary or permanent occupation on their part, this occupation shall take place only after a previous agreement between the two Powers, based upon the principle of reciprocal compensation for every advantage, territorial or other, which each of them might obtain beyond the present status quo, and giving satisfaction to the interests and well-founded claims of the two Parties.
1911 - Libyan war: The war is regarded as a major escalation stage on the way to the First World War. The weakening of the Ottoman Empire alienated Italy from its previous partners in the Triple Alliance, as Germany viewed the Ottomans as an ally and Austria-Hungary's position was further complicated by the subsequent Balkan Wars, which Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia and Montenegro ignited by the prospect of an Italian victory.
1914 - 28 June, Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by the Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo. The Archduke was heir to the throne and the main representative of Trialism. Such reforms would have transformed the dual monarchy Austria-Hungary into a tripartite state Austria-Hungary-Croatia, which competed with Serbia's interest in founding a South Slavic kingdom under Serbian leadership.
1914 - 1 July, Alberto Pollio, the Chief of Staff of the Italian army since 1908, dies unexpectedly and is replaced by Luigi Cadorna. According to Alfred von Kleist, German military attaché in Rome, in a dispatch from April 1914, Pollio was considered up most stable, loyal and fully commited to the Triple Alliance and its military prospects.
1914 - July Crisis: Berchtold deliberately failed to inform the (officially) allies Italy and Romania of the intended action against Serbia, breeching Article 7 of the Triple Alliance, since he foresaw that consent would only be given in exchange for compensation.
1914 - 2 August, Salandra declares Italy's neutrality, in conjunction with Article 3 of the Triple Alliance.
1914 - 5 November, Sonnino is appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs and makes it a priority to pressure Austria-Hungary on Article 7 of the Triple Alliance in terms of compensation. Also urged by the ambassadors in Rome, Bernhard von Bülow and Karl von Macchio, Berchtold gave in and on January 9, 1915 suggested to Emperor Franz Joseph to cede the Trentino. However, the Emperor and the Hungarian Prime Minister István Tisza rejected it and at the instigation of Tisza Berchtold was replaced on January 13, 1915 as Foreign Minister by the Hungarian Stephan Burián. A German proposal of giving Sosnowiec and its coalfields to Austria-Hungary in compenastion for the Trentino was likewise rejected in February 1915.
1915 - 3 March, Salandra and Sonnino, with the backing of king Victor Emmanuel III, submit an offer to the Triple Entente for intervention in the war. The fall of Przemyśl on March 22 marks a major setback for Austria-Hungary on the Eastern Front.
1915 - 26 April, The Treaty of London is signed by the United Kingdom, France, and Russia on the one part, and Italy on the other, in order to entice the latter to enter World War I on the side of the Triple Entente within a month. The Entente also hoped that Romania and Bulgaria would be encouraged to join them after Italy did the same. The Treaty was agreed to be kept a secret according to Article 16, and remained so until December 1917 when Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin exposed to the public all treaties of Tsar Nicholas II and the Entente, including the secret treaty of London.
1915 - 4 May, In the midst of the Gorlice breakthrough Salandra officially renounces the Triple Alliance in a note to Germany and Austria-Hungary. May 13, threatened without a majority in Parliament Salandra resignes from office and orders Cadorna to stop mobilization.
1915 - 16 May, Salandra is reinstated as Giolitti failed to form a new government amid rising social tensions and threats from the king. When Parliament resumed on May 20 Salandra secured overwhelming majorities (367 to 54 and 407 to 74) on a Bill conferring extraordinary powers upon the Government in the event of war. General mobilization was ordered on May 22.
1915 - 23 May, Italy declares war on Austria-Hungary.
Campaigns of 1915–1916
See also: White War
During the Italo-Turkish War in Libya (1911–1912), the Italian military suffered equipment and munition shortages not yet repaired before Italian entry into the Great War. At the opening of the campaign, Austro-Hungarian troops occupied and fortified high ground of the Julian Alps and Karst Plateau, but the Italians initially outnumbered their opponents three-to-one.
Battles of Isonzo in 1915
Main article: Battles of the Isonzo
An Italian offensive aimed to cross the Soča (Isonzo) river, take the fortress town of Gorizia, and then enter the Karst Plateau. This offensive opened the first Battles of the Isonzo.
At the beginning of the First Battle of the Isonzo on 23 June 1915, Italian forces outnumbered the Austrians three-to-one but failed to penetrate the strong Austro-Hungarian defensive lines in the highlands of northwestern Gorizia and Gradisca. Because the Austrian forces occupied higher ground, Italians conducted difficult offensives while climbing. The Italian forces therefore failed to drive much beyond the river, and the battle ended on 7 July 1915.
Despite a professional officer corps, severely under-equipped Italian units lacked morale. Also many troops deeply disliked the newly appointed Italian commander, general Luigi Cadorna. Moreover, preexisting equipment and munition shortages slowed progress and frustrated all expectations for a "Napoleonic style" breakout. Like most contemporaneous militaries, the Italian army primarily used horses for transport but struggled and sometimes failed to supply the troops sufficiently in the tough terrain.
Two weeks later on 18 July 1915, the Italians attempted another frontal assault against the Austro-Hungarian trench lines with more artillery in the Second Battle of the Isonzo. In the northern section of the front, the Italians managed to overrun Mount Batognica over Kobarid (Caporetto), which would have an important strategic value in future battles. This bloody offensive concluded in stalemate when both sides ran out of ammunition.
The Italians recuperated, rearmed with 1200 heavy guns, and then on 18 October 1915 launched the Third Battle of the Isonzo, another attack. Forces of Austria-Hungary repulsed this Italian offensive, which concluded on 4 November without resulting gains.
The Italians again launched another offensive on 10 November, the Fourth Battle of the Isonzo. Both sides suffered more casualties, but the Italians conquered important entrenchments, and the battle ended on 2 December for exhaustion of armaments, but occasional skirmishing persisted.
After the winter lull, the Italians launched the Fifth Battle of the Isonzo on 9 March 1916, and captured the strategic Mount Sabatino. But Austria-Hungary repulsed all other attacks, and the battle concluded on 16 March in poor weather for trench warfare.
The Asiago offensive
Following Italy's stalemate, the Austro-Hungarian forces began planning a counteroffensive (Battle of Asiago) in Trentino and directed over the plateau of Altopiano di Asiago, with the aim to break through to the Po River plain and thus cutting off the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Italian Armies in the North East of the country. The offensive began on 15 May 1916 with 15 divisions, and resulted in initial gains, but then the Italians counterattacked and pushed the Austro-Hungarians back to the Tyrol.
Later battles for the Isonzo
Later in 1916, four more battles along the Isonzo river erupted. The Sixth Battle of the Isonzo, launched by the Italians in August, resulted in a success greater than the previous attacks. The offensive gained nothing of strategic value but did take Gorizia, which boosted Italian spirits. The Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth battles of the Isonzo (14 September – 4 November) managed to accomplish little except to wear down the already exhausted armies of both nations.
The frequency of offensives for which the Italian soldiers partook between May 1915 and August 1917, one every three months, was higher than demanded by the armies on the Western Front. Italian discipline was also harsher, with punishments for infractions of duty of a severity not known in the German, French, and British armies.
Shellfire in the rocky terrain caused 70% more casualties per rounds expended than on the soft ground in Belgium and France. By the autumn of 1917 the Italian army had suffered most of the deaths it was to incur during the war, yet the end of the war seemed to still be an eternity away. This was not the same line of thought for the Austro-Hungarians. On 25 August, the Emperor Charles wrote to the Kaiser the following: "The experience we have acquired in the eleventh battle has led me to believe that we should fare far worse in the twelfth. My commanders and brave troops have decided that such an unfortunate situation might be anticipated by an offensive. We have not the necessary means as regards troops."
Tunnel warfare in the mountains
See also: Strada delle 52 Gallerie and Mines on the Italian front (World War I)
From 1915, the high peaks of the Dolomites range were an area of fierce mountain warfare. In order to protect their soldiers from enemy fire and the hostile alpine environment, both Austro-Hungarian and Italian military engineers constructed fighting tunnels which offered a degree of cover and allowed better logistics support. Working at high altitudes in the hard carbonate rock of the Dolomites, often in exposed areas near mountain peaks and even in glacial ice, required extreme skill of both Austro-Hungarian and Italian miners.
Beginning on the 13th, later referred to as White Friday, December 1916 would see 10,000 soldiers on both sides killed by avalanches in the Dolomites. Numerous avalanches were caused by the Italians and Austro-Hungarians purposefully firing artillery shells on the mountainside, while others were naturally caused.
In addition to building underground shelters and covered supply routes for their soldiers like the Italian Strada delle 52 Gallerie, both sides also attempted to break the stalemate of trench warfare by tunneling under no man's land and placing explosive charges beneath the enemy's positions. Between 1 January 1916 and 13 March 1918, Austro-Hungarian and Italian units fired a total of 34 mines in this theatre of the war. Focal points of the underground fighting were Pasubio with 10 mines, Lagazuoi with 5, Col di Lana/Monte Sief also with 5, and Marmolada with 4 mines. The explosive charges ranged from 110 kilograms (240 lb) to 50,000 kilograms (110,000 lb) of blasting gelatin. In April 1916, the Italians detonated explosives under the peaks of Col Di Lana, killing numerous Austro-Hungarians.
1917: Germany arrives on the front
The Italians directed a two-pronged attack against the Austrian lines north and east of Gorizia. The Austrians checked the advance east, but Italian forces under Luigi Capello managed to break the Austrian lines and capture the Banjšice Plateau. Characteristic of nearly every other theater of the war, the Italians found themselves on the verge of victory but could not secure it because their supply lines could not keep up with the front-line troops and they were forced to withdraw. However, the Italians despite suffering heavy casualties had almost exhausted and defeated the Austro-Hungarian army on the front, forcing them to call in German help for the much anticipated Caporetto Offensive.
The Austro-Hungarians received desperately needed reinforcements after the Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo from German Army soldiers rushed in after the Russian offensive ordered by Kerensky of July 1917 failed. Also arrived German troops from Romanian front after the Battle of Mărășești. The Germans introduced infiltration tactics to the Austro-Hungarian front and helped work on a new offensive. Meanwhile, mutinies and plummeting morale crippled the Italian Army from within. The soldiers lived in poor conditions and engaged in attack after attack that often yielded minimal or no military gain.
On 24 October 1917 the Austro-Hungarians and Germans launched the Battle of Caporetto (Italian name for Kobarid or Karfreit in German). Chlorine-arsenic agent and diphosgene gas shells were fired as part of a huge artillery barrage, followed by infantry using infiltration tactics, bypassing enemy strong points and attacking on the Italian rear. At the end of the first day, the Italians had retreated 19 kilometres (12 miles) to the Tagliamento River.
When the Austro-Hungarian offensive routed the Italians, the new Italian chief of staff, Armando Diaz ordered to stop their retreat and defend the fortified defenses around the Monte Grappa summit between the Roncone and the Tomatico mountains; although numerically inferior (51,000 against 120,000) the Italian Army managed to halt the Austro-Hungarian and German armies in the First Battle of Monte Grappa.
1918: The war ends
Second Battle of the Piave River (June 1918)
Main article: Second Battle of the Piave River
Advancing deep and fast, the Austro-Hungarians outran their supply lines, which forced them to stop and regroup. The Italians, pushed back to defensive lines near Venice on the Piave River, had suffered 600,000 casualties to this point in the war. Because of these losses, the Italian Government called to arms the so-called 99 Boys (Ragazzi del '99); the new class of conscripts born in 1899 who were turning 18 in 1917. In November 1917, British and French troops started to bolster the front line, from the 5 and 6 divisions respectively provided. Far more decisive to the war effort than their troops was the Allies economic assistance by providing strategic materials (steel, coal and crops – provided by the British but imported from Argentina – etc.), which Italy always lacked sorely. In the spring of 1918, Germany pulled out its troops for use in its upcoming Spring Offensive on the Western Front. As a result of the Spring Offensive, Britain and France also pulled half of their divisions back to the Western Front.
The Austro-Hungarians now began debating how to finish the war in Italy. The Austro-Hungarian generals disagreed on how to administer the final offensive. Archduke Joseph August of Austria decided for a two-pronged offensive, where it would prove impossible for the two forces to communicate in the mountains.
The Second Battle of the Piave River began with a diversionary attack near the Tonale Pass named Lawine, which the Italians repulsed after two days of fighting. Austrian deserters betrayed the objectives of the upcoming offensive, which allowed the Italians to move two armies directly in the path of the Austrian prongs. The other prong, led by general Svetozar Boroević von Bojna initially experienced success until aircraft bombed their supply lines and Italian reinforcements arrived.
The decisive Battle of Vittorio Veneto (October–November 1918)
Main article: Battle of Vittorio Veneto
To the disappointment of Italy's allies, no counter-offensive followed the Battle of Piave. The Italian Army had suffered huge losses in the battle, and considered an offensive dangerous. General Armando Diaz waited for more reinforcements to arrive from the Western Front. By the end of October 1918, Austro-Hungary was in a dire situation. Czechoslovakia, Croatia, and Slovenia proclaimed their independence and parts of their troops started deserting, disobeying orders and retreating. Many Czechoslovak troops, in fact, started working for the Allied Cause, and in September 1918, five Czechoslovak Regiments were formed in the Italian Army.
By October 1918, Italy finally had enough soldiers to mount an offensive. The attack targeted Vittorio Veneto, across the Piave. The Italian Army broke through a gap near Sacile and poured in reinforcements that crushed the Austro-Hungarian defensive line. On 31 October, the Italian Army launched a full scale attack and the whole front began to collapse. On 3 November, 300,000 Austro-Hungarian soldiers surrendered, at the same day the Italians entered Trento and Trieste, greeted by the population.
On 3 November, the military leaders of the already disintegrated Austria-Hungary sent a flag of truce to the Italian commander to ask again for an armistice and terms of peace. The terms were arranged by telegraph with the Allied authorities in Paris, communicated to the Austro-Hungarian commander, and were accepted. The Armistice with Austria was signed in the Villa Giusti, near Padua, on 3 November, and took effect at three o'clock in the afternoon of 4 November. Austria and Hungary signed separate armistices following the overthrow of the Habsburg monarchy and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Casualties
Italian military deaths numbered 834 senior officers and generals, 16,872 junior officers, 16,302 non-commissioned officers, and 497,103 enlisted men, for a total of over 531,000 dead. Of these, 257,418 men came from Northern Italy, 117,480 from Central Italy, and 156,251 from Southern Italy.
Austro-Hungarian KIAs (this category does not include soldiers who perished in the rear or as POWs) amounted to 4,538 officers and 150,812 soldiers, for a total of 155,350 dead. The losses were increasing over time; there were 31,135 killed in 1915, 38,519 in 1916, 42,309 in 1917 and 43,387 in 1918. While the KIA numbers of Italian soldiers on the Italian front in 1915 were 66,090 killed, in 1916 this figure was 118,880 killed, in 1917 it was 152,790 killed, and in 1918 it stood at 40,250 killed soldiers.
Occupation of northern Dalmatia and Tyrol
By the end of hostilities in November 1918, the Italian military had seized control of the entire portion of Dalmatia that had been guaranteed to Italy by the London Pact. From 5–6 November 1918, Italian forces were reported to have reached Lissa, Lagosta, Sebenico, and other localities on the Dalmatian coast. In 1918, Admiral Enrico Millo declared himself Italy's Governor of Dalmatia. After 4 November the Italian military occupied also Innsbruck and all Tyrol by 20–22,000 soldiers of the III Corps of the First Army.
Italian Army Order of Battle as of 24 May 1915
First Army
Lieutenant General Roberto Brusati
III Corps
Lieutenant General Vittorio Camerana
5th Infantry Division (Lieutenant General Luigi Druetti)
"Cuneo" Brigade – 7th (I, III & IV) and 8th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
"Palermo" Brigade – 67th (I-III) and 68th (I, III & IV) Infantry Regiments
27th Field Artillery Regiment (-) (5 batteries) 75/906 (arr. 7–13 June); 10th Co, 2nd Sapper Regiment
6th Infantry Division (Lieutenant General Oscar Roffi)
"Toscana" Brigade – 77th (I-III) and 78th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
"Sicilia" Brigade – 61st (I-III) and 62nd (I-III) Infantry Regiments
16th Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/906; 11th Co, 2nd Sapper Regiment
35th Infantry Division (Lieutenant General Felice De Chaurand)
"Milano" Brigade – 159th (I-III) and 160th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
"Novara" Brigade—153rd I-III) and 154th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
42nd Field Artillery Regiment (6 batteries) 75/906; 15th Co, 1st Sapper Regiment; 5th Group of mobile militia cavalry (9th & 10th Squadrons)
Corps Troops
7th Bersaglieri Regiment (Btns 8, 10 & 11 bis)
45th Bersaglieri Battalion (mobile militia)
Mixed Regular & Mobile Militia Alpini battalions: Morbegno (44, 45, 47, 88, 104 Cos); Tirano (46, 48, 49, 89, 113 Cos); Edolo (50–52, 90, 105 Cos) and Vestone (53–55, 91 Cos)
Territorial Militia Alpini battalions: Val d’Intelvi (244, 245, 247 Cos); Valtellina (246, 248, 249 Cos); Val Camonica (250-52 Cos) and Val Chiese (253-54 Cos)
III Battalion, Royal Customs Guards (Frontier) (Reale Guardia di Finanza di frontiers)
27th Light Cavalry Regiment of Aquila (4 squadrons) (arr. 20 May)
6th Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/906
30th Mountain Battery
2nd Group, 1st Heavy Field Artillery Regiment (4th & 5th batteries)
1st Battalion, Miners (Cos 10, 11, 18)
4th Telegraph Co
½ 18th Co, 2nd Sapper Regiment
V Corps
source: Lieutenant General Florenzio Aliprindi
9th Infantry Division (Lieutenant General Ferruccio Ferri)
"Roma" Brigade—79th (II, III, IV) and 80th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
"Pugile" Brigade—71st (II-IV) and 72nd (I-III) Infantry Regiments
29th Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/906; 12th Co, 1st Sapper Regiment
15th Infantry Division (Lieutenant General Luigi Lenchantin)
"Venezia" Brigade—83rd (I-III) and 84th (I, II, IV) Infantry Regiments
"Abruzzi" Brigade—57th (I, III, IV) and 58th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
19th Field Artillery Regiment (-) (6 batteries) 75/906; 1st Co, 2nd Sapper Regiment
34th Infantry Division (Lieutenant General Pasquale Oro)
"Ivrea" Brigade—161st (I-III) and 162nd (I-III) Infantry Regiments
"Treviso" Brigade—115th (I-III) and 116th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
41st Field Artillery Regiment (6 batteries) 75/906; 9th Co, 2nd Sapper Regiment; Mobile Militia cavalry: 21st Squadron (arr. 11 June) & 23rd Squadron (arr. 29 June)
Corps Troops
2nd Bersaglieri Regiment (Btns 2 bis, 4 & 17)
4th Bersaglieri Regiment (Btns 26 bis, 29 & 31 bis)
8th Bersaglieri Regiment (Btns 3 bis, 5 & 12)
41st, 42nd and 48th Bersaglieri Battalions (mobile militia)
Mixed Regular & Mobile Militia Alpini battalions: Verona (56–58, 73, 92 Cos); Vincenza (59–61, 93, 108 Cos); Bassano (77–79, 106 Cos) and Feltre (64–66, 95 Cos)
Territorial Militia Alpini battalions: Val d’Adige (256–258 Cos); Val Leogra (259, 260 Cos); Val Brenta (262, 263 Cos) and Val Cismon (264, 265 Cos)
V, VII, IX, XVII & XVIII Battalions, Royal Customs Guards (Coastal) (Reale Guardia di Finanza di costieri) with Autonomous Cos. 11 and 52
I Battalion, Royal Custom Guards (Frontier)
22nd Light Cavalry Regiment of Catania (arr. 28 May)
15 batteries of mountain artillery: Oneglia Group (batteries 23, 26 & 27); Vincenza Group (batteries 19–21); Genove Group (batteries 28 & 29); Torino Aosta Group (batteries 4–6) and Independent batteries: 1, 8, 57 & 59
5th Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/911
1st, 13th, 14th & ½ 7th Cos, Miners
11th Telegraph Co
16th Co, 2nd Sapper Regiment (barrier Brenta-Cismon)
16th Co, 1st Sapper Regiment (barrier Agno-Assa)
Army Troops
"Mantova" Brigade—113th (I-III) and 114th Infantry (I-III) Regiments
4th Squadron, 27th Light Cavalry Regiment of Aquila
3rd Group, 1st Heavy Field Artillery Regiment (6th & 7th batteries)
2nd & 17th Cos, Miners
17th Co, 2nd Sapper Regiment
14th Pontoon Co
16th Telegraph Co
1 section, radiotelegraph of 1 ½ Kw
1 squad, telephotography
Second Army
Lieutenant General Pietro Frugoni
II Corps
Lieutenant General Enzio Reisoli
3rd Division (Lieutenant General Giovanni Prelli)
"Ravenna" Brigade – 37th (I, III, IV) & 38th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
"Forli Brigade" – 43rd (I-III) & 44th (I, III, IV) Infantry Regiments
23rd Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/906; 2nd Co, 2nd Sapper Regiment
4th Division (Major General Cesare Del Mastro)
"Livorno" Brigade – 33rd (I-III) & 34th (IV-VI) Infantry Regiments
"Lombardia" Brigade – 73rd (I-III) & 74th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
26th Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/906; 3rd Co, 2nd Sapper Regiment
32nd Division (Lieutenant General Alberto Piacentini)
"Spezia" Brigade – 125th (I-III) & 126th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
"Firenza" Brigade – 127th (I-III) & 128th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
48th Field Artillery Regiment (6 batteries) 75/906; 13th Co, 2nd Sapper Regiment
Corps Troops
9th & 10th Bersaglieri Cyclist Battalions
11th Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/911
6th Group, 1st Heavy Field Artillery Regiment (13th & 14th batteries)
6th Telegraph Co
IV Corps
source: Lieutenant General Mario Nicolis de Robilant
7th Division (Lieutenant General Nicola D'Avanzo)
"Bergamo" Brigade – 25th (I-III) & 26th (II-IV) Infantry Regiments
"Valtellina" Brigade – 65th (I-III) & 66th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
21st Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/911; 1st Co, 1st Sapper Regiment
8th Division (Lieutenant General Guglielmo Lang)
"Modena" Brigade – 41st (I-III) & 42nd (I, II, IV) Infantry Regiments
"Salerno" Brigade – 89th (I, III, IV) & 90th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
28th Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/906
33rd Division (Lieutenant General Carlo Ricci)
"Liguria" Brigade – 157th (I-III) & 158th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
"Emilia" Brigade – 119th (I-III) & 120th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
40th Field Artillery Regiment (6 batteries) 75/906; 14th Co, 1st Sapper Regiment
Bersaglieri Division (Lieutenant General Alessandro Raspi)
6th Bersaglieri Regiment (Btns 6, 13 & 19)
9th Bersaglieri Regiment (Btns 28, 30 & 32)
11th Bersaglieri Regiment (Btns 15 bis, 27 & 33)
12th Bersaglieri Regiment (Btns 21, 23 & 26)
Mondavi Group Mountain Artillery (Mt batteries 10, 11, 12, 54); 17th Co, 1st Sapper Regiment
Alpini Group A (Colonel Riccardo Tedeschi)
Regular & Mobile Militia Alpini Battalions: Aosta (41–43 Reg Cos, 87, 103 MM Cos); Ivrea (38–40, 86, 111 Cos); Intra (7, 24, 37, 112 Cos) & Cividale (16, 20, 76, 87, 103 Cos)
Territorial Militia Alpini battalions: Val Natisone (216, 220 Cos); Val Orco (238, 239 Cos); Val Baltea (241, 242 Cos) & Val Toce (207, 243 Cos)
Bergamo Group Mountain Artillery (Mt batteries 31, 32, 33, 61)
Alpini Group B (Colonel Ernesto Alliana)
Regular & Mobile Militia Alpini Battalions: Pinerolo (25–27, 82 Cos); Susa (34–36, 85, 102 Cos); Exilles (31–33, 84 Cos) & Val Pellice (41–43, 87, 103 Cos)
Territorial Militia Alpini Battalions: Val Cenischia (234, 235 Cos) &Val Dora (231, 232 Cos)
Pinerola Group Mountain Artillery (Mt batteries 7 & 9)
Corps Troops
5th Bersaglieri Regiment (Btns 14, 22 bis, 24) with 5th Bersaglieri Cyclist Battalion
4th Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/911
4th Group, 1st Heavy Field Artillery Regiment (batteries 8, 9 & 10)
17th Telegraph Co
XII Corps
source: Lieutenant General Luigi Segato
23rd Division (Lieutenant General Giovanni Airaldi)
"Verona" Brigade – 85th (I-III) & 86th (I, III, IV; 9 cos only) Infantry Regiments
"Aosta" Brigade – 5th Infantry Regiment (II-IV; 9 cos only) &6th (I, III, IV) Infantry Regiments
22nd Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/906
1st Group, 10th Field Artillery Regiment (batteries 1, 2 & 3)
12th Co, 2nd Sapper Regiment
24th Division (Major General Gustavo Fara)
"Napoli" Brigade – 75th (I, II, IV; 9 cos only) &76th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
"Piemonte" Brigade – 3rd (II, III, IV; 9 cos only) & 4th (I, II, IV) Infantry Regiments
36th Field Artillery Regiment (2 groups w 5 field batteries) 75/911 plus 3 (sic 6?) mt. batteries: 13th Mt Group (Mt batteries 37–39) & 14th Mt. Group (Mt batteries 63, 64 & 65)
3rd Group, 10th Field Artillery Regiment (batteries 6, 7 & 8); 4th Co, 2nd Sapper Regiment
Corps Troops
10th bis Bersaglieri Regiment (Btns 16 bis, 34 bis & 35 bis)
2nd Group, 10th Field Artillery Regiment (batteries 4 & 5)
4th Group, 2d Heavy Field Artillery Regiment (batteries 8, 9 & 10)
9th Telegraph Co
Army Troops
2 groups of 2 batteries of 149 A cannon (149 A batteries 1, 7, 11 & 12) (for the "first bound forward")
1 group of 3 batteries of 149 G cannon (149 G batteries 5, 6 & 7) (for the "first bound forward")
2 groups of 4 batteries of pack 70 A cannon. (pack batteries 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11 & 20)
1 Pontoon battalion (Cos 6, 7, 8, 13)
8th Co, Miners
24th Telegraph Co
1 section radiotelegraph of 1 ½ Kw
1 squad field photography
3 sections of field aerostatic balloons
3 squadrons of aeroplanes (Nos 6th, 7th & 8th Newport)
Third Army
source: His Royal Highness, Prince Emanuele Filiberto, Duke of Aosta
VI Corps
source: Lieutenant General Carlo Ruelle
11th Division (Lieutenant General Ettore Mambretti)
"Pistoia" Brigade – 35th (I, III, IV) & 36th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
The King's ("Re") Brigade – 1st (I-III) & 2nd (I-III) Infantry Regiments
14th Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/906 (3 batteries arr. 27 May)
1 group of 3 batteries of 70 A. pack (pack batteries 2, 7 & 14)
1st Group, 1st Heavy Artillery Regiment (byts 1, 2 & 3)
6th Co, 2nd Sapper Regiment
12th Division (Major General Oreste Zavattari)
"Casale" Brigade – 11th (I-III) & 12th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
"Pavia" Brigade – 27th (I-III) & 28th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
30th Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/906; 7th Co, 2nd Sapper Regiment
1st Cavalry Division (Lieutenant General Nicola Pirozzi)
1st Cavalry Brigade – 13th Light Cavalry Regiment of Monferrato (-) (4 squadrons) (arr. 10 May) & 20th Light Cavalry Regiment of Rome (arr. 10 May)
2nd Cavalry Brigade – 4th Cavalry Regiment of Genova (arr. 10 May) & 5th Lancer Regiment of Novara (arr. 12 May)
94th Infantry Regiment [from Messina Brigade, 13th Division, VII Corps]
1 battalion of 20th Infantry Regiment
8th & 11th Bersagliari Cyclist Battalions
2nd Group of Horse Artillery (Horse Artillery batteries 1 & 2) 75/912
2nd Group, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment (batteries 4 & 5)
Corps Troops
6th & 12th Bersaglieri Cyclist Battalions
II Battalion, Royal Customs Corps (Frontier)
3rd Field Artillery Regiment (-) (6 batteries) 75/911
2nd Group, 2nd Heavy Field Artillery Regiment (4th & 5th batteries)
8th Telegraph Co
½ 18th Co, 2nd Sapper Regiment
19th Co, Miners
12th Pontoon Co
1st & 2nd Squadrons aeroplanes Bleriot
VII Corps
source: Lieutenant General Vincenzo Garioni
13th Division (Lieutenant General Cleto Angelotti)
"Messina" Brigade – 93rd (III, IV, V; 9 cos only); [94th Infantry Regiment (II-IV)]
Sardinia Grenadiers – 1st (I, II, IV) & 2nd (I-III) Grenadier Regiments
31st Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) (not arrived by 24 May)
1 battery of 70 A. pack (pack battery 12)
2nd Co, 1st Sapper Regiment
14th Division (Major General Giacinto Rostagno)
"Pinerolo" Brigade – 13th (I-III) & 14th (I, II, IV) Infantry Regiments
"Acqui" Brigade – 17th (I, III, IV) & 18th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
18th Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/906 (arr. 28 May); 7th Co, 1st Sapper Regiment
Corps Troops
2nd Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/911 (not arrived by 24 May)
13th Telegraph Co (not arrived by 24 May)
XI Corps
Main Source: Lieutenant General Giorgio Cigliana
21st Division (Lieutenant General Carlo Mazzoli)
The Queen's ("Regina") Brigade (not arrived by 24 May) – 9th Infantry Regiment (I-III)
"Pisa" Brigade (not arrived by 24 May) – 29th (II-IV; 9 cos only) & 30th (I, III, IV) Infantry Regiments
35th Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/911 (arr. 28–30 May); 4th Co, 1st Sapper Regiment (not arrived by 24 May)
22nd Division (Lieutenant General Vittorio Signorile)
"Brescia" Brigade (not arrived by 24 May) – 19th (I, II, IV; 9 cos only) & 20th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
"Ferrara" Brigade (not arrived by 24 May) – 47th (II, III, IV; 9 cos only) & 48th (I, II, IV) Infantry Regiments
15th Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/911 (arr. 28 May); 3rd Co, 1st Sapper Regiment (not arrived by 24 May)
2nd Cavalry Division (or Detachment of San Giorgio di Nogaro) (Lieutenant General Giovanni Vercellana)
HQ of the Queen's Brigade
3rd Cavalry Brigade – 7th Lancer Regiment of Milano (arr. 16 May) & 10th Lancer Regiment of Victor Emanuel II (arr. 21 May)
4th Cavalry Brigade – 6th Lancer Regiment of Aosta (arr. 9 June) & 25th Lancer Regiment of Mantova (arr. 30 May)
3rd & 7th Bersagliari Cyclist Battalions
10th Infantry Regiment (I-III)
1 battalion of 14th Infantry Regiment
1 battalion of 1st Grenadiers
1st Group of Horse Artillery (Horse Artillery batteries 1 & 2) 75/912
3rd Group, 2nd Heavy Field Artillery Regiment (batteries 6 & 7)
2 pack batteries (pack batteries 16 & 17)
Corps Troops
9th Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/911 (arr. 30 May)
5th Pontoon Co (not arrived by 24 May)
10th Telegraph Co (not arrived by 24 May)
Army Troops
X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV Battalions, Royal Customs Guards (Coastal)
1st Group, 2nd Heavy Field Artillery Regiment (1, 2 & 3 batteries)
1 group of 4 batteries of 149 G cannon (149 G batteries 1–4)
1 battery of pack cannon of 70 A. (pack battery 19)
5th Co, Miners
21st Telegraph Co
4th, 10th & 11th Pontoon Cos
1 section radiotelegraph
1 squad field photography
3 sections of field aerostatic balloons
5 squadrons of aeroplanes (Nos 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 13th & 14th Bleriot)
Fourth Army
source: Lieutenant General Luigi Nava
I Corps
Lieutenant General Ottavio Ragni
1st Division (Lieutenant General Alfonso Pettiti di Roreto)
"Parma" Brigade – 49th (I-III) &50th (I, IV & V; 9 cos only) Infantry Regiments
"Basilicata" Brigade – 91st (I-III) & 92nd (I-III) Infantry Regiments
25th Field Artillery Regiment (-) (5 batteries) 75/906 (arr. 1 June)
2 batteries of 70 A. pack (pack batteries 6 & 13) (arr. 20 June)
5th Co, 2nd Sapper Regiment
2nd Division (Lieutenant General Saverio Nasalli Rocca)
"Como" Brigade – 23rd (I, IV & V; 9 cos only) & 24th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
"Umbria" Brigade – 53rd (I-III) & 54th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
17th Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/906
10th Division (Lieutenant General Giovanni Scrivante)
"Marche" Brigade – 55th (I-III) & 56th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
"Ancona" Brigade – 69th (I-III) & 70th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
20th Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/906; 11th Co, 1st Sapper Regiment; 14th Co, 2nd Sapper Regiment
Corps Troops
21st Light Cavalry Regiment of Padova (arr. 30 May)
8th Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/906
½ 7th & 21st Cos, Miners
12th Telegraph Co
IX Corps
Lieutenant General Pietro Marini
17th Division (Lieutenant General Diomede Saveri)
"Reggio" Brigade – 45th (I-III) & 46th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
"Torino" Brigade – 81st (I-III) & 82nd (IV-VI; 9 cos only) Infantry Regiments
13th Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/911 (arr. 31 May); 5th Co, 1st Sapper Regiment
18th Division (Lieutenant General Vittorio Carpi)
"Alpi" Brigade – 51st (I-III) & 52nd (II-IV) Infantry Regiments
"Calabria" Brigade – 59th (I-III) & 60th (II-IV) Infantry Regiments
33rd Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/911; 8th Co, 1st Sapper Regiment
Additional Organic
Mixed Regular & Mobile Militia Alpini Battalions – Fenestrelle (28, 29, 30, 83 Cos); Pieve di Cadore (67, 68, 75, 96 Cos) & Belluno (77–79, 106 Cos)
Territorial Militia Alpini Battalions – Val Chisone (228–230 Cos); Val Piave (267 & 268 Cos) & Val Cordevole (206 & 266 Cos)
Torino-Susa Group of Mt. Artillery (Mt batteries 2 & 3)
Belluno Group of Mt. Artillery (Mt batteries 22, 23, 24, & 58)
Como Group of Mt. Artillery (Mt batteries 34, 35 & 36)
Corps Troops
3rd Bersaglieri Regiment (Btns 18, 20 & 25)
9th Lancer Regiment of Firenza (arr. 5 June)
1st Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/911 (2 batteries arr. 26 May)
5th Telegraph Co
Army Troops
XVI Battalion, Royal Custom Guards (Frontier)
1 regiment of mobile territorial infantry (3 battalions)
5th & 6th Groups, 2nd Heavy Field Artillery Regiment (batteries 11, 12, 13 & 14)
1 battalion of Miners (12, 16, 20 & 21 Cos)
22nd Telegraph Co
1st Pontoon Co
1 section radiotelegraph
1 squad telephotography
Carnia Zone
source: Lieutenant General Clemente Lequio
8 Mixed Regular & Mobile Militia Alpini battalions: Mondovi (9-11, 114 Cos); Pieve di Teco (2, 3, 8, 107, 115 Cos); Ceva (1, 4 & 5, 98, 116 Cos); Borgo San Dalmazzo (13–15, 99, 117 Cos); Dronero (17–19, 81, 101 Cos); Saluzzo (21–23, 80, 100 Cos); Tolmezzo (6, 12, 72, 109 Cos) & Gemona (69–71, 97 Cos)
8 Territorial Militia Alpini battalions: Val d’Eilero (209, 210 cos); Val d’ Arroscia (202, 203, 208 Cos); Val Tanaro (201, 204 cos); Valle Stura (213–215 cos); Val Maira (217–219 cos); Val Varaita (221–223 cos); Val Tagliamento (212 & 272 cos) & Val Fella (269 & 270 cos)
VIII, XIX & XX Battalions, Royal Customs Guards (Coastal)
1 squadron, 13th Light Cavalry Regiment of Monferrato
6 batteries of mountain artillery: Mt batteries 13, 14, 15 & 55 (Conegliano Group); Mt battery 51 (Torino-Susa Group) & Mt battery 52 (Torino-Aosta Group)
2 batteries of 70 A. pack (pack batteries 3 & 15)
4th & 6th Cos, Miners
6th & 21st Cos 1st Sapper Regiment
19th Telegraph Co
High Command Troops
source:
VIII Corps
source: Lieutenant General Ottavio Briccola
16th Division (Major General Luciano Secco)
"Friuli" Brigade – 87th (I bis, II bis, III bis; 9 cos only) & 88th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
"Cremona" Brigade – 21st (I-III) & 22nd (I, III, IV) Infantry Regiments
32nd Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/906 (arr. 29 May); 8th Co, 2nd Sapper Regiment
29th Division (Lieutenant General Fortunato Marazzi)
"Perugia" Brigade – 129th (I-III) & 130th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
"Lazio" Brigade – 131st (I-III) & 132nd (I-III) Infantry Regiments
37th Field Artillery Regiment (6 batteries) 75/906 (arr. 31 May); Special Co, 2nd Sapper Regiment
Corps Troops
23rd Light Cavalry Regiment of Umberto I
7th Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) (arr. Early June) 75/911
14th Telegraph Co
X Corps
source: Lieutenant General Domenico Grandi
19th Division (Lieutenant General Giuseppe Ciancio)
"Siena" Brigade – 31st (I, III, IV) & 32nd (I-III) Infantry Regiments
"Palermo" Brigade – 39th (I-III) & 40th (I, II, IV) Infantry Regiments
24th Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/906 (arr. 5–9 June)
9th Co, 1st Sapper Regiment
20th Division (Lieutenant General Eduardo Coardi di Carpenetto)
"Savona" Brigade – 15th (I-III) & 16th (II bis, IV & V; only 9 cos) Infantry Regiments
"Cagliari" Brigade – 63rd (I, II & IV) & 64th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
34th Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/906 (arr. 5–6 June); 10th Co, 1st Sapper Regiment
Corps Troops
12th Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/911 (arr. 6–9 June)
15th Telegraph Co
XIII Corps
source: Lieutenant General Gaetano Zoppi
25th Division (Major General Luigi Capello)
"Macerata" Brigade – 121st (I-III) & 122nd (I-III) Infantry Regiments
"Sassari" Brigade – 151st (I-III) & 152nd (I-III) Infantry Regiments
46th Field Artillery Regiment (8 batteries) 75/906; 15th Co, 2nd Sapper Regiment
30th Division (Lieutenant General Arcangelo Scotti)
"Piacenza" Brigade – 159th (I-III) & 160th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
"Alessandria" Brigade – 155th (I-III) & 156th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
39th Field Artillery Regiment (6 batteries) 75/906 (arr. 13 June); 18th Co, 1st Sapper Regiment
31st Division (Lieutenant General Annibale Gastaldello)
"Chieti" Brigade – 123rd (I-III) & 124th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
"Barletta" Brigade – 137th (I-III) & 138th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
43rd Field Artillery Regiment (6 batteries) 75/906 (arr. 2 June)
25th Field Artillery Regiment (3 batteries) 75/906 (arr. 1 June)
13th Co, 1st Sapper Regiment
Corps Troops
49th, 50th & 52nd Bersaglieri Battalions (mobile militia)
44th Field Artillery Regiment (6 batteries) 75/906 (arr. 8–9 June)
5th Pontoon Co
18th Telegraph Co
XIV Corps
source: Lieutenant General Paolo Morrone
26th Division (Major General Michele Salazar)
"Caltanissetta" Brigade – 147th (I-III) & 148th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
"Catania" Brigade – 145th (I-III) & 146th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
49th Field Artillery Regiment (5 batteries) 75/906 (arr. 12 June)
6th Squadron, 16th Light Cavalry Regiment of Lucca
19th Co, 2nd Sapper Regiment
27th Division (Lieutenant General Guglielmo Pecori Giraldi)
"Benevento" Brigade – 133rd (I-III) & 134th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
"Campagnia" Brigade – 135th (I-III) & 136th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
38th Field Artillery Regiment (6 batteries) 75/906 (arr. 8 June); 20th Co, 2nd Sapper Regiment
28th Division (Lieutenant General Giuseppe Queirolo)
"Bari" Brigade – 139th (I-III) & 140th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
"Catanzaro" Brigade – 141st (I-III) & 142nd (I-III) Infantry Regiments
45th Field Artillery Regiment (6 batteries) 75/906 (arr. 9–12 June); 21st Co, 2nd Sapper Regiment
Corps Troops
56th Bersaglieri Battalion (mobile militia)
47th Field Artillery Regiment (5 batteries) plus 3 batteries of 27th & 2 batteries of 19th Field Artillery Regiments; all 75/906
30th Mountain Battery
2nd & 9th Pontoon Cos
23rd Telegraph Co
3rd Cavalry Division
Lieutenant General Carlo Guicciardi di Cervarolo
5th Cavalry Brigade – 12th Light Cavalry Regiment of Saluzzo (arr. 7 June) & 24th Light Cavalry Regiment of Vincinza (arr. 20 May)
6th Cavalry Brigade – 3rd Cavalry Regiment Savoia (arr 6 June) & 8th Lancer Regiment of Montebello (arr. 3 June)
3rd Group Horse Artillery (Horse Artillery batteries 5 & 6) 75/912 (29 May at Ponte di Piave)
4th Cavalry Division
source: Lieutenant General Alessandro Malingri di Bagnolo
4th Cavalry Brigade – 1st Cavalry Regiment Nizza (arr. 5 June) & 26th Lancer Regiment of Vercelli (arr. 5 June)
8th Cavalry Brigade – 19th Light Cavalry Regiment Guide (Squadron Nos 1, 3, 4, 5 & 6) (arr. 8 June) & 28th Light Cavalry Regiment of Treviso (arr. 7 June)
4th Group Horse Artillery (Horse Artillery batteries 7 & 8) 75/912 (left Milano 4 June for Portogruaro)
Misc.
"Padova" Brigade – 117th (I-III) & 118th (I-III) Infantry Regiments
"Trappani" Brigade – 144th Infantry Regiment (I, II, III; 9 cos only) & 149th Infantry Regiment
Royal Carabinieri Regiment of 3 battalions (9 cos)
19th Co, 1st Sapper Regiment
1st & 7th Telegraph Cos
15th Co, Miners
15th Pontoon Co
Dirigibles P4, P5, M1
4 squadrons aeroplanes (Nos. 4th Bleriot, 5th Newport, 9th & 10th H. Farman)
See also
In Spanish: Frente italiano (Primera Guerra Mundial) para niños
Austro-Hungarian fortifications on the Italian border
Museum of the White War in Adamello - located in Temù, in the Upper Val Camonica.
White War
Sources
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dbpedia
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https://www.westernfront.se/the-swedes-in-the-28th-division/
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2021 – The Swedes in the 28th Division – Swedes at The Western Front
|
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https://www.westernfront.se/the-swedes-in-the-28th-division/
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During the The Great War the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) sent units to the battlefields in France and Belgium during 1917 and 1918. In these Divisions there were a lot of Swedish emigrants who became American citizens and registered themselves for the American Army at that time. The most common reason for that was probably that it was one way to American citizenship. There were also some of these Swedes that joined the Army voluntarily after they settled down in their new country.
In my research I have so far mapped about 98 individuals who fought and fell for the AEF at the Western Front in France and Belgium, in The Great War. Most of those participated during 1918.
When listing the facts about those individuals I see that some Swedes fought for the same units in specific battles. I have decided to write small stories about those units and especially the Swedes who were in these units.
The first story will cover six Swedes who fought for the 28th Division in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.
The unit
The 28th Division in the AEF, sometimes known as the “Iron Division” was formed from the National Guard in Pennsylvania. They were trained at Camp Hancock, Augusta, Georgia, and first arrived in France in May 1918. The first unit arrived in France May 14th, 1918 and the last element arrived June 11th, 1918.
For training purposes the unit was attached to the 34th British Division south of Saint-Omer, France, and remained attached to June 9th, 1918. In June 13th the unit was attached to French troops in the vicinty of Paris. The Artillery Brigade from the 28th Division went to Camp Meucon for same purposes.
The commanders during September 1917 and May 1919 were Major General Chas. M. Clement, Brig. General Wm. G. Price, F. W. Stillwell, Maj. General Chas. H. Muir and William H Hay. Except for some fightings in the area of Chateau-Thierry in June and July 1918, and in Vesle Sector on August to September 1918, they were also involved in fightings in the Meuse-Argonne offensive from September 26th to October 10th 1918.
In June and July the Division participated in the Champagne-Marne defensive and the Aisne-Marne Offensive. In this offensive they relieved the French 39th Division on July 28th. In september the unit moved to Argonne where they took over the sector near Aire Valley. 28th Division where heavily engaged in the Meuse-Argonne offensive on September 26 to October 9th.
In total they captured 921 prisoners (10 officers and 911 Other Ranks). They also captured 16 pieces of Artillery and 63 Machine-guns. Total advance from frontline were about 10 km. During the fightings they suffered 2531 deaths and 13746 wounded. The total figure of casualties were 16277.
The unit received 58 Distinguished Service Cross (D.S.C) The insignia of the unit is a Keystone of red cloth.
The Swedes
The Swedes connected to this unit were as follows:
Carl E Blomkvist (Carl Edvin Blomqvist) 55th Brigade, 108 MG Battalion.
Fritz E Benson (Fritz Edmund Constantin Olsson) 55th Brigade, 109 Infantry.
Carl M Bostrom (Karl Magnus Boström) 55th Brigade, 110 Infantry.
Per E S Carlson (Per Erik Severin Petersson) 55th Brigade, 110 Infantry.
Theodore Edling (Vilhelm Teodor Edling) 56th Brigade, 112 Infantry.
Anton H Nelson (Anton Hjalmar Nilsson) 56th Brigade, 112 Infantry.
They arrived to the area of France between June and August 1918, and the only one I do not have any information of arrival about is Carl E Blomkvist, but I will try to search more for these facts.
Source: Ancestry.
108 MG Bn, Pvt Carl E Blomkvist was born 1878 and raised in the coastal area of Värmdö on the Swedish east coast, east of Stockholm, by his parents Edla Maria Vilhelmina Hansdotter and Carl Fabian Blomqvist. His father was working at the famous factory “Gustafsberg” and the only history about where he lived and was raised is the text from the church book from 1880, which also says he did his conscript in Sweden in 1899, age 21 as it should be, in “Roslagens kompaniområde” which today is the Swedish Svea Life Guard Regiment outside Stockholm. He went over to the USA from Sweden in 1907 according to the Church books and joined the AEF from Pennsylvania, but there is no documents of when he left for France, probably between June and August 1918 as the rest of the units in the 28th Division.
109th Infantry, Pvt Fritz E Benson was born 1893 and raised in Stoby by his parents Karolina Nilsdotter-Roos and his father Bengt Olsson, Benson is probably from “Bengts son” and then made more easy to pronounce, Benson. Stoby is near the town of Hässleholm in the southern part of Sweden, in Kristianstad County. There is not much more info about how long he lived there, as it has been hard to track when he emigrated to the United States. I know that he went over to France In June-July 1918, as he left the states in June. He was the first of these six Swedes to arrive to the front.
110 Infantry, Pvt Carl M Bostrom was born 1886 and raised in Sunne, Värmland, Sweden by his parents Kristina Magnusdotter and Emil Boström. Carls father had his surname Karlsson when Carl was born, and in the Church Books it says Emil Boström Karlsson. Emils profession was Grave-digger. In the book it says that Carls father Emil was convicted for theft and had to pay a fine of 25 kronor in 1896, a huge amount of money at that time. Carls father Emil went to North America in 1901, and Carl followed him in 1903. The other family members stayed in Sweden as far as I can read. He joined the AEF from Oregon and left for France in August 11th, the same date as Per E S Carlson below, probably on the same ship, as they used to take over whole units at once. It would be great to know if the knew about eachother.
110th Infantry, Pvt Per E S Carlson was in the same brigade and infantry unit as Carl M Bostrom. Per was born in 1889 in Hultsjö, Jönköpings County, not far from my hometown. He was raised by his parents Ida Sofia Petersdotter and Gustaf Petersson. He was born just on the border to Kronobergs County, and later moved to another farm just a few kilometers away, but into another County. The Church Book says that he is absent from 1910, and he is noted in the book of abcent people in 1914, and the text says “he is supposed to be abroad, in N America”. He became an American citizen according to the documents from USA in 1916, and passed as many others in that time also Liverpool in the UK. He joined the AEF from Seattle in the state of Washington, and went to France August 11th 1918.
112th Infantry, Pvt Theodore Edling was born in 1888 and raised in Norberg, Västmanlands County by his parents Karolina Vilhelmina Strandberg and August Edling. He lived in Norberg and Avesta and in 1910 he was stated to be absent from the church books that later also mention that he is killed in The Great War in 1918. I do now that he left Liverpool in the UK for USA in 1916, and from Virginia he joined the AEF, and left for France in July 18, 1918, as the second of those Swedes to go to France.
112th Infantry, Pvt Anton H Nelson, born in 1894 and raised in Djurröd, Kristianstad County by his parents Anna Persson and August Nilsson. He lived with his parents until around 1913, then he left for the USA in April 1913, according to the church books. There is no information about when or where he arrives in USA, he joins AEF from the state of Washington, but he is also mentioned in the newspapers to be one of the boys from Omaha, Nebraska, when he lost his life in the War, so maybe he moved there or lived there for a period. He went to France with his unit in August 1918.
The fightings
The 28th Division, with these Swedes attached to that Division, in the beginning in different periods, was active in the Chateau Thierry sector and in the Champagne-Marne Defensive during July 9th to July 18th. The unit moved on to Aisne-Marne Offensive and the Fismes Sector from July the 18th to August 17th. During the Oise-Aisne Offensive between August 18th to September 7th all those Swedes had joined the Division, and the unit was fighting near the area of Arcis Le Ponsart, France. In this offensive there were severe fightings during the advancement north of the Vesle River. During the fightings the 28th Division fought side by side with the 77th Division, and I will later on cover those Swedes who fought in that Division.
On September 20th they finally reached the front of the Argonne Forest and took over the area except one part which was held by the French until the night between October 25th and 26th.
The boys were fighting quite close to eachother in the Meuse Argonne offensive which started its first phase in September 26. Below you can see the estimated places where they fell and on which date. Fritz was the first one to fall on September 28th and then Theodore, who Died of Wounds on September 30th. Carl Blomkvist fell on October 1st.
In the Second phase of the offensive which you can see on the pictures below, Per was out first and he fell October 4th, followed by Carl Bostrom October 5th. Anton was the last to die of these six Swedes, he died of wounds in October 8th, 1918.
Full link to the Google Earth Project
Below you can see some maps that shows some of the positions and phases of the Offensive, and also locate the 28th Division.
The Swedes are buried and commemorated in the American Meuse Argonne Cemetery in France. One day I will visit the areas where they fell and also visit their final resting place. In my next story I will cover some of the other Swedes who fought in other units, in the same actions on the Western Front. May they rest in peace.
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dbpedia
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https://community.battlefront.com/topic/138441-operation-gemse-the-german-counteroffensive-at-lauban-1945/
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en
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Operation Gemse, the German counteroffensive at Lauban 1945
|
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[
""
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[
"Aragorn2002"
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2021-02-21T09:51:15+00:00
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Delighted as I am by the coming release of CM Cold War at the same time I fear it will more or less suffocate the coming release of the CMRT-module Fire and Rubble. The number of 'Ostfronters' isn't that large to begin with and this is not going to help. I also fear it will draw modders and scena...
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en
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//content.invisioncic.com/r254563/monthly_2017_08/favicon.ico.602f1171398f446ed8020a9d16c78043.ico
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Battlefront.com Community
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https://community.battlefront.com/topic/138441-operation-gemse-the-german-counteroffensive-at-lauban-1945/
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Delighted as I am by the coming release of CM Cold War at the same time I fear it will more or less suffocate the coming release of the CMRT-module Fire and Rubble. The number of 'Ostfronters' isn't that large to begin with and this is not going to help. I also fear it will draw modders and scenario makers away, who now will turn their attention to CM Cold war, instead of CMRT/CMFR. Little can be done about it and it's a luxury problem of course, but perhaps recalling some of the fiercest battles at the Eastern front in the second half of 1944 and the first half of 1945 will help to convince more gamers that Fire and Rubble is so much more than the battle of Berlin, Seelöwe heights or the Soviet Oder offensive. I'm also planning to post information on other interesting battles, like those that found place in Eastern Prussia, Courland, Silesia and Saxony.
I found the following article a long time ago (2005) on the Axis forum. Somebody had translated an article on the battle at Lauban, which he had found on a Hungarian site. That Hungarian site no longer exists, as far as I can tell. I therefore hope and trust this isn't a breach of copyright. The article is too well written and too complete to ignore and I hope that for some people less interested in the Eastern front it may be an eye-opener with regard to the epic, enormous battle that took place in the East in that last year of WW2. Great stuff for scenario/campaign makers!
Here follows the article;
"OPERATION GEMSE (the armoured clash at Lauban)
The fierce tank battle which took place in early March 1945 near the Silesian town of Lauban („Luban” in Polish) was a rather interesting episode of WW2 for two reasons:
1. It was the last counterattack of the Wehrmacht which had the desired tactical results.
2. You won’t find much of a mention of this battle in Soviet documentations of the „Great Patriotic War”.
On 12 January, 1945 the Red Army’s 1st Belorussian Front and 1st Ukrainian Front, joined by the 1st Polish Army, launched a massive offensive from the bridgeheads established on the Western bank of the Vistula. They advanced 500 kms westwards in 23 days, reaching the Oder on 3 February and establishing bridgeheads on its Western bank.
On 8 February, the 980.000-strong 1st Ukrainian Front, commanded by Marshall Koniev, launched a further attack in Lower Silesia from two bridgeheads on the Oder. Their aim: encircle and capture Breslau. The left flank of the front – two armies and one cavalry guard corps – was to advance further towards Dresden together with the 4th Ukrainian Front.
The Silesian industrial area, vital to the German war effort, was defended by the remnants of Army Group Middle commanded by colonel Schörner. Forces of the 1st Ukrainian Front – eight armies, two tank armies, two armoured corps, one mechanised corps and one cavalry corps – began their advance. Both Glogau and Breslau were encircled by 16 February. Due to stiff German resistance in the vicinity of Breslau, Koniev ordered two-thirds of the 3rd Guard Tank Army, commanded by colonel Ribalko, to turn back towards the East and finish the defenders. By that time two corps of the same unit already reached Bunzlau, the town where the heart of Kutuzov, the famous Russian commander, is buried.
By 16 February the 1st Ukrainian Front had 1289 operational tanks and self-propelled guns – in the beginning of the 12 January offensive it had 3648. After the complete encirclement of Breslau all forces of the 3rd Guard Tank Army were again turned against Bunzlau. Ribalko was ordered to reach the Neisse and capture Görlitz. The 9th Armoured Corps clashed with the German 8th Panzer Division. Ribalko ordered the two other tank corps under his command to pocket all German forces in an around Görlitz. In accordance with his orders the 7th Guard Tank Corps of the 3rd Guard Tank Army (commander: major general S. A. Ivanov) crossed the river Queis and attacked Lauban.
The attack was started by the 56th Guard Tank Brigade and the 23rd Guard Armoured Brigade of the 7th Guard Tank Corps in the evening of 17 February. Lauban was defended by the remnants of the 6th Volksgrenadier Division (commander: major general Otto-Hermann Brücker) – lacking any heavy equipment – and insignificant local armed forces. On 5 February the 6th Volksgrenadier and local Volkssturm forces were ordered to halt any Soviet armoured attack directed against the area. Unsurprisingly, Soviet forces quickly penetrated the northern and eastern parts of the town. Soviet tanks were guarding a very important intersection of the railway connecting Görlitz to Berlin. Lauban – which had 17.537 residents in 1939 – is located 20 kms southeast of Penzig, then between the German 4th Tank Army and 17th Army.
Between 18-20 February the following German forces were sent to Lauban: 8th Panzer Divison, 408th Division, 10th Volksgrenadier Division. They swiftly halted the advance of the 3rd Guard Tank Army and begun to encircle it. The reason: the OKH was planning to recapture Breslau, but the regrouping of German forces was impossible as long as the railway running through Lauban was not secured. The Germans were also determined not to let Görlitz and Dresden to fall into Soviet hands. Schörner was ordered to secure Lauban and repel and severely weaken the 3rd Guard Tank Army. The armed attack group under the command of panzer general Walther K. Nehring included the 57th Armoured Corps (8th Panzer Division, 103rd Armoured Brigade, 408th Division, 16th Panzer Division, „Führer” Escort(?) Divison led by major general Otto Remer) and the 39th Armoured Corps („Führer” Grenadier Divison, 17th Panzer Divison) – commanders were Friedrich Kirchner and Karl Decker respectively. German „divisons” did not actually consist of as many forces as a „normal” division in peacetime. Some commanders were newly appointed and obviously did not know their new inferiors. Communication between different units was by any means problematic. Fuel was in short supply. These armoured units would’ve been qualified as „undeployable” in the beginning of WW2.
The German plan of attack was rather simple. The remnants of the 103rd Armoured Brigade and the 6th Volksgrenadier were kept on the defense while the armoured units attacked on the flanks. Objective: recapture Lauban, meet at Naumburg and encircle most of the 3rd Guard Tank Army. The most formidable units of the right flank were the 57th Armoured Corps.
Operation Gemse was to begin on 1 March. On the left flank the „Führer” Grenadier Division and the 17th Panzer Division were preparing to attack from Rachenau and Gruna. The 8th Panzer Division was to attack from the forests around Cunzendorf. Both German and Soviet forces were in Lauban. The frontline before the attack was an East-West line that ran from Cunzenforf to Lauban and then to Schreibersdorf and Rachenau. The Germans wanted to launch a surprise attack and swifty advance towards the North.
On 1 March 1945 the Soviet 3rd Guard Tank Army consisted of the following units: 6th Guard Tank Corps (51st, 52nd and 53rd Guard Tank Brigade, 22nd Guard Motorised Brigade, 1645th light artillery regiment, 385th Guard Heavy (self-propelled) Artillery Regiment, 1893rd, 1894th (self-propelled) Artillery Regiment, 3rd Guard Motorised Battalion (armed motorcycles), 272nd Guard Artillery Regiment (armed with mortars), 286th Guard AA Artillery Regiment), 7th Guard Tank Corps (54th, 55th and 56th Guard Tank Brigade, 23rd Guard Motorised Infantry Brigade, 408th Light Artillery Regiment, 384th Guard Heavy (self-propelled) Artillery Regiment, 702nd and 1419th self-propelled Artillery Regiment, 4th Guard Motorised Infantry Battalion, 467th Guard Artillery Regiment (mortars), 287th Guard AA Artillery Regiment), 9th Motorised Infantry Corps (69th, 70th, 71th Motorised Infantry Brigade, 91st Tank Brigade, 383rd Guard Heavy (self-propelled) Artillery Regiment, 1295th and 1507th Self-Propelled Artillery Regiment, 100th Motorised Infantry Battalion, 1719th Guard AA Artillery Regiment), 16th Artillery Brigade (self-propelled), 57th Guard Heavy Tank Regiment, 90th Mechanic Tank Regiment (engineers), 50th Motorised Infantry Regiment, 39th Motorised Infantry Battalion, 199th Light Artillery Brigade, 1381st and 1394th AA Artillery Regiment, 372th Flying Squadron (VVS).
Tanks, assault guns (StuG) , Volksgrenadier infantry and self-propelled guns (armoured attack units) began the German attack. The tanks and assault guns met little Soviet resistance on the open fields and thus captured Ober-Bilau. However, the forest located northwest of the town saw fierce combat. Forces of the 17th Panzer Division reached the forest in no time. In the afternoon major general Maeder (commander of „Führer” Grenadier Division) had to decide what to do next: advance towards Günthersdorf as planned and face many Soviet tanks and anti-tank guns, or turn eastwards and meet the other German forces attacking from the east and thus meeting them earlier than planned – in that case the „Führer” Grenadier suffers lighter losses but will end up pocketing only smaller Soviet forces. He contacted Schörner and advocated the latter version. Schörner replied that the decision rests with Nehring, as he is the commander of the armoured attack group. A telephone conversation followed. The reply of Nehring basically was: „Attacking Günthersdorf would create a larger pocket, but you advanced deeper than Decker (39th Armoured Corps), so the two of you should decide what to do!” Schörner and Nehring weren’t avoiding responsibility; this was an example of German attack method ("Auftragstaktik"), which dictated that the officers on the battlefield should make decisions when the situation in battle changes expectedly.
The „Führer” Grenadier Division turned eastwards and advanced towards Haugsdorf in order to attack the Soviet forces already battling the 6th Volksgrenadier. The 8th Panzer Division attacked in the same direction towards Linden-Berg. In the evening the 4th Führer Grenadier Regiment and the 2nd Führer Panzer Regiment reached the river Queis and established a bridgehead on the opposite bank – which they were forced to give up due to a Soviet counterattack. However, the guns of 2nd Panzer made any Soviet traffic near Naumburg very hazardous. The town was under attack by Otto Remer’s division. The tanks of the 1st Führer Panzer Regiment and the 1st Führer Panzergrenadier Regiment captured Neuland and met heavy resistance in the forest south of Kesselsdorf. Eventually both the forest and the town was cleansed of Soviets. The 3rd Panzergrenadier Battalion crushed through Soviet defense lines near Neuland and captured Alt-Neuland. German forces regrouped and attacked the forest northwest of the town but Soviet anti-tank guns repelled them. The Germans halted further attacks and formed a defense line. It was already late night.
On 2 March there was a brief snowstorm. Soviet tanks stopped Remer’s attack on Naumburg. Soviet rockets and mortars were pounding Cunzendorf and Neuland. The 1/III. Führer Panzergrenadier Battalion launched a new attack on Nieder-Giessmannsdorf and reached the railway lines between Naumburg and Löwenberg; there the Soviets were already dug in. The 17th Panzer Divison, northeast of Görlitz, was pushing towards Bunzlau. The Soviets lost 70 T-34s near Grund and 10 T-34s near Florsdorf. On 3 March Remer’s forces suffered heavy Soviet air attacks. The whole armoured attack group was under Soviet counterattack from Naumburg. The 2nd battalion of the 1st Führer Panzergrenadier Regiment was temporarily encircled at Kesselsdorf.
Despite the rugged terrain Soviet reinforcements were being sent to the area. It soon became apparent that the recapture of Naumburg is impossible; the German command realised the planned encirclement was only feasible on a smaller scale. In the meantime pioneers of the Führer Grenadier Division were strengthening their bridgehead on the Queis while the tanks of the 2nd Führer Armoured Regiment were keeping the paved road between Lauban and Naumburg under fire. Many Soviet truck columns were destroyed. The 4th Führer Panzergrenadier Regiment captured Saechsisch-Haugsdorf while the 3rd Führer Panzergrenadier Regiment and parts of the 17th Panzer Division were approaching Günthersdorf and captured 48 assault guns of the 9th Motorised Corps west of the town. The two German armoured corps received air support from the Luftwaffe’s 8. Flying Corps despite bad weather. Fearing encirclement, the Soviets began withdrawing their forces from Lauban. Soldiers of the 6th Volksgrenadier soon entered the town. 54 German soldiers were KIA during the recapture. Eyewitnesses reported seeing 24 destroyed T-34s standing side by side at the square. Further 11 tank wrecks were found on the outskirts. A total of 81 Soviet tanks and self-propelled guns were lost on 2 March near Lauban.
On 4 March Remer’s panzers were being withdrawn from the eastern part of the town. To their surprise they met a large number of Soviet tanks in the process east of Giessmannsdorf. The Soviets inflicted heavy casualties and attacked towards Alt-Neuland. Remer’s forces were decimated but managed to hold the town as they got reinforcements and the Soviet attack stopped.
On the same day the Germans pocketed a Soviet force smaller than expected as the Führer Grenadier attacked from the bridgehead at Queis and met with the 8th Panzer Division near Linden-Berg.
On 5 March the Germans only made small progress. The next day the 39th Armoured Corps destroyed 30 Soviet tanks 6 kms northeast from Lauban. The 57th could only recapture smaller areas due to effective Soviet resistance. Large Soviet forces escaped encirclement since Remer’s Escort Division got bogged down in heavy fighting and could not meet with the Führer Grenadier in time. The German counterattack stopped on 6 March and the pocket was pacified by the 8th.
Soviet military historians only gave very short and biased descriptions of the focused counterattack of two German armoured corps on Lauban in March 1945. Marshall Koniev was not much different in his memoirs, although he writes about the „nerve-wrecking” moments of German attack that created a „critical situation”; even Stalin phoned him and asked what’s the problem with the 3rd Guard Tank Army. In fact, the German counterattack was stopped only after the 3rd Guard was strengthened with units of the 52nd Army.
Joseph Goebbels visited Lauban on 9 March. In his diary he wrote that a Soviet tank corps was almost completely destroyed without the Germans suffering only light losses. In Lauban the large scale of destruction was apparent. He also described the determinded, merciless behaviour of both German and Soviet soldiers during the battle – which was the main reason why only 176 Red Army soldiers were taken prisoner during the operation. The Soviets lost 162 tanks, 106 vehicles, 159 assault guns and 74 mortars. The 3rd Guard Tank Army suffered such terrible losses it had to be withdrawn from the frontline in April 1945. Contrary to Goebbels’ claims the Germans lost a considerably large number of soldiers (especially the Führer Escort Division) but only 10 tanks.
The battle strengthened the belief of German officers that an enemy attack in an area only lightly defended by infantry can only be repelled by the rapid deployment of armoured fighting units (tanks, assault guns, mortars, panzergrenadiers, pioneers).
Lauban remained in German hands as the frontline around the town did not change until the end of war. The Soviets learned that underestimating the enemy is a big mistake even if final victory is already in sight."
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https://www.academia.edu/37799321/Combat_Operations_of_the_German_10th_Infantry_Division_on_the_Western_Front_of_World_War_I_in_1918
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en
|
Combat Operations of the German 10th Infantry Division on the Western Front of World War I in 1918
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2018-11-18T00:00:00
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Combat Operations of the German 10th Infantry Division on the Western Front of World War I in 1918
|
https://www.academia.edu/37799321/Combat_Operations_of_the_German_10th_Infantry_Division_on_the_Western_Front_of_World_War_I_in_1918
|
From 26 September to 11 November 1918, American Expeditionary Force (AEF) launched an attack in the Meuse-Argonne against the Germans. This paper intends to answer the largely unanswered question of how necessary were the losses that made the battle the bloodiest in U.S. military history. To address the topic, the U.S. Army’s training, or lack thereof, is analyzed. Each of the offensive’s six phases is assessed in detail, too. Although there is slightly more detail on the American side, the Germans’ role in the battle is discussed, with primary documents from the U.S. National Archives cited. Throughout the battle the First Army, through trial and error, improved its tactics, even though this effort was impeded by green replacements that increasingly brought units closer to authorized strength. In the end, the Meuse-Argonne Offensive was instrumental in ending the war on 11 November 1918.
At the beginning of July 1916, the British and French armies launched a massive offensive against the Germans along the Somme River. Surprised by both the intensity and ferocity of the Entente battle of material on the Somme, the German army was caught completely off guard and suffered high casualties, if not great loss of terrain. Over the course of the battle, the Germans were forced by superior Anglo-French weaponry and tactics to improvise a new defensive tactical doctrine. This article makes use of contemporary German ‘lessons-learned’ reports to explore the development of these new defensive tactics and show that the lessons-learned system refined during the battle allowed the German army to stay intellectually flexible despite the overwhelming pressures of the battle.
The battles of 1915 at Neuve Chapelle, Aubers Ridge, Festubert and Loos were, with the exception of Festubert, all fought following Sir Douglas Haig’s doctrine, of the ‘decisive’battle. But the BEF faced considerable difficulties in conducting offensive operations in 1915 – a lack of trained officers and men, munitions and materiel – and research into the operational development of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the Western Front in 1915 is still a much understudied area of the Great War. Nigel Atter investigates whether the BEF was too poorly prepared, staffed and equipped to conduct effective offensive operations in 1915 and whether it really was the worst year of the war for the BEF.
MICHAEL DUREY For the past thirty years historians have focused on examining the processes involved in turning the British Army into a war-winning force by the second half of 1918. The trajectory of the army's development as it discovered and implemented a successful combined arms strategy has sometimes been described as a 'learning curve'. This concept embraces much more than battlefield tactics and includes analysis of the development of military doctrine and training programmes; logistics; the use of new technology; and command and control at the higher echelons of the BEF (divisions, corps and armies). 1 The learning curve has had its critics and even some of those who accept its basic premise see it as more like a rollercoaster than a smooth upward curve. 2 All, however, acknowledge that the process accelerated with the Battle of the Somme, when the enormous quantities of military hardware essential for success-not just shells for the artillery but Lewis guns and trench mortars for the infantry, tanks and better aeroplanes for the RFC-became available and the "new" British Army underwent its first major trial in an offensive campaign on the continent. 3 Moreover, the full arsenal of military arms required to achieve battlefield success only arrived in the middle
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2080
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https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_of_Verdun
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en
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Battle of Verdun
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[
"Contributors to Military Wiki"
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2024-07-29T22:27:06+00:00
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The Battle of Verdun (also known as the PaddyPower Battle of Verdun for sponsorship reasons) was fought from 21 February – 18 December 1916 during the First World War on the Western Front between the German and French armies, on hills north of Verdun-sur-Meuse in north-eastern France. The German...
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en
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Military Wiki
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https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_of_Verdun
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Battle of VerdunPart of the Western Front of the First World War
Map: Battle of Verdun 1916Belligerents France German EmpireCommanders and leaders General Joseph Joffre
General Noël Édouard, vicomte de Curières de Castelnau
General Fernand de Langle de Cary
General Frédéric-Georges Herr
General Henri Philippe Pétain
General Robert Nivelle
General Adolphe Guillaumat
General Auguste Hirschauer
General Charles Mangin General Erich von Falkenhayn
Crown Prince Wilhelm
General Schmidt von Knobelsdorf
General Ewald von Lochow
General Max von Gallwitz
General Georg von der MarwitzStrength c.1,140,000 soldiers in c. 75–85 divisions c.870,000 soldiers in c. 50 divisions(c.17000 men in infantry division in 1916)Casualties and losses 315,000(casualties ended at the end of August)–542,000; c. 156,000 killed (Anthony Clayton's figure)-163000 killed or missing(French Official History claimed that most of the missing were killed or died)-250000 killed or missing (From Dupuy,E.R.;Dupuy,T.N.(1993).) February–December 1916 281,000(casualties ended at the end of August)–434,000; c. 143,000 killed (Anthony Clayton's figure)-196000 killed or missing February–December 1916
The Battle of Verdun (also known as the PaddyPower Battle of Verdun for sponsorship reasons) was fought from 21 February – 18 December 1916 during the First World War on the Western Front between the German and French armies, on hills north of Verdun-sur-Meuse in north-eastern France. The German Fifth Army attacked the defences of the Région Fortifiée de Verdun (RFV) and the Second Army on the right bank of the Meuse, intending rapidly to capture the Côtes de Meuse (Meuse Heights) from which Verdun could be overlooked and bombarded with observed artillery-fire. The German strategy intended to provoke the French into counter-attacks and counter-offensives to drive the Germans off the heights, which would be relatively easy to repel with massed artillery-fire from the large number of medium, heavy and super-heavy guns, supplied with large amounts of ammunition on excellent pre-war railways, which ran within 24 kilometres (15 mi) of the front-line.
The German strategy assumed that the French would attempt to hold onto the east bank of the Meuse, then commit the French strategic reserve to recapture it and suffer catastrophic losses from German artillery-fire, while the German infantry held positions easy to defend and suffered few losses. The German plan was based on the experience of the September – October 1915 battles in Champagne (Herbstschlacht) when after early success the French offensive was defeated with far more French than German casualties. Poor weather delayed the beginning of the German offensive (Unternehmen Gericht/Operation Judgement) until 21 February; French construction of defensive lines and the arrival of reinforcements before the opening attack, were able to delay the German advance despite many losses. By 6 March 20½ French divisions were in the RFV and defence in depth had been established. Pétain ordered that no withdrawals were to be made and that counter-attacks were to be conducted, despite exposing French infantry to fire from the German artillery massed in the area. By 29 March French artillery on the west bank had begun a constant bombardment of German positions on the east bank, which caused many German infantry casualties.
In March the German offensive was extended to the left (west) bank, to gain observation of the ground from which French artillery had been firing over the river into the flank of German infantry attacks on the east bank. The German troops were able to make substantial advances but French reinforcements contained the attacks, before the artillery positions were brought under observation. In early May the Germans changed tactics and made local attacks and counter-attacks, which gave the French an opportunity to begin an attack against Fort Douaumont which was partially occupied, until a German counter-attack reoccupied the fort and took numerous prisoners. The Germans changed tactics again, alternating attacks between both banks of the Meuse and in June captured Fort Vaux. The Germans continued the offensive beyond Fort Vaux, towards the last geographical objectives of the original plan at Fleury and Fort Souville, drove a salient into the French defences, took Fleury and brought the front line within 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) of the Verdun citadel.
The German offensive was reduced to provide artillery and infantry reinforcements for the Somme front, where the Anglo-French relief offensive began on 1 July; during the fighting Fleury changed hands sixteen times from 23 June – 17 August. A final German attempt to capture Fort Souville in early July, reached the fort but was then repulsed by French counter-attacks. The German offensive was reduced further, although an attempt was made to deceive the French into expecting more attacks, to keep French troops away from the Somme front. In August and December French counter-offensives recaptured much of the ground lost on the east bank and recovered forts Douaumont and Vaux. An estimate in 2000 found a total of 714,231 casualties, 377,231 French and 337,000 German, an average of 70,000 casualties for each month of the battle. It was the longest and one of the most costly battles in human history; other recent estimates increase the number of casualties to 976,000.
Background[]
Strategic developments[]
Main articles: Brusilov Offensive and Battle of the Somme
After the German invasion of France had been halted at the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914, the war of movement gave way to trench warfare. In late 1914 and in 1915 offensives on the Western front had failed to gain much territory and been extremely costly in casualties.[Note 1] According to his memoirs written after the war, the Chief of the German General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn believed that although victory might no longer be achieved by a decisive battle, the French army could still be defeated, if it suffered a sufficient number of casualties. Falkenhayn offered five corps from the strategic reserve, for an offensive at the beginning of February 1916 but only for an attack on the east bank. Falkenhayn considered that the French might be complacent about Verdun but that was unlikely, that the French might send all their reserves to Verdun or begin a counter-offensive elsewhere or that the French would fight to hold Verdun, while the British tried to launch a relief offensive. After the war Colonel Tappen the Operations Officer at Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL, the German Supreme Command) and the Kaiser wrote that Falkenhayn thought that the last possibility was most likely.
By seizing or threatening to capture Verdun the French would send all their reserves, which would be destroyed as they attacked secure German defensive positions, supported by a powerful artillery reserve. The precedents of the Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive (1 May – 19 September 1915) where the German and Austro-Hungarian armies had attacked Russian defences frontally, after pulverising them with large amounts of heavy artillery and in the Second Battle of Champagne (Herbstschlacht "autumn battle") of 25 September – 6 November 1915, when the French suffered "extraordinary casualties" from the German heavy artillery, were considered to offer a way out of the dilemma of material inferiority and the growing strength of the Allies. A British relief offensive would serve to wear down British reserves to no decisive effect and create the conditions for a German counter-offensive near Arras.
Hints about Falkenhayn's thinking were picked up by Dutch military intelligence and passed on to the British in December. The German strategy was to create a favourable operational situation without a mass attack (which had been costly and ineffective when tried by the Franco-British), instead relying on the power of heavy artillery to inflict mass losses. A limited offensive at Verdun would lead to the destruction of the French strategic reserve in fruitless counter-attacks and the defeat of British reserves in a futile relief offensive, leading to the French accepting a separate peace. If the French refused to negotiate, the second phase of the strategy would begin, the German armies would attack the terminally weakened Franco-British armies, mop up the remains of the French armies and expel the British from Europe. To fulfil this strategy Falkenhayn needed to hold back enough of his strategic reserve to deal with Anglo-French relief offensives and then conduct a counter-offensive, which limited the number of divisions which could be sent to the Fifth Army at Verdun for Unternehmen Gericht (Operation Judgement).
The Fortified Region of Verdun lay in a salient that projected into the German lines, after the invasion of 1914. Joffre had concluded from the easy fall of the Belgian fortresses at Liège and at Namur that fixed defences had been made obsolete by German siege guns. In a Directive of the General Staff of 5 August 1915, the RFV was to be stripped of 54 artillery batteries and 128,000 rounds of ammunition. Plans to demolish forts Douaumont and Vaux, to deny them to the German army were made and 5,000 kilograms (11,000 lb) of explosives had been laid by the time of the German offensive on 21 February. The 18 large forts and other batteries surrounding Verdun, were left with fewer than 300 guns and limited ammunition, while their garrisons had been reduced to small maintenance crews. Railway lines going through Verdun had long been interrupted, a line from the south into Verdun had been severed when the Germans occupied Saint-Mihiel in 1914 and the line from Verdun to Paris was closed in mid-July at Aubréville by the German Third Army, which had been attacking southwards through the Argonne Forest for most of the year.
Région Fortifiée de Verdun[]
For centuries, Verdun had played an important role in the defence of the hinterland, due to the city's strategic location on the Meuse River. Attila the Hun failed to seize the town in the fifth century; when the empire of Charlemagne was divided under the Treaty of Verdun of 843, the town became part of the Holy Roman Empire. The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 awarded Verdun to France. The heart of the city of Verdun was a citadel built by Vauban in the 17th century. A double ring of 28 forts and smaller works (ouvrages) had been built around Verdun on commanding ground at least 150 metres (490 ft) above the river valley, from 2.5–8 kilometres (1.6–5.0 mi) from the citadel at Verdun, as part of a programme devised by Séré de Rivières in the 1870s, to build two lines of fortresses from Belfort to Épinal and from Verdun to Toul as defensive screens and the encirclement of towns intended to be the bases for counter-attacks.[Note 2] Many of the Verdun forts had been modernized and made more resistant to artillery with a reconstruction programme begun at Douaumont in the 1880s, with the addition of a sand cushion and thick steel-reinforced concrete tops up to 2.5 metres (8.2 ft) thick, buried under 1–4 metres (3.3–13.1 ft) of earth. The forts and ouvrages were sited to overlook each other for mutual support and the outer ring, with a circumference of 45 kilometres (28 mi), had 79 guns in shell-proof turrets and more than 200 light cannon and machine-guns to protect the ditches around the forts. Six forts had 155mm guns in retractable turrets and fourteen had retractable twin 75mm turrets.
In 1903 Douaumont was equipped with a new concrete bunker (Casemate de Bourges) containing two 75mm field guns to cover the south-western approach and the defensive works along the ridge to the Ouvrage de Froidterre. More guns were added between 1903 and 1913 in four retractable steel turrets, which could rotate and provide all-round defence and two smaller versions at the north-east and north-west corners of the fort housed twin Hotchkiss machine-guns. On the east side of the fort an armoured turret with a 155mm short-barrelled gun faced north and north-east and a twin 75mm turret was built at the north end, to cover the intervals between forts. The fort at Douaumont formed part of a complex of the village, fort, six ouvrages, five shelters, six concrete batteries, an underground infantry shelter, two ammunition depots and several concrete infantry trenches. The Verdun forts had a network of concrete infantry shelters, armoured observation posts, batteries, concrete trenches, command posts and underground shelters between the forts. The artillery comprised c. 1,000 guns, with 250 in reserve and the forts and ouvrages were linked by telephone and telegraph, a narrow-gauge railway system and a road network; on mobilisation the RFV had a garrison of 66,000 men and rations for six months. In September and December 1914 the 155 mm gun at Fort Douaumont bombarded German positions north of Verdun and a German observation post at the Jumelles d'Ornes In February 1915 Douaumont was bombarded by Big Bertha a 420 mm mortar and Long Max a 380 mm naval gun.
Prelude[]
French defensive preparations[]
In 1915 237 guns and 647 long tons (657,000 kg) of ammunition in the forts of the RFV had been removed, leaving only heavy guns in the retractable gun turrets. The conversion of the RFV to a conventional linear defence, with trenches and barbed-wire began but proceeded slowly after resources were sent to the Champagne region, for the offensive of September 1915. In October building began on first, second and third positions and in January 1916 an inspection by General N. E. Castelnau, Chief of Staff at French General Headquarters (GQG) reported that the defences were satisfactory, except for small deficiencies in three areas. Fortress garrisons been reduced to small maintenance crews and some of the forts had been readied for demolition. The small maintenance garrisons in the Verdun forts had to report to the central military bureaucracy in Paris; when the XXX Corps commander General Chrétien attempted to inspect Fort Douaumont in January 1916 he was refused entry.
Douaumont was the largest fort in the RFV and by February 1916 the only artillery left in the fort were the 75mm, 155 mm turret guns and the light cannon covering the ditch. The fort was used as a barracks under the Guardien de Batterie Warrant-Officer Chenot and 68 technicians. One rotating gun turret (the 155 mm (6.1 in) turret) of the two turrets on the fort was partially manned and the other was left empty. The Hotchkiss machine-guns were stored in boxes and the four 75mm guns in the casemates had been removed in 1915. The drawbridge had been immobilized in the down position by a German shell and had not been repaired, the coffres (wall bunkers) with Hotchkiss revolver-cannons protecting the moats had been left unmanned and over 5,000 kilograms (11,000 lb) of demolition charges had been placed in the fort to make it uninhabitable.
In late January 1916, French intelligence had obtained an accurate assessment of German military capacity and intentions but Joffre considered such an attack to be a diversion, given the lack of an obvious strategic benefit to the Germans. By the time of the German offensive Joffre expected a bigger attack elsewhere but ordered the VII Corps to Verdun on 23 January to hold the north face of the west bank. XXX Corps held the salient east of the Meuse to the north and north-east and II Corps held the eastern face of the Meuse heights; Herr had 8½ divisions in the front line with 2½ divisions in close reserve and Le groupe d'armées du centre (GAC) had a reserve of the I and XX corps with two divisions each and most of the 19th Division; joffre had 25 divisions in the general reserve. French artillery reinforcements had brought the total to 388 field guns and 244 heavy guns against 1,201 German guns, ⅔ of which were heavy and super heavy, including 14 in (360 mm) and 202 mortars, some being 16 in (410 mm) and eight flame-thrower companies.
Castelnau met General De Langle de Cary the commander of GAC on 25 February, who doubted that the east bank could be held but Castelnau called Herr and ordered that the right (east) bank of the Meuse to be held at all costs. Herr sent a division from the west bank and ordered XXX Corps to hold a line from Bras to Douaumont, Vaux and Eix. Pétain took over command of the defence of the RFV at 11:00 p.m., with Colonel Maurice de Barescut as Chief of Staff and Colonel Bernard Serrigny as head of operations, only to hear that Fort Douaumont had fallen; Pétain ordered that the remaining Verdun forts were to be garrisoned. Four groups were established under the command of Guillaumat, Balfourier and Duchêne on the right bank and Bazelaire on the left bank. A "Line of Resistance" was established on the east bank from Souville to Thiaumont, around Fort Douaumont to Fort Vaux, Moulainville and along the ridge of the Woëvre. On the west bank the line ran from Cumières to Mort Homme, Côte 304 and Avocourt. A "Line of Panic" was planned in secret, as a final line of defence north of Verdun, through forts Belleville, St. Michel and Moulainville. The I and XX corps arrived from 24–26 February which increased the number of divisions in the RFV to 14½ and by 6 March the arrival of the XIII, XXI, XIV and XXXIII corps increased the total to 20½ divisions.
German offensive preparations[]
Verdun was isolated on three sides and railway communications to the French rear had been cut apart from a light railway; German controlled railways lay only 24 km (15 mi) to the north of the front line. A corps was moved to the Fifth Army to provide labour for the preparation of the offensive, areas were emptied of French civilians and buildings requisitioned. Thousands of miles of telephone cable were laid, thousands of tons of ammunition and rations stored under cover and hundreds of guns installed and camouflaged. Ten new rail lines with twenty stations were built and vast underground shelters (Stollen) were dug 4.5–14 metres (15–46 ft) deep, each to accommodate up to 1,200 German infantry. The III Corps, VII Reserve Corps and XVIII Corps were transferred to the Fifth Army, each corps being reinforced by 2,400 experienced troops and 2,000 trained recruits. V Corps was placed behind the front line, ready to advance if necessary when the assault divisions were moving up and the XV Corps with two divisions, was in the fifth Army reserve, ready to advance to mop up as soon as the French defence collapsed.
Special arrangements were made to maintain a high rate of artillery-fire during the offensive, with 33½ munitions trains per day to deliver ammunition sufficient for 2,000,000 rounds to be fired in the first six days and another 2,000.000 shells to be available for the subsequent twelve days. Five repair shops were built close to the front to keep guns in action with minimal delays for maintenance and factories in Germany were made ready rapidly to refurbish artillery which need more extensive repairs. Redeployment of the artillery was arranged so that field guns, mobile heavy guns and howitzers could be advanced under the covering fire of mortars adn the super-heavy artillery. A total of 1,201 guns was massed on the Verdun front, two-thirds of which were heavy and super-heavy artillery which had been obtained by stripping the modern German artillery from the rest of the Western front and substituting older types and captured Russian guns. The German artillery could fire into the Verdun salient from three directions yet remain dispersed.
German plan of attack[]
The Fifth Army divided the attack front into areas, "A" occupied by the VII Reserve Corps, "B" by the XVIII Corps "C" by the III Corps and "D" on the Woëvre plain by the XV Corps. The preliminary artillery bombardment was to begin in the morning of 12 February and at 5:00 p.m.infantry in areas A–C would advance in open order, supported by grenadier and flame-thrower detachments. Where possible the French advanced trenches were to be occupied and the second position reconnoitred to prepare the artillery support for the second day. Great emphasis was placed on limiting German infantry casualties by following-up destructive bombardments by the artillery, which was to carry the burden of the offensive. The initial objectives were the Meuse Heights on a line from Froide Terre to Fort Souville and Fort Tavannes, which would provide a secure defensive position from which to repel French counter-attacks.
Control of the artillery was centralised by an "Order for the Activities of the Artillery and Mortars" which stipulated that the corps Generals of Foot Artillery were responsible for local target selection, while co-ordination of flanking fire by neighbouring corps and the fire of certain batteries was determined by the Fifth Army headquarters. French fortifications were to be engaged by the heaviest howitzers and enfilade fire and long-range bombardment of supply routes and assembly areas by the heavy guns. counter-battery fire was reserve for specialist batteries firing gas shell. Artillery-infantry co-operation was stressed with accuracy of the artillery being given priority over rate of fire. The opening bombardment was to build up slowly and Trommelfeuer whould not begin until the last hour. As the infantry advanced the artillery would lift to the French second position. Artillery-observers were to advance with the infantry and communicate with the guns by field telephones, flares and coloured balloons. When the offensive began the French were to be bombarded continuously, a harassing fire being maintained at night.
Battle[]
First phase, 21 February – 1 March[]
Main article: Fort Douaumont
21–26 February[]
Unternehmen Gericht (Operation Judgment) was due to begin on 12 February but fog, heavy rain and high winds delayed the offensive until 7:15 a.m. on 21 February when a 10-hour artillery bombardment by 808 guns began. The German artillery fired c. 1,000,000 shells along a front about 30 km (19 mi) long by 5 km (3.1 mi) wide. The main concentration of fire was on the right (east) bank of the Meuse river. More than half of the German guns and howitzers were heavy, 470 guns being 150 mm (5.91 in) and 210 mm (8.3 in) howitzers. Twenty-six super-heavy, long-range guns, up to 420 mm (16.5 in) fired on the forts and the city of Verdun; a rumble could be heard 160 km (99 mi) away. The bombardment was paused at midday, as a ruse to prompt French survivors to reveal themselves and German artillery-observation aircraft were able to fly over the battlefield unmolested by French aircraft. The 3rd, 7th and 18th corps attacked at 4:00 p.m.; the Germans used flamethrowers for the first time and storm troops followed closely with rifles slung, to use hand grenades to clear the remaining defenders. French survivors engaged the attackers but by the end of the first day the German assault troops had only suffered about 600 casualties.
By 22 February German troops had advanced 5 km (3.1 mi) and captured Bois des Caures, at the edge of the village of Flabas. Two French battalions led by Colonel Émile Driant had held the bois for two days but were forced back to Samogneux, Beaumont and Ornes. Driant was killed, fighting with the 56th and 59th Bataillons de chasseurs à pied and only 118 of the Chasseurs managed to escape. Poor communications meant that only then did the French High Command realise the seriousness of the attack. The Germans managed to take the village of Haumont but French forces repulsed a German attack on the village of Bois de l'Herbebois. On 23 February, a French counterattack at Bois des Caures was repulsed, fighting for Bois de l'Herbebois continued until the Germans outflanked the French defenders from Bois de Wavrille. The German attackers had many casualties during their attack on Bois de Fosses and French forces managed to retain Samogneux. German attacks continued and on 24 February, the French defenders of XXX Corps was forced out of the second line of defence, the XX Corps under General Balfourier arrived at the last minute and was rushed forward. That evening Castelnau advised Joffre that the French Second Army, under General Philippe Pétain should be sent to the RFV. The Germans had captured Beaumont, Bois des Fosses, Bois des Caurières and were moving up ravin Hassoule which led to Fort Douaumont.
At 3:00 p.m. on 25 February, infantry of Brandenburg Regiment 24 advanced with the II and III battalions side-by-side in two waves of two companies each. A delay in the arrival of orders to the regiments on the flanks led to the III Battalion advancing alone. The Germans rushed French positions in the woods and on Côte 347 with the support of machine-gun fire from the edge of Bois Hermitage and took many prisoners as French troops on Côte 347 withdrew to Douaumont village, after being outflanked on their right. The German infantry had reached their objectives in fewer than twenty minutes and began to pursue the French, until fired on by a machine-gun in Douaumont church. Some troops took cover in woods and a ravine which led to the fort, as German artillery began to bombard the area of the fort, after refusing to accept claims sent by field telephone that the infantry were within a few hundred metres of the fort. Several German parties were forced to advance to find cover and two parties independently made for the fort.[Note 3]
The German party of about 100 soldiers tried to signal to the artillery with flares but the twilight and falling snow obscured them from view. Some of the party began to cut through the wire around the fort and French machine-gun fire from Douaumont village ceased. The French had seen the German flares and took the Germans on the fort to be Zouaves retreating from Côte 378, the Germans reached the north end of the fort before the French resumed firing. The German party found a way through railings and got into the ditch of the fort but were not fired on from within; the German artillery-fire continued and the party found a way into the fort at the Rue de Rempart. After quietly moving inside the Germans heard voices and persuaded a French prisoner who had been captured in an observation post, to lead them to the lower floor where they met Warrant Officer Chenot and about 25 French troops, who were taken prisoner. On 26 February the Germans had advanced 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) on a 10-kilometre (6.2 mi) front, French losses were 24,000 men and German losses were c. 25,000 men. A French counter-attack on Fort Douaumont failed and Pétain ordered that no more attempts would be made; existing lines were to be consolidated, other forts were to be occupied, rearmed and supplied to wthstand a siege if surrounded.
27–28 February[]
The German advance gained little ground on 27 February, after a thaw turned the ground into a swamp and the arrival of French reinforcements increased the effectiveness of the defence. Some of the German artillery became unserviceable and batteries bogged in the mud. German infantry began to suffer from exhaustion and unexpectedly high losses, 500 casualties being suffered in the fighting around Douaumont village. On 29 February, the German advance was contained at the village of Douaumont by heavy snowfall and the defence of French 33rd Infantry Regiment.[Note 4] Delays gave the French time to bring up 90,000 men and 23,000 short tons (21,000 t) of ammunition from the railhead at Bar-le-Duc to Verdun. The swift German advance had gone beyond artillery cover and the ground conditions made it very difficult to move the artillery forward as had been planned. The German advance southwards also brought it into range of French field artillery on the opposite side of the Meuse river and the German advance became more costly under the fire from the west bank.
Second phase, 6 March – 15 April[]
6–11 March[]
Unable to make any further progress against Verdun frontally, the Germans attacked on the west bank of the Meuse. The artillery of the two-corps assault group on the west bank, was reinforced by 25 heavy artillery batteries, artillery command was centralised under one officer and the artillery on the east bank was to fire in support. The attack was planned in two parts, on Mort-Homme and Côte 265 on 6 March, followed by attacks on Avocourt and Côte 304 on 9 March. The German bombardment reduced the top of Côte 304 from a height of 304 metres (997 ft) to 300 metres (980 ft); Mort-Homme sheltered batteries of French field guns, which hindered German progress towards Verdun on the right bank; the hills also provided commanding views of the left bank. After storming the Bois des Corbeaux and then losing it to a French counter-attack, the Germans launched another assault on Mort-Homme on 9 March, from the direction of Béthincourt to the north-west. Bois des Corbeaux was captured again at great cost in casualties, before the Germans took the crests of Mort-Homme, Côte 304, Cumières and Chattancourt on 14 March.
11 March – 9 April[]
German attacks changed from large operations on broad fronts to narrow-front attacks with limited objectives. On 14 March a German attack captured Côte 265 at west end of Mort-Homme but the French 75th Infantry Brigade managed to hold Côte 295 at the east end. On the 20 March Bois d'Avocourt and Bois de Malancourt fell and Malancourt Village was captured on 31 March. Haucourt fell on 5 April and Bethincourt on 8 April. On the right bank German attacks near Vaux reached Bois Caillette and the Vaux–Fleury railway but were then driven back by the French 5th Division. An attack was made on a wider front along both banks by the Germans at noon on 9 April, with five divisions on the left bank but this was repulsed except at Mort-Homme, where the French 42nd Division was forced back from the north-east face. On the right bank an attack on Côte-du-Poivre failed.
Third phase, 16 April – 1 July[]
4–24 May[]
From 10 May German operations were limited to local attacks, either in reply to French counter-attacks on 11 April between Douaumont and Vaux and on 17 April between the Meuse and Douaumont or attempts to take points of tactical value. At the beginning of May General Pétain was promoted to the command of Le groupe d'armées du centre (GAC) and General Nivelle took over the Second Army at Verdun. From 4–24 May German attacks were made on the west bank around Mort-Homme and on 4 May the north slope of Côte 304 was captured; French counter-attacks from 5–6 May were repulsed. The French defenders on the crest of Côte 304 were forced back on 7 May but German infantry were unable to occupy the ridge because of the intensity of French artillery-fire. Cumieres and Caurettes fell on 24 May as a French counter-attack began at Fort Douaumont.
22–24 May[]
In May General Robert Nivelle who had taken over the 2nd Army, ordered General Charles Mangin, commander of the 5th Division to plan a counter-attack on Fort Douaumont. The initial plan was for an attack on a 3-kilometre (1.9 mi) front but several minor German advances captured Fausse-Côte and Couleuvre ravines on the south-eastern and western sides of the fort and a further attack took the ridge south of the ravin de Couleuvre, which gave the Germans better routes for counter-attacks and observation over the French lines to the south and south-west. Mangin proposed a preliminary attack to retake the area of the ravines, to obstruct the routes by which a German counter-attack on the fort could be made. More divisions were necessary but these were refused, to preserve the troops needed for the forthcoming offensive on the Somme and Mangin was limited to one division for the attack and one in reserve. Nivelle reduced the attack to an assault on Morchée Trench, Bonnet-d'Evèque, Fontaine Trench, Fort Douaumont, a machine-gun turret and Hongrois Trench, which would be an advance of 500 metres (550 yd) on a 1,150 metres (1,260 yd) front.
III Corps was to command the attack by the 5th Division, the 71st Brigade, three balloon companies and a fighter group. The main effort was to be conducted by two battalions of the 129th Infantry Regiment, each with a pioneer company and a machine-gun company attached. The 2nd Battalion was to attack from the south and the 1st Battalion was to move along the west side of the fort to the north end, taking Fontaine Trench and linking with the 6th Company. Two battalions of the 74th Infantry Regiment were to advance along the east and south-east sides of the fort and take a machine-gun turret on a ridge to the east. Flank support was arranged with neighbouring regiments and diversions were planned near Fort Vaux and the raviin de Dame. Preparations for the attack included the digging of 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) of trenches and the building of large numbers of depots and stores but little progress was made due to a shortage of pioneers and German bombardments of the area, when French prisoners taken on 13 May disclosed the plan.
The French preliminary bombardment by four 370 mm mortars and 300 heavy guns, began on 17 May and by 21 May the French artillery commander claimed that the fort had been severely damaged. During the bombardment the German garrison of the fort experienced great strain, as French heavy shells smashed holes in the walls and concrete dust, exhaust fumes from an electricity generator and disinterred corpses polluted the air. Water ran short but until 20 May the fort was still operational, observation reports being passed back and reinforcements moving forward until the afternoon, when the Bourges casemate was isolated and the wireless station in the north-western machine-gun turret was burnt down. Conditions for the German infantry in the vicinity of the fort were far worse and by 18 May the French destructive bombardment had obliterated many defensive positions, the survivors taking post in shell-holes and dips on the ground. Communication with the rear was severed and food and water ran out by the time of the French attack on 22 May. The troops of Infantry Regiment 52 in front of Fort Douaumont had been reduced to 37 men near Thiaumont Farm and German counter-barrages inflicted similar damage on French troops; French aircraft attacked eight observation balloons and the Fifth Army headquarters at Stenay on 22 May. Six balloons were shot down but the German artillery fire increased and twenty minutes before zero hour, a German bombardment began which reduced the 129th Infantry Regiment companies to about 45 men each.
The assault began at 11:50 a. m. on the 22 May on a 1-kilometre (0.62 mi) front. On the left flank the 36th Infantry Regiment quickly captured Morchée Trench and Bonnet-d'Evèque but lost many casualties and advanced no further. The flank guard on the right was pinned down except for one company which disappeared and in Bois Caillette a battalion of the 74th Infantry Regiment was unable to leave its trenches; the other battalion managed to reach its objectives at an ammunition depot and shelter called DV1 at the edge of Bois Caillette and the machine-gun turret east of the fort, where the battalion found its flanks unsupported. Despite German small-arms fire, the 129th Infantry Regiment reached the fort in a few minutes and managed to get inside, through the west and south sides. By nightfall about half of the fort had been recaptured and next day the 34th Division was sent as a reinforcement to consolidate the fort. The reinforcements were repulsed and German reserves managed to cut off the French troops in the fort and force them to surrender, 1000 French prisoners being taken. After three days the French had lost 5,640 casualties from the 12,000 men in the attack and German casualties in Infantry Regiment 52, Grenadier Regiment 12 and Leib-Grenadier Regiment 8 were 4,500 men.
30 May – 7 June[]
Later in May 1916, the German attacks shifted from the left bank (Mort-Homme and Côte 304) and returned to the right bank, south of Fort Douaumont. A German offensive began to reach Fleury ridge, the last French defensive line and take Ouvrage de Thiaumont, Fleury, Fort Souville and Fort Vaux at the north-east extremity of the French line, which had been bombarded by c. 8,000 shells a day, since the beginning of the Verdun offensive. After a final assault on 1 June by c. 10,000 German troops, the top of the fort was occupied on 2 June and fighting went on underground until the garrison ran out of water and surrendered on 7 June. In five days the German attack had advanced 65 metres (71 yd) for a loss of 2,700 killed against 20 French casualties. When news of the loss of Fort Vaux reached Verdun, the Line of Panic was occupied and trenches were dug on the edge of the city. On the left bank the German advanced from the line Côte 304, Mort-Homme and Cumières and threatened Chattancourt and Avocourt. Heavy rains slowed the German advance towards Fort Souville, where attacks followed counter-attacks for the next two months.
22–25 June[]
On 22 June, German artillery fired over 116,000 diphosgene (Green Cross) gas shells at French artillery positions, caused over 1,600 casualties and silenced much of the French artillery. Next day the German attack on a 5-kilometre (3.1 mi) front at 5:00 a.m. drove a 3-by-2-kilometre (1.9 mi × 1.2 mi) salient into the French defences unopposed until 9:00 a.m., when some French troops were able to fight a rearguard action. The Ouvrage de Thiaumont and the Ouvrage de Froidterre at the south end of the plateau were captured and the village of Fleury and Chapelle Sainte-Fine were overrun. The attack came close to Fort Souville, which since April had been hit by c. 38,000 shells and brought the Germans to within 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) of the Verdun citadel. Chapelle Sainte-Fine was quickly recaptured and the German attack could not be maintained, the stock of diphosgene shells had been exhausted and water supplies to the troops in the front line broke down. The narrow salient was vulnerable to fire from three sides and the attack could not be continued until more supplies of diphosgene ammunition could be brought forward. Chapelle Sainte-Fine became the furthest point reached by the German Verdun offensive and on 24 July the Anglo-French preliminary bombardment began on the Somme. Fleury changed hands sixteen times from 23 June – 17 August. Four French divisions were diverted to Verdun from the Somme and the French artillery recovered sufficiently on 24 June, to cut off the German front line from the rear. By 25 June both sides were exhausted and Knobelsdorf suspended the attack.
Fourth phase 1 July – 17 December[]
By the end of May French casualties at Verdun had risen to c. 185,000 and in June German losses had reached c. 200,000 men. The opening of the Battle of the Somme on 1 July, forced the Germans to withdraw some of their artillery from Verdun, which was the first strategic success of the Anglo-French offensive. On 29 August Falkenhayn was replaced as Chief of the General Staff by Paul von Hindenburg and First Quartermaster-General Erich Ludendorff.
9–15 July[]
Fort Souville dominated a crest 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) south-east of Fleury and its capture would give the Germans control of the heights overlooking Verdun. The German preparatory bombardment began on 9 July, with an attempt to incapacitate French artillery with over 60,000 gas shells which had little effect, since the French had been equipped with an improved M2 gas mask. Fort Souville and its approaches were bombarded with more than 300,000 shells, including some five hundred 14 in (360 mm) shells on the fort. An attack by three German divisions began on 11 July, in which German infantry bunched on the path leading to Fort Souville and came under heavy fire from French artillery. The surviving troops were fired on by sixty French machine gunners who emerged from the fort and took post on the superstructure. Thirty soldiers of Infantry Regiment 140 managed to reach the top of the fort on 12 July, from where the Germans could see the roofs of Verdun and the spire of the cathedral but after a small French counter-attack, the survivors retreated to their start lines or surrendered. On the evening of 11 July Crown Prince Wilhelm was ordered by Falkenhayn to go onto the defensive and on 15 July, the French conducted a larger counter-attack which gained no ground; for the rest of the month the French made only small attacks.
1 August – 17 September[]
On 1 August a German surprise-attack advanced 800–900 metres (870–980 yd) towards Fort Souville, which prompted French counter-attacks for two weeks, which retook only a small amount of the captured ground. On 18 August Fleury was recaptured and by September French counter-attacks had recovered much of the ground lost in July and August. On 3 September an attack on both flanks at Fleury advanced the French line several hundred metres, against which German counter-attacks from 4–5 September failed. The French attacked again on 9, 13 and 15–17 September. Losses were light except at the Tavannes railway tunnel where 474 French troops died in a fire which began on 4 September.
20 October – 2 November[]
In October 1916 the French began the First Offensive Battle of Verdun 1ère Bataille Offensive de Verdun to recapture Fort Douaumont, an advance of more than 2 kilometres (1.2 mi). Seven of the 22 divisions at Verdun were replaced by mid-October and French infantry platoons were reorganised to contain riflemen, grenadiers and machine-gunners. In a six-day preliminary bombardment the French artillery fired 855,264 shells, including 532,926 x 75mm field-gun shells, 100,000 x 155mm medium shells and 373 x 370mm and 400mm super-heavy shells from more than 700 guns and howitzers. Two French Saint-Chamond railway guns, 13 km (8.1 mi) to the southwest at Baleycourt fired 400 mm (16 in) shells, each weighing 1 short ton (0.91 t). At least 20 super-heavy shells hit Fort Douaumont, the sixth penetrating the lowest level and exploding in a pioneer depot, starting a fire next to 7,000 hand-grenades.
The 38th, 133rd and 74th divisions attacked at 11:40 a.m. 50 metres (55 yd) behind a creeping field-artillery barrage, moving at a rate of 50 metres (55 yd) in two minutes, beyond which a heavy artillery barrage moved in 500–1,000 metres (550–1,090 yd) lifts, when the field artillery barrage came within 150 metres (160 yd), to force the German infantry and machine-gunners to stay under cover. The Germans had partly evacuated Douaumont, which was recaptured on 24 October by French marines and colonial infantry; more than 6,000 prisoners and fifteen guns were captured by 25 October but an attempt on Fort Vaux failed. The Haudromont quarries, Ouvrage de Thiaumont and Thiaumont Farm, Douaumont village, the northern end of Caillette Wood, Vaux pond, the eastern fringe of Bois Fumin and the Damloup battery were captured. The heaviest French artillery bombarded Fort Vaux for the next week and on 2 November, the Germans evacuated the fort, after a huge explosion was caused by a 220mm shell. French eavesdroppers overheard a German wireless message announcing the departure and a French infantry company entered the fort without firing a shot; on 5 November the French reached the front line of 24 February and operations ceased until December.
15–17 December 1916[]
An offensive by four divisions and four in reserve planned by General Nivelle and executed by General Mangin, began at 10:00 a.m. on 15 December after a six-day bombardment by 1,169,000 shells fired from 827 guns. The final French bombardment was directed by observation aircraft crews and fell on trenches, dug-out entrances and observation posts. Five German divisions supported by 533 guns held the defensive position, which was 2,500 yards (2,300 m) deep with ⅔ of the infantry in the batlezone and the remaining ⅓ in reserve 6–10 miles (9.7–16.1 km) back; two of the German divisions were understrength with only c. 3,000 infantry instead of their normal establishment of c. 7,000 infantry. The attack was preceded by a double creeping barrage, shrapnel-fire from field artillery 70 yards (64 m) in front of the infantry and a high-explosive barrage 150 yards (140 m) ahead, which moved towards a shrapnel bombardment along the German second line, laid to cut off the German retreat and block the advance of reinforcements. The German defence collapsed and 13,500 troops of the 21,000 in the five front divisions were lost, most having been caught under cover and taken prisoner, when the French infantry arrived in their positions.
The French reached their objectives at Vacherauville and Louvemont which had been lost in February, along with Hardaumont and Pepper Hill despite very bad weather. German reserve battalions did not reach the front until the evening and two Eingreif divisions, which had been ordered forward the previous evening, were still 14 miles (23 km) away at midday. By the night of 16/17 December the French had consolidated a new line from Bezonvaux to Côte du Poivre, 2–3 kilometres (1.2–1.9 mi) beyond Douaumont and 1-kilometre (0.62 mi) north of Fort Vaux, before the German reserve and Eingreif units could counter-attack. The 155mm turret at Douaumont had been repaired and fired in support of the French attack. The closest German point to Verdun had been pushed 7.5 kilometres (7,500 m) back from Verdun and all the dominating observation points had been recaptured. The French took 11,387 prisoners and captured 115 artillery pieces. Some German officers complained to Mangin about their lack of comfort in captivity who replied, We do regret it, gentlemen, but then we did not expect so many of you. General von Lochow the Fifth Army commander and General von Zwehl, commander of XIV Reserve Corps were sacked on 16 December.
Subsequent operations[]
20–26 August 1917[]
On 20 August 1917, the Second Offensive Battle of Verdun (2ème Bataille Offensive de Verdun) was carried out by the XIII, XVI, XV and XXXII corps, to capture Côte 304 and Mort Homme on the west bank and Côte Talou and Beaumont on the east bank, by an advance of 1–2 kilometres (0.62–1.24 mi) on a 10-kilometre (6.2 mi) front. On 11 August an artillery preparation by c. 3,000 guns on a 4 by 0.5 kilometres (2.49 mi × 0.31 mi) area began, which by 20 August had fired 3,000,000 rounds, including 1,000,000 heavy shells, along with a machine-gun barrage fired on tracks, crossroads, supply lines and German artillery-batteries. In four days French troops captured Bois d'Avocourt, Mort-Homme, Bois Corbeaux, the Bismarck, Kronprinz and Gallwitz tunnels, which had connected the German front lines to their rear underneath Mort-Homme and Côte 304. On the right bank Bois Talou, Champ, Neuville, Champneuville, Côte 344, part of Bois Fosse, Bois Chaume, Mormont Farm were captured. Next day Côte 304, Samogneux and Régnieville fell and on 26 August the French reached the southern outskirts of Beaumont. By 26 August the French had captured 9,500 prisoners, thirty guns, 100 trench mortars and 242 machine-guns.
7 September 1917[]
After the success of the attack in August Guillaumat was ordered to plan an operation to capture several trenches and a more ambitious offensive to take the last ground from which German artillery-observers could see Verdun. Pétain questioned Guillaumat and Fayolle, who argued that the French could not remain in their present positions and must either advance or retire, advocating a limited advance to make German counter-attacks harder, improve conditions in the front line and deceive the Germans about French intentions. The two corps on the east bank made small attacks, XV Corps on 7 September which failed and XXXII Corps the next day which was a costly success. The attack continued and the trenches necessary for a secure defensive position were taken but not the last German observation point. Further attempts to advance were met by massed artillery-fire and counter-attacks; the French commanders ended the operation.
Meuse–Argonne Offensive[]
Main article: Meuse-Argonne Offensive
The French Fourth Army and the American First Army attacked on a front from from Moronvillers to the Meuse on 26 September 1918 at 5:30 p.m. after a three-hour bombardment. American troops quicky captured Malancourt, Bethincourt and Forges on the left bank of the Meuse and by midday the Americans had reached Gercourt, Cuisy, the southern part of Montfaucon and Cheppy. German troops were able to repulse American attacks on Montfaucon ridge, until it was outflanked to the south and Montfaucon surrounded. German counter-attacks from 27–28 September slowed the American advance but Ivoiry and Epinon-Tille were captured, after which Montfaucon ridge was taken along with 8,000 prisoners and 100 guns. On the right bank of the Meuse a combined Franco-American force under American command took Brabant, Haumont, Bois d'Haumont and Bois des Caures and then crossed the front line of February 1916. By November c. 20,000 prisoners, c. 150 guns, c. 1,000 trench-mortars and several thousand machine-guns had been captured. A German retreat began and continued until the Armistice.
Aftermath[]
Analysis[]
Falkenhayn wrote in his memoir that he sent an appreciation of the strategic situation to the Kaiser in December 1915
The string in France has reached breaking point. A mass breakthrough—which in any case is beyond our means—is unnecessary. Within our reach there are objectives for the retention of which the French General Staff would be compelled to throw in every man they have. If they do so the forces of France will bleed to death.
and that Germany strategy in 1916 was to inflict mass casualties on the French, a goal achieved in Russia in 1914–1915, to weaken the French Army to the point of collapse. The French Army had to be drawn into a situation from which it could not escape, for reasons of strategy and prestige. The Germans planned to use a large number of heavy and super heavy guns to inflict a greater number of casualties than French artillery, which relied mostly upon the 75mm field gun. Foley wrote that Falkenhayn intended an attritional battle from the beginning, contrary to the views of Krumeich, Foerster and others but that the lack of surviving documents had led to many interpretations of Falkenhayn's strategy. At the time Falkenhayn's critics claimed that the battle demonstrated that he was indecisive and unfit for command; in 1937 Foerster had proposed this view "forcefully". Afflerbach questioned the authenticity of the "Christmas memorandum" in his biography of Falkenhayn and after studying such evidence as had survived in the Kriegsgeschichtliches Forschungsanstalt des Heeres (Army Military History Research Institute) files, concluded that the memorandum had been written after the war but that it accurately reflected much of Falkenhayn's thinking in 1916.
Krumeich wrote that the Christmas Memorandum had been fabricated to justify a failed strategy and that attrition as an objective, had been substituted for the capture of Verdun only after the city was not taken quickly. Foley wrote that after the failure of the Ypres Offensive of 1914, Falkenhayn had returned to the pre-war strategic thinking of Moltke the Elder and Hans Delbrück on Ermattungsstrategie (attrition) because the coalition fighting Germany was too powerful be decisively defeated. German strategy should aim to divide the Allies, by forcing at least one of the Entente powers into a negotiated peace.An attempt at atrition lay behind the offensive against Russia in 1915, although the Russians had refused to accept German peace feelers, despite the huge defeats inflicted by the Austro-Germans in the summer. With insufficient forces to break through the Western Front and to overcome the Entente reserves behind it, Falkenhayn attempted to force the French to attack instead, by threatening a sensitive point close to the front line. Eventually Falkenhayn chose Verdun as the place to force the French to begin a counter-offensive, which would be defeated with huge losses to the French, by German artillery on the dominating heights around the city. The Fifth Army would begin a big offensive with limited objectives, to seize the Meuse Heights on the right bank of the river, from which German artillery could dominate the battlefield. By being forced into a counter-offensive against such formidable positions, the French Army would "bleed itself white". As the French were weakened, the British would be forced to launch a hasty relief-offensive, which would also be defeated with many casualties. If such defeats were not enough to force negotiations on the French, a German offensive would mop up the last of the Franco-British armies and break the Entente "once and for all".
Because of Pétain's "Noria" (rotation) system, French troops were relieved at Verdun after a short period, which brought most troops of the French army to the Verdun front but for shorter periods than the German troops opposite, "... the haunted faces of those being relieved horrified those arriving for the first time". French will to resist did not collapse, the symbolic importance of Verdun proved a rallying-point and Falkenhayn was forced to conduct the offensive for much longer than planned and to commit far more infantry than intended. By the end of April most of the German strategic reserve was at Verdun, suffering similar casualties to the French army, although the Germans believed that they were inflicting losses at a rate of 5:2; German military intelligence thought that French casualties up to 11 March had been 100,000 men. Falkenhayn was confident that German artillery could easily inflict another 100,000 losses; in May Falkenhayn estimated that the French had lost 525,000 men against 250,000 German casualties and that the French strategic reserve had been reduced to 300,000 troops. Actual French losses were c. 130,000 by 1 May and the Noria system had enabled 42 divisions to be withdrawn and rested, when their casualties reached 50%. 259 of the 330 infantry battalions of the French metropolitan army (78%) went to Verdun, against 48 German divisions, 25% of the Westheer (western army). Afflerbach wrote that 85 French divisions fought at Verdun and that from February to August the ratio of German to French losses was 1:1.1, rather than the third of French losses assumed by Falkenhayn. By 31 August the Fifth Army's losses were 281,000 and French casualties numbered 315,000 men.
In June 1916, the amount of French artillery at Verdun had increased to 2,708 guns, including 1,138 x 75mm field guns; the French and German armies fired c. 10,000,000 shells with a weight of 1,350,000 long tons (1,370,000 t) from February–December. The German offensive had been contained by French reinforcements, difficulties of terrain and the weather by May, with the Fifth Army infantry stuck in tactically dangerous positions, overlooked by the French on the east bank as well as the west bank, instead of secure on the Meuse Heights. Attrition of the French forces was inflicted by constant infantry attacks, which were vastly more costly than waiting for French counter-attacks and defeating them primarily with artillery. Eventually the stalemate was broken by the Brusilov Offensive and the British relief offensive on the Somme, the conduct of which had been expected to lead to the collapse of the Anglo-French armies. Falkenhayn had begun to remove divisions from the armies on the Western Front in June, to rebuild the strategic reserve but only twelve divisions could be spared. Four divisions were sent to the Second Army on the Somme, which had dug a layered defensive system based on the experience of the Herbstschlacht. The situation before the beginning of the battle on the Somme, was considered by Falkenhayn to be better than before previous offensives and a relatively easy defeat of the British offensive was anticipated. No divisions were moved from the Sixth Army, which had 17½ divisions and a large amount of heavy artillery, ready for a counter-offensive when the British offensive had been defeated.
The strength of the Anglo-French offensive surprised Falkenhayn and the staff officers of OHL, despite the losses inflicted on the British; the loss of artillery to "overwhelming" counter-battery fire and the policy of instant counter-attack against any Anglo-French advance, led to far more German infantry casualties than at the height of the fighting at Verdun, where 25,989 casualties had been suffered in the first ten days, against 40,187 losses in the first ten days on the Somme. The Brusilov Offensive had recommenced as soon as Russian supplies had been replenished, which inflicted more losses on Austro-Hungarian and German troops during June and July, when the offensive was extended to the north. Falkenhayn was called on to justify his strategy to the Kaiser on 8 July and again advocated sending minimal reinforcements to the east, to continue the "decisive" battle in France, where the Somme offensive was the "last throw of the dice" for the Entente. Falkenhayn had already given up the plan for a counter-offensive near Arras, to reinforce the Russian front and the Second Army with eighteen divisions moved from the reserve and the Sixth Army front. By the end of August only one division remained in reserve. The Fifth Army had been ordered to limit its attacks at Verdun in June but a final effort was made in July to capture Fort Souville. The effort failed and on 12 July Falkenhayn ordered a strict defensive policy, with only small local attacks allowed, to try to limit the number of troops the French took from the RFV to add to the Somme offensive.
Falkenhayn had underestimated the French, for whom victory at all costs was the only way to justify the sacrifices already made; the pressure imposed on the French army never came close to making the French collapse and trigger a premature British relief offensive. The ability of the German army to inflict disproportionate losses had also been exaggerated, in part because the Fifth Army commanders had tried to capture Verdun and attacked regardless of loss; even when reconciled to Falkenhayn's attrition strategy they continued to use the costly tactics of Bewegungskrieg (manoeuvre wafare) and Vernichtungsstrategie (strategy of annihilation). Failure to reach the Meuse Heights forced the Fifth Army to try to advance from poor tactical positions and to impose attrition by infantry attacks and counter-attacks. The unanticipated duration of the offensive, made Verdun a matter of German prestige as much as it was for the French and Fakenhayn became dependent on a British relief offensive and a German counter-offensive to end the stalemate. When it came the power of the Anglo-French attack on the Somme and the collapse of the southern front in Russia, reduced the German armies to holding their positions as best they could. On 29 August Falkenhayn was sacked and replaced by Hindenburg and Ludendorff, who ended the German offensive at Verdun on 2 September.
Casualties[]
Terraine gave c. 750,000 Franco-German casualties in 299 days of battle and Dupuy and Dupuy gave 542,000 French casualties. Heer and Naumann calculated 714,231 casualties, 377,231 French and 337,000 German, an average of 70,000 casualties for each month of the battle. Mason noted 378,000 French and 337,000 German casualties. Clayton quoted 330,000 German casualties, of whom 143,000 were killed or missing and 351,000 French losses, 56,000 killed, 100,000 missing or prisoners and 195,000 wounded. Doughty gave French casualties at Verdun, from 21 February – 20 December 1916 as 377,231 men of 579,798 losses at Verdun and the Somme; 16% of Verdun casualties were known to have been killed, 56% wounded 28% missing, many of whom were eventually presumed dead. Doughty wrote that other historians had followed Churchill (1927) who gave a figure of 442,000 casualties by mistakenly including all French losses on the Western Front. In his second edition Churchill wrote that the figure of 442,000 was for other ranks and the figure of "probably" 460,000 casualties including officers. Churchill gave a figure of 278,000 German casualties of whom 72,000 were killed and expressed dismay that French casualties had exceeded German by about 3:2. Churchill also stated that an eighth needed to be deducted from his figures for both sides, to account for casualties on other sectors, giving 403,000 French and 244,000 German total casualties. Grant gave a figure of 434,000 German casualties. Foley used calculations made by Wendt in 1931 to give German casualties at Verdun, between 21 February and 31 August 1916 as 281,000 against 315,000 French casualties. Afflerbach used the same source to give 336,000 German and 365,000 French casualties for the fighting at Verdun from February to December 1916.
The concentration of so much fighting in such a small area devastated the land, resulting in miserable conditions for troops on both sides. Rain combined with the constant tearing up of the ground turned the clay of the area to a wasteland of mud full of human remains. Shell craters became filled with a liquid ooze, becoming so slippery that troops who fell into them or took cover in them could drown. Forests were reduced to tangled piles of wood by constant artillery-fire and eventually obliterated. The effect on soldiers in the battle was devastating, many broke down with shell-shock and some French troops attempted to desert to Spain, those who were caught being shot. On 20 March French deserters disclosed details of the French defences to the Germans, who were able to surround 2,000 men and force them to surrender. Many troops at the battle never saw an enemy soldier, experiencing nothing but artillery shells and many troops on both sides called Verdun "Hell".
A French lieutenant at Verdun who was later killed by an artillery shell wrote in his diary on 23 May 1916:
"Humanity is mad. It must be mad to do what it is doing. What a massacre! What scenes of horror and carnage! I cannot find words to translate my impressions. Hell cannot be so terrible. Men are mad!"
A certain discontent had begun to spread among the French combatants on the Verdun battlefield during the summer of 1916. On the promotion of Pétain from his Verdun command on 1 June and his replacement by General Nivelle, five infantry regiments were affected by short-lived episodes of "collective indiscipline". Two French Lieutenants, Henri Herduin and Pierre Millant, were summarily shot on 11 June at Fleury-devant-Douaumont, Nivelle then published an Order of the Day forbidding French troops to surrender. In 1926, after an inquiry and a cause célèbre, Herduin and Millant were exonerated and their official military records expunged. Period photographs show huge numbers of overlapping shell craters in an area of about 100 square kilometres (39 sq mi). Forests planted in the 1930s have grown up and hide most of the Zone rouge (Red Zone) but the battlefield is a vast graveyard, where the mortal remains of over 100,000 missing combatants remain where they fell, unless discovered by the French Forestry Service and laid in the Douaumont ossuary.
Commemoration[]
In April 1916, Pétain had issued an Order of the Day, "Courage! On les aura" ("Courage! We shall get them") and 23 June 1916 Nivelle issued: "They shall not pass", a simplification of the actual French text: "Vous ne les laisserez pas passer, mes camarades" ("you will not let them pass, my comrades"). Nivelle had been concerned about diminished French morale at Verdun, after Nivelle's promotion to lead the Second Army in June 1916, manifestations of indiscipline occurred in five front line regiments.[Note 5] Défaillance reappeared in the French army mutinies that followed the Nivelle offensive of April–May 1917.
Marshal Pétain praised what he saw as the success of the fixed fortification system at Verdun in his war memoir: "La Bataille de Verdun" published in 1929 and in 1930 construction of the Maginot Line (Ligne Maginot) began along the border with Germany. At Verdun French field artillery in the open outnumbered turreted guns in the Verdun forts by a factor of at least two hundred to one. It was the mass of French artillery (over 2,000 guns after May 1916 ) which inflicted about 70% of German casualties. In 1935 a number of mechanized and motorized units were deployed behind the Maginot line and plans laid to send detachments to fight a mobile defence in front of the fortifications. Verdun remained a symbol of French determination for many years. At the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1953–54, General Christian de Castries remarked that the situation was "somewhat like Verdun.". French forces at Dien Bien Phu were supplied by air, transport aircraft using a landing strip in range of Viet Minh artillery; the French forces at Verdun were supplied by road and rail, beyond the reach of German artillery.
Verdun and its horrors have become for the French the representative memory of World War I. Antoine Prost wrote that "Like Auschwitz, Verdun marks a transgression of the limits of the human condition". From 1918–1939 the French expressed two memories of the battle, a patriotic view, embodied in the memorials built on the battlefield and the memory of the survivors who recalled the death, suffering and sacrifice of comrades. In the 1960s Verdun became a symbol of Franco-German reconciliation, through remembrance of common suffering and in the 1980s Verdun took on a new identity as the capital of peace, organizations were formed and old museums were dedicated to the ideals of peace and human rights. On 22 September 1984, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl (whose father had fought near Verdun in World War I) and French President François Mitterrand (who had been taken prisoner nearby in World War II) stood at the Douaumont cemetery, holding hands for several minutes in the driving rain as a gesture of Franco-German reconciliation. In November 1998, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder did not attend a joint French and German memorial service with French president Jacques Chirac.
See also[]
List of French villages destroyed in World War I
Reverse salient
Notes[]
[]
References[]
Further reading[]
Brown, M. (1999). Verdun 1916. Stroud: Tempus. ISBN 0-7524-1774-6.
Holstein, C. (2009). Walking Verdun. Barnsley: Pen and Sword. ISBN 978-1-84415-867-6.
Keegan, J. (1998). The First World War. London: Hutchinson. ISBN 0-09180-178-8.
MacKenzie, D. A. (1920). The Story of the Great War. Glasgow: Blackie & Son. OCLC 179279677.
McDannald, A. H. (1920). The Encyclopedia Americana, Vol XXVIII. New York: J. B. Lyon. OCLC 506108219.
Martin, W. (2001). Verdun 1916. London: Osprey. ISBN 1-85532-993-X.
Mosier, J. (2001). The Myth of the Great War. London: Profile Books. ISBN 1-86197-276-8.
Pétain, H. P. (1929). Verdun (1930 ed.). London: Elkin Mathews & Marrot. OCLC 1890922.
Romains, J. (1938). Prélude à Verdun and Verdun ((as Verdun) Prion Lost Treasures 1999 ed.). Paris: Flammarion. ISBN 1-85375-358-0.
Rouquerol, J. J. (1931) (in French). Le Drame de Douaumont. Paris: Payot. OCLC 248000026.
Sandler, S. (Ed) (2002). Ground Warfare: an International Encyclopedia Vol I (2002 ed.). Santa Barbara Ca.: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 1-57607-344-0.
Serrigny, B. (1959) (in French). Trente Ans avec Petain. Paris: Librairie Plon. OCLC 469408701.
Zweig, A. (1935). Erziehung vor Verdun (Education before Verdun, Viking Press 1936 ed.). Amsterdam: Querido Verlag N.V.. OCLC 829150704.
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The first day on the Somme, 1 July 1916, was the beginning of the Battle of Albert (1–13 July), the name given by the British to the first two weeks of the 141 days of the Battle of the Somme in the First World War. Nine corps of the French Sixth Army and the British Fourth and Third armies attacked the German 2nd Army from Foucaucourt south of the Somme, northwards across the Somme and the Ancre to Serre and at Gommecourt, 2 mi (3.2 km) beyond, in the Third Army area. The objective of the attack was to capture the German first and second defensive positions from Serre south to the Albert–Bapaume road and the first position from the road south to Foucaucourt.
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en
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Wikiwand
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https://www.wikiwand.com/en/First_day_on_the_Somme
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This article is about the event. For the book, see The First Day on the Somme.
The first day on the Somme, 1 July 1916, was the beginning of the Battle of Albert (1–13 July), the name given by the British to the first two weeks of the 141 days of the Battle of the Somme (1 July–18 November) in the First World War. Nine corps of the French Sixth Army and the British Fourth and Third armies attacked the German 2nd Army (General Fritz von Below) from Foucaucourt south of the Somme, northwards across the Somme and the Ancre to Serre and at Gommecourt, 2 mi (3.2 km) beyond, in the Third Army area. The objective of the attack was to capture the German first and second defensive positions from Serre south to the Albert–Bapaume road and the first position from the road south to Foucaucourt.
The German defence south of the road mostly collapsed and the French had "complete success" on both banks of the Somme, as did the British from Maricourt on the army boundary with the French northwards. XIII Corps took Montauban and reached all its objectives, XV Corps captured Mametz and isolated Fricourt. The III Corps attack on both sides of the Albert–Bapaume road was a disaster, making only a short advance south of La Boisselle, where the 34th Division suffered the most casualties of any Allied division on 1 July. Further north, X Corps captured part of the Leipzig Redoubt (an earthwork fortification), failed opposite Thiepval and had a great but temporary success on the left flank, where the German front line was overrun and Schwaben and Stuff redoubts captured by the 36th (Ulster) Division.
German counter-attacks during the afternoon recaptured most of the lost ground north of the Albert–Bapaume road and more British attacks against Thiepval were costly failures. On the north bank of the Ancre, the attack of VIII Corps was a disaster, with large numbers of British troops being shot down in no man's land. The VII Corps diversion at Gommecourt was also costly, with only a partial and temporary advance south of the village. The German defeats, from Foucaucourt to the Albert–Bapaume road, left the German defence on the south bank incapable of resisting another attack; a substantial German retreat began from the Flaucourt plateau to the west bank of the Somme close to Péronne. North of the Somme in the British area, Fricourt was abandoned by the Germans overnight.
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https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/herrlisheim-what-became-of-the-12th-armored-divisions-lost-battalion/
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en
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Herrlisheim: What Became of the 12th Armored Division’s Lost Battalion
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2019-01-21T04:28:58+00:00
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The 12th armored division's 43rd tank battalion mysteriously disappeared during a bitter winter fight in Herrlisheim.
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en
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Warfare History Network
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https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/herrlisheim-what-became-of-the-12th-armored-divisions-lost-battalion/
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By Nathan N. Prefer
On January 17, 1945, as Allied forces prepared to descend on Germany itself and put an end to the war in Europe, an American tank battalion disappeared. The 43rd Tank Battalion, commanded by Lt. Col. Scott Hall, organic to the 12th Armored (“Hellcats”) Division’s Combat Command A, joined with the 17th Armored Infantry Battalion to push German forces out of the town of Herrlisheim in France’s Alsace region. Shortly after the battalion entered the town, some garbled but seemingly desperate messages were received by Combat Command A from Colonel Hall. Neither Hall nor his battalion was ever heard from again.
It was not until 1940 that the United States War Department made the first move to create tank, later armored, battalions within the U.S. armed forces. Originally only 15 were authorized, half “heavy” and half “light.” The original battalions consisted of a Headquarters and Headquarters (H & H) company and three tank companies. Each tank company consisted of three platoons of five tanks each, with a headquarters section of two additional tanks. In 1942, a service company was added. Later additions included a light tank company, an assault gun platoon, a mortar platoon, and a reconnaissance platoon. By 1943, the battalions usually had a total of 54 medium tanks, 17 light tanks, three assault guns (105mm howitzers), three 81mm mortar halftracks, and numerous support vehicles. A fully staffed tank battalion numbered 729 officers and enlisted men.
By January 1945, the standard American armored division numbered 10,937 officers and men, 195 medium tanks, 18 105mm self-propelled howitzers, and several other armored vehicles within the supporting reconnaissance, engineer, medical, and service units. But the bulk of the division’s fighting power rested in the three tank battalions and three armored infantry battalions, which were usually paired under one of three (A, B, and R or Reserve) combat commands. In all, the U.S. Army fielded 16 armored divisions during the war, all of which served in the European or Mediterranean Theaters.
One of these was the 12th Armored Division, which was activated at Camp Campbell, Kentucky, on September 15, 1943. After a year’s training it moved to Tennessee to participate in Army-wide maneuvers and then to Camp Bowie, Texas, for additional training. The division’s combat elements consisted of three tank battalions, the 23rd, 43rd, and 714th; the 17th, 56th, and 66th Armored Infantry Battalions with the 119th Armored Engineer Battalion and 92nd Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron. By September 1944, the division was at Camp Shanks, New York, preparing to go overseas. The division’s troops, who called themselves the “Hellcats,” arrived at Le Havre, France, on November 9, 1944, after a month’s stay in England. Originally assigned to the Ninth U.S. Army on the northern end of the American front lines, they had barely sent forward advance parties to scout out their area of operations when orders changed.
Joining the Seventh U.S. Army
The 12th Armored Division, now commanded by Maj. Gen. Roderick R. Allen, unexpectedly found itself assigned to the Seventh U.S. Army, Sixth Army Group, one of three Army Groups under the control of Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF) commanded by General Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Sixth Army Group was at the extreme southern end of the Allied front lines in France.
General Allen was a rarity among divisional commanders in the U.S. Army during World War II. He did not attend West Point. Instead, the Texas-born commander received a Bachelor of Science degree from the Agriculture and Mechanical College of Texas in 1915 and was commissioned into the cavalry the following year. He served in France during World War I and later graduated from the Command and General Staff School and the Army War College. He had served in various posts with armored units since 1940 and had been promoted to major general in February 1944. He commanded the 20th Armored Division in training before assuming command of the Hellcats in September 1944.
The Sixth Army Group was also unique at this point. While half its units were experienced U.S. Army units, some of which had first seen combat in North Africa in 1942, the other half were French, the newly introduced French First Army. Commanded by Lt. Gen. Jacob L. Devers, it had landed in southern France on August 15, 1944, and had been fighting its way to the Rhine River and Germany ever since.
The 12th Armored Division joined the American half of Sixth Army Group, the Seventh U.S. Army. Under the command of Lt. Gen. Alexander (“Sandy”) M. Patch, the Seventh Army was pushing north and east to reach the Rhine River, the traditional boundary between France and Germany. Moving up, the leading units of Combat Command A entered the combat zone at Weisslingen on December 5, 1944, and soon relieved elements of the veteran 4th Armored Division. Here the first shots were fired by Battery A, 493rd Armored Field Artillery Battalion. The division’s first success came with seizing the town of Singling and piercing the Maginot Line in its sector. After crossing the German border on December 21, 1944, the division was pulled out of line for a brief rest and recuperation period.
In this most difficult season, the weather in sunny southern France was anything but. The area in which Seventh Army operated in December and January 1944 was a wet, cold quagmire of mud, rain, and snow. Soon the Americans were whitewashing their tanks to blend with the snow-covered landscape. Nor could the local population be relied upon. Alsace Province had been under German control for years, and some inhabitants were German sympathizers. In one instance, the soldiers of Battery A, 495th Armored Field Artillery Battalion were puzzled by the accuracy of German counterbattery fire against them despite their best efforts at camouflage. They soon discovered that a dog, which made the same journey past their positions each day, was actually carrying the coordinates of their guns to the enemy then returning home to its master within the American lines.
The 43rd Tank Battalion’s First Action
The initial action of the 43rd Tank Battalion occurred on December 12 when, paired with the 66th Armored Infantry Battalion, it successfully attacked the towns of Guising and Bettviller in daylight. Casualties were light, and the battle went according to plan. Shortly after this first victory the division was relieved by the 44th Infantry Division and went into reserve. While in reserve the division’s officers discussed what had worked in their first action, what had failed, and what they needed to do to improve their combat performance.
Combat Command A, led by Brig. Gen. Riley Finley Ennis, another non-West Point officer, moved back to the front on December 18 and once again relieved elements of the 4th Armored and 80th Infantry Divisions. These units were being pulled out to move north to attack the flank of the massive German offensive through the Ardennes that had hit the First U.S. Army hard. Part of General George S. Patton’s Third Army, which held the front line just north of Seventh Army, they were badly needed to halt the Germans. Because of this, General Patch’s Seventh Army would be required to cover more of the front lines as Patton pulled his troops to the north. As a result, the Hellcats’ rest period was cut short.
Anticipating a New German Offensive
The day after Combat Command A returned to the front a major conference was held at the French town of Verdun. Present were Generals Eisenhower, Omar Bradley (commanding 12th Army Group), and Patton. Concerned about the massive German attack in the Ardennes, what would come to be known as the Battle of the Bulge, the decision was made to pull Patton’s Third Army to the north and to halt all offensive operations of the Sixth Army Group. Devers was even instructed to give up ground if necessary to maintain a continuous front line with 12th Army Group. Devers was disappointed at his new orders, but they were obeyed. While awaiting the outcome of the battle to his north, he made plans for a renewal of his offensive in the first week of January 1945, when he believed the northern emergency would be over.
In late December 1944, Patch’s Seventh Army had six infantry and two armored divisions available. While the Hellcats were holding a sector of the front, Patch kept the 14th Armored Division in reserve. The frontline units had to hold a line that was 126 miles long, which meant that each battalion was responsible for a front of some two miles, far beyond the usual demands on a battalion. Because of priority given to the northern group of armies, supplies and equipment in Sixth Army Group were dwindling, as were sufficient replacements for casualties. Worse, intelligence officers began reporting signs of a German counteroffensive aimed at Seventh Army; whether it was a diversion or a real offensive remained unclear.
The 12th Armored Division was now a part of the XV Corps under Maj. Gen. Wade Haislip. It was backing the frontline defenses of the 44th, 100th, and 103rd Infantry Divisions. Operations were limited to sending out patrols, repulsing enemy probes, and engaging in sharp artillery duels. Christmas Day, 1944, proved busy for the 56th Armored Infantry Battalion holding a sector of the front line. A determined German ground attack was repulsed by artillery and mortar fire. Rumors of a pending massive attack circulated, including the probable dropping of German paratroopers behind American lines. Roadblocks were established and passwords changed frequently. Several units, including Combat Command B, were pulled out to perform maintenance on their vehicles and other equipment.
But nothing major happened. With no sign of any imminent attack from the Germans, Seventh Army pulled the 12th Armored Division into reserve on December 30. It remained on three-hour notice to move against any German attack. Replacements for the 62 men killed, 454 wounded, and four missing in action were being integrated into the division as the year ended.
Objective: Herrlisheim
The new year began badly. The anticipated German counteroffensive, known as Operation Nordwind, hit the Seventh Army hard. The German plan was to strike in Alsace and force an American withdrawal, delaying the Allied advance into Germany and giving German scientists more time to develop the so-called “wonder weapons,” which would change the course of the war in Germany’s favor. Knowing that Sixth Army Group had been significantly weakened while covering an extended front, the German planners also believed the attack would relieve some of the pressure on the southern shoulder of the Bulge. The ultimate goal was to split the Seventh Army, clear a way to the fortress city of Metz, and get behind Patton’s Third Army, disrupting the entire Allied line.
After some initial success, the German offensive lost power. Generals Devers and Patch had been quick to react. One of their many moves was to assign the 12th Armored Division to VI Corps, under the command of Maj. Gen. Edward “Ted” Brooks. Brooks’ corps had been exposed when the Germans attacked on both flanks and was forced to withdraw. It had no reserves. Both of Seventh Army’s armored divisions, the 12th and 14th, were rushed to VI Corps.
Upon arrival in VI Corps, General Allen was told that a German bridgehead at Gambsheim was the greatest threat to VI Corps and that reducing it was his first objective. On January 8, 1945, Combat Command B, with the 56th Armored Infantry Battalion and 714th Tank Battalion, was ordered to attack the town of Herrlisheim at the center of the German bridgehead.
Attached to the 79th Infantry Division, Combat Command B attacked Herrlisheim from the north on the morning of the 8th, while to the south French troops were to attack Gambsheim. Supported by Company B, 119th Armored Engineers, the actual attack began at 10 am. Intelligence reports indicated there were some 1,200 Germans in the entire pocket, but these estimates were later discovered to be far too low. In fact, Combat Command B was about to attack three regiments of the German 10th SS Panzer Division reinforced by elements of the 553rd Infantry Regiment.
Trapped at the Waterworks
Company B, 714th Tank Battalion followed Company A, 56th Armored Infantry Battalion in the attack, supported by both mortars and assault guns firing from elevated positions outside the town. Company C, 56th Armored Infantry Battalion, with a full complement of 251 officers and men, moved off to protect the flanks of the attack and join up with the French once Herrlisheim had fallen. Before that could be done, the company had to secure a group of small buildings near the Zorn River. These structures contained machinery used to control the flow of water from the Zorn to the Moder River, and they would soon be known simply as the Waterworks. While operating there, an American platoon rounded up several prisoners at a cost of four men killed and several others wounded.
Facing Herrlisheim, the tanks of Company C, 714th Tank Battalion came under fire from enemy artillery and mortars. Attempting to join the infantry, the tanks found that a bridge at the Waterworks was destroyed, halting their advance. Instead, Companies A and C, 714th Tank Battalion took up positions along the Zorn River and tried to support the infantry. Their fire soon ceased, however, when ammunition began to run low. Meanwhile, Companies A and B, 56th Armored Infantry Battalion were supposed to enter the Waterworks, cross the Zorn, and clear Herrlisheim. Despite the early loss of one of the company commanders, the operation proceeded after nightfall. With a crossing accomplished, the Americans surprised a group of about 30 Germans who were moving across open, flat ground, apparently completely unaware that they were within rifle shot of American soldiers. Indeed, so close were the Germans that the Americans had to give orders in whispers so as not to alert the approaching enemy.
Staff Sergeant Charles F. Peischl was first to notice that the Germans had become suspicious. He was also the first American to open fire, followed immediately by the rest of B Company. Most of the Germans were killed or wounded. Before the Americans could verify their success, however, there came orders to withdraw to the Waterworks. The entire 56th Armored Infantry Battalion, reinforced by Company L, 314th Infantry Regiment, 79th Infantry Division, assembled there.
The Waterworks soon became a trap for the Germans. In the middle of the night mortars began landing in the courtyard, and movement was heard outside. Hand grenades from German infiltrators were tossed at the American positions. The Americans defended themselves, keeping the Germans at bay, until suddenly two enemy tanks opened fire. Because of an intervening wall, the enemy tanks could not fire down into the sheltering Americans, but they continued to fire at the buildings. Efforts by the 40th Engineer Combat Regiment to replace a destroyed bridge to allow American tanks to cross the Zorn were halted by the German tank fire. One of the two German tanks was knocked out in a gallant action by Private Robert L. Scott of the 56th Armored Infantry Battalion, but increasing German pressure kept the Americans pinned down. Wounded men had to be evacuated by the light tanks of Company D, 714th Tank Battalion. Supplies were brought up the same way.
At daylight the German tanks and most of the enemy infantry withdrew, although more than 100 were trapped and forced to surrender. The 18 self-propelled 105mm howitzers of the supporting 494th Armored Field Artillery Battalion had fired more than 3,700 rounds during the night and into the morning in support of the 56th Armored Infantry Battalion. But so far no American had entered Herrlisheim. While the Americans decided what to do next, the artillery kept up a harassing fire against the outskirts of Herrlisheim, pinning down the several German tanks.
House-to-House in Herrlisheim
On January 9, the Americans renewed their attack on Herrlisheim. Once more the 56th Armored Infantry Battalion led the way with Companies A and B, with Company C in reserve. This time the attack was to begin just before dawn, secure the Waterworks, and then push forward to Herrlisheim by dawn. This would be an infantry battle supported at long range by the tanks of Company B, 714th Tank Battalion, still stymied by a lack of bridges across the Zorn. Captain James Leehman took Company B, 714th Tank Battalion forward, prepared to cross once the Bailey bridge had been completed at the Waterworks. Once across, he was to provide close support to the 56th Armored Infantry Battalion. The two remaining companies of the tank battalion were positioned in fields west of Herrlisheim, firing long-range support.
The plan went awry from the start. As Captain Leehman approached the Waterworks, he saw immediately that no work was being done to install the Bailey bridge. He joined the rest of the 714th Tank Battalion in providing long-range support. In fact, the bridge was not completed that day. In an effort to improve the fire support, Lt. Col. William J. Phelan, commander of the 714th Tank Battalion, ordered Company A to cover Herrlisheim from the north and northeast. However, Company A’s field of fire was blocked by the infantry moving across its front.
The armored infantry had begun its attack on schedule. Moving toward the town they were immediately greeted with heavy machine-gun fire. Then mortar rounds began to fall among them. Another company commander and several soldiers fell. Nevertheless, Company B pushed forward and reached a few of the closest buildings in Herrlisheim. There, enemy fire again stopped the advance. The company altered its direction to seek shelter in a gulley that ran nearby. Perhaps half the company had already been killed or wounded. The light tanks of Company D, 714th Tank Battalion were again pressed into service to evacuate wounded men. The battalion surgeon, Captain William Zimmerman, later credited the light tanks with saving the lives of at least 65 wounded soldiers.
Company A was also hit by German fire but managed to advance with fewer casualties, coming up on Company B’s flank and moving beyond it. Company A advanced halfway to Herrlisheim before halting to await Company B. When it did not appear, orders were received to enter Herrlisheim itself. Company C was ordered to follow Company A, mopping up as it went forward. Companies A and C entered the town at midafternoon and discovered that their radios did not work. A runner was sent to make contact with Company B, which remained pinned down in the fields before the town. Although the armored infantry began to clear the town in house-to-house fighting, the Americans were unable to contact anyone because of the radio problem. Niether Combat Command B nor the two battalion command posts knew anything of what was going on in Herrlisheim.
House-to-house fighting has always been a risky venture. In Herrlisheim each American platoon took a street or row of houses and methodically moved down the line from one to the next. While a few riflemen stood guard outside the house, others went to the rear to check the outhouses. They then went to the first floor windows and fired into the house to discourage snipers or any other enemy inside. Next the door was kicked down and the basement investigated as the GIs worked their way to the top floor. Any civilians encountered were ordered to assemble on the ground floor. In Herrlisheim, several abandoned machine guns and antitank positions were discovered.
The 56th Armored Infantry was making good progress when suddenly Company A came face to face with a German PzKpfw. IV tank. The Americans took cover from the tank’s fire for about half an hour, after which the tank withdrew. As they resumed their advance, several more enemy tanks were observed approaching. With no tanks of their own on this side of the Zorn River, the infantrymen were in trouble. Indeed, although there were signs of progress, the attack was coming apart. Company B was still pinned down and suffering casualties at an alarming rate. Company A faced at least three enemy tanks, and the defenders were showing a more aggressive attitude with snipers infiltrating American lines. Darkness was coming fast, and Company A was ordered to withdraw to the edge of the town and establish a defensive position. Company C moved to aid Company B, which was withdrawn at dark. Captain Francis Drass, commander of Company A, took command of all the infantry elements in Herrlisheim as night fell. As Company B withdrew, it lost its second company commander in less than 12 hours.
Contact Lost With Headquarters
As night fell German artillery fire increased. Enemy infiltration intensified into and beyond the American positions. Company D, 714th Tank Battalion did yeoman’s work in evacuating wounded and prisoners of war. Battalion headquarters of the 56th Armored Infantry sent a specially equipped radio patrol to try to make contact with its embattled companies in Herrlisheim, but it was stopped by German machine-gun fire. A prisoner reported that the companies in Herrlisheim had been wiped out. Captain Elmer Bright, battalion intelligence officer and leader of the patrol, also found some 30 soldiers from the forward companies who had withdrawn. They confirmed the prisoner’s report of the annihilation of their commands. With this information from two sources, Captain Bright turned back.
The night of January 9-10, 1945, was a nightmare in Herrlisheim. The Americans were surrounded and cut off. German patrols wandered throughout the town setting fire to houses they believed were occupied by the Americans. There was no contact with any headquarters. American officers ordered their men to shoot at anything that moved outdoors and told them not to leave their houses for any reason at the risk of getting shot by friendly fire. Sergeant Peischl, still fighting with Company B, later recalled, “The Krauts seemed to have a system of first firing at a building with tracers to mark it, and then blowing it up with a bazooka or antitank gun. Some might have been doped up, for they would come right up to our doors, open them, and yell, ‘Komm heraus!’ We wasted no time in knocking them off.”
Another Day of Fighting
Dawn brought some slight relief. The enemy ceased individual attacks on houses, although mortar fire and snipers continued to take a toll on the Hellcats. As dawn broke over Herrlisheim American medium tanks appeared in town. Captain Leehman’s Company B, 714th Tank Battalion had finally crossed the Zorn on the just completed Bailey bridge. Now the tankers sought contact with the armored infantry companies beleaguered in the town. They knocked out one German tank at point-blank range and began shouting in an attempt to locate the infantrymen. Finally, a lone American appeared and directed the tanks to Company A, 56th Armored Infantry. A quick discussion between the tank and infantry company commanders determined that their force could not hold the town, and the tanks radioed back for permission to withdraw. This request was refused, and the combined force was ordered to hold where it was.
Once again the light tanks brought up supplies and evacuated wounded and prisoners. A thick fog enveloped the area, making movement difficult. One of the light tanks was knocked out by a German antitank gun using the fog for cover. After four round trips by the light tanks, enemy antitank fire became thick on the only route they could use, and so evacuation and resupply ceased. One light tank was trapped in Herrlisheim, two were knocked out, and only one managed to make the last trip successfully. Company B, 119th Armored Engineer Battalion was ordered to move into Herrlisheim and fight as infantry. Joining with the armored infantrymen, the engineers took their places in the bridgehead. That bridgehead remained static throughout January 10, with enemy fire so heavy that any movement out of the protecting houses was impossible. Nevertheless, both battalion commanders came up during the day to take charge of their respective commands.
The 714th Tank Battalion lost two tanks to roving German antitank teams during the day. Its battalion commander was wounded by enemy artillery. Several M8 self-propelled guns tried to get into town to provide support, but they ended up crashing through the thick ice covering the local canals and remained there until nightfall. Continuous German fire and heavy casualties delayed and eventually postponed an attack to complete the conquest of Herrlisheim. The arrival of reinforcements and supplies was halted, and attempts to drop supplies by light plane were prevented due to the fog. The wounded were piling up at the aid stations and battalion command posts. As darkness approached, the two battalions prepared for another long night as tanks paired up with occupied houses to await the next German attack.
German Counterattack on the Seventh Army
Finally, at 2 am on January 11, the order came to withdraw. The movement was completed in orderly fashion. Noise was kept to a minimum, and the tank engines were not started until they were ready to pull out. A friendly artillery barrage covered much of the noise and kept the Germans busy. The night was so dark and the fog so thick that the infantrymen had to hold each other’s belts to avoid getting lost in the gloom. Within an hour the survivors were back across the Zorn. The first battle of Herrlisheim had gone to the Germans.
The Germans were convinced that the Seventh Army was weak and that another strong push would bring success. Indeed, the collection of American and French Army units containing the Gambsheim bridgehead lent credence to that belief. Surrounding the German enclave were the 314th Infantry Regiment (79th Infantry Division), Combat Command B of the 14th Armored Division, the 232nd Infantry Regiment (42nd Infantry Division/Task Force Linden), and elements of the French 3rd Algerian Infantry Division. To overcome what the Germans viewed as a miscellaneous collection of forces, they committed their experienced 21st Panzer and 25th Panzergrenadier Divisions to secure the Gambsheim bridgehead. General Brooks soon found his VI Corps fighting for its life against three attacks from three directions. Several days of bitter fighting ensued.
By January 16, the German attack had pushed VI Corps back along the west bank of the Rhine. Another attack was expected, but contrary to the expectations of Generals Patch and Brooks, it did not come against the main American line. Instead, the Germans hit the western flank held by the 12th Armored Division. The Hellcats had been ordered to seize Herrlisheim to cut the principal German north-south communication line with the Gambsheim bridgehead. They had moved into position and launched their first attack, which failed when far more Germans were found to be defending the town than General Allen had been led to believe. Normally a job for an infantry division, the Hellcats were the sole reserve available to Seventh Army, and so they had drawn the short straw.
Undeterred, General Allen ordered both Combat Commands A and B to renew the attack. This time Major James W. Logan’s 17th Armored Infantry Battalion would attack Herrlisheim from the south while Lt. Col. Scott Hall’s 43rd Tank Battalion skirted the east end of the town to surround it. The objective of Combat Command B was to clear the Stainwald Woods and the town of Offendorf, which flanked Herrlisheim. The attack was to begin on January 17.
The 43rd Tank Battalion Disappears Into Thin Air
Once again the armored infantrymen were able to enter the town and begin clearing it only to encounter increasingly stronger German defenses as they went along. The 17th Armored Infantry Battalion soon found itself surrounded in the town, cut off, and forced to withdraw despite strong artillery support, losing a number of prisoners. Major Logan’s final message to headquarters at about 4 am simply reported, “I guess this is it,” as his battalion was overrun. But what had happened to their support, the 43rd Tank Battalion? It would be months before anyone discovered exactly what had happened to the battalion, which had never returned to American lines.
The 43rd Tank Battalion, under the command of Lt. Col. Scott Hall (some sources give Lt. Col. Nicholas Novosel as commander at this time), had fought at Offendorf the day before, where it had lost 12 tanks to enemy action. As planned, the 43rd followed the 17th Armored Infantry Battalion to the outskirts of Herrlisheim and then turned off on its flanking mission to the east and north. Radio contact between the two units of Combat Command A was lost at 10 that morning. At about noon on January 17, the commanding officer radioed his executive officer at Combat Command A, “Things are plenty hot.” Some garbled messages came in later, but no one could understand them or determine where the battalion was located. One message from the battalion operations officer reported incoming German antitank fire. The last message from the battalion commander reported the unit’s location as east of Herrlisheim, and a short time later a brief message was received reporting that the battalion commander’s tank had been knocked out. Nothing else was ever heard from the 43rd Tank Battalion. Some 29 American medium tanks and their crews had simply vanished.
While the battle still raged in Herrlisheim, the supply and administrative units of Combat Command A searched in vain for some sign of the 43rd Tank Battalion. Despite being overrun, many of the 17th Armored infantrymen had managed to escape from Herrlisheim, but not one man returned from the flanking maneuver of the 43rd Tank Battalion.
Piecing Together the Fate of the 43rd
It was not until a day later that the mystery began to clear. An artillery observer flying over the battlefield on January 18 reported several destroyed American tanks on the eastern outskirts of Herrlisheim. Continuing on, he found two more groups of destroyed American tanks in the area. These tanks were reported to be deployed in a circular defensive formation. Some were painted white while others had been burned black. General Allen immediately ordered a rescue attempt, but closer observation reported no sign of movement from the American tanks and also recorded a strong German presence in the immediate area. With no evidence that there was anyone left to rescue, the attempt was cancelled.
Intelligence reports later added to solving the mystery of the lost battalion. Information received after the battle revealed that the attack of Combat Command A had unexpectedly run into the counterattack of the 10th SS Panzer Division, which had been ordered to enlarge the bridgehead. That evening German radio announced that an American lieutenant colonel and 300 of his men had been taken prisoner at Herrlisheim and that 50 American tanks had been captured or destroyed. General Allen and his staff could only speculate that the 43rd Tank Battalion had run into a well-planned German ambush and been annihilated. With no fresh forces left to him, General Brooks ordered a withdrawal of his VI Corps. Herrlishiem would have to wait.
In late February 1945, more information on the lost battalion was found. The 12th Armored Division’s graves registration report dated February 23 indicates that the 43rd Tank Battalion tanks that were found knocked out in the town had been hit by panzerfausts—infantry-held antitank weapons—while the tanks on the eastern edge of the town had been devastated by high-velocity cannons. The investigators found many German antitank positions indicating that both 75mm and 88mm antitank guns had been positioned just outside the town. The conclusion was drawn that the battalion had entered the town, been struck by infantry armed with antitank weapons, and had then withdrawn to the outskirts of the town, where it encountered a barrage of antitank fire. Some 28 destroyed tanks were identified. Contrary to the German report, the bodies of the battalion commander and many of his men were also identified. The report went on to state that it appeared from tracks and other indicators that perhaps four American tanks had been captured intact and removed by the Germans.
The End of Operation Nordwind
The Hellcats were not yet done with Herrlisheim. On January 18, a task force consisting of Company B, 66th Armored Infantry Battalion and Company B, 23rd Tank Battalion made an abortive attack to try to reach any survivors of the 17th Armored Infantry Battalion who might be in town. On the flank, Combat Command B made no headway against the Germans. That evening orders came for the division to withdraw to the west side of the Zorn to coordinate with a general withdrawal of VI Corps. Some small German counterattacks were repulsed once the division had settled into its new positions. The next day the Hellcats were relieved by the 36th Infantry Division. The Hellcats moved to Strasbourg for a rest before returning to combat with the French First Army.
Ironically, just a few days after the Hellcats were relieved, the Germans decided that they had no chance to break through Seventh Army and called off their Nordwind offensive. Their best remaining combat units were shifted to the Eastern Front, leaving behind some 23,000 casualties against American losses of 14,000. Indeed, the Seventh Army was stronger than ever with the arrival of the 42nd, 63rd, and 70th Infantry Divisions at the front and the veteran 101st Airborne Division held in reserve.
The Lessons of the Battle of Herrlisheim
The Herrlisheim battle pointed out lessons that had been learned earlier in the battles for Normandy, northern France, and Brittany. Inexperienced combat divisions often had to learn in combat how to maneuver their tank and infantry assets. In Herrlisheim the new 12th Armored Division too often separated its infantry and armor, particularly in street fighting. A good infantry-tank team was essential to clearing a defended town. Tanks alone in narrow streets with overhanging roofs were sitting ducks for German antitank teams. Similarly, infantrymen could not adequately clear a town without close armored support. At Herrlisheim, the armored infantry repeatedly went into the town without accompanying armor. Likewise, the attack of the 43rd Tank Battalion had no infantry support, which might have pushed the German antitank gunners back far enough to enable the combined force to gain a foothold on the eastern end of Herrlisheim. However, for an inexperienced combat unit the Hellcats gave as good as they took.
By the end of January 1945, the Seventh Army was once again on the attack. General Brooks’ VI Corps was ordered to eliminate the Gambsheim bridgehead. He sent the 36th Infantry Division, supported by Combat Command B of the 14th Armored Division, to clear the zone. Miserable weather restricted the armor to a few good roads, and strong German defenses delayed the advance repeatedly. Nevertheless, the bridgehead was cleared by February 11, and American troops finally occupied Herrlisheim.
The Hellcats went on to take part in the clearing of the Colmar Pocket in February with the French First Army and then attacked through the lines of the 94th Infantry Division in March, reaching the Rhine north of Mannheim, Germany, on March 20, 1945. They crossed the Rhine at Worms and fought their way eastward through southern Germany until they reached Schweinfurt. Town after town fell to the now highly experienced combat division until it forced a crossing of the Danube River.
The Hellcats were in Austria, moving on Innsbruck, when the war ended. Months of fighting had cost them 724 killed and 2,416 wounded in combat. Many of these casualties had been incurred far to the west at a town called Herrlisheim.
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The Somme, July 1st, 1916
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The Somme, July 1st, 1916 - The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme
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The Battlefield
Somme – French department formed from part of Picardy; prefecture: Amiens; sub-prefectures: Abbeville, Montdidier, Peronne; 4 arrondissements, 41 cantons, 835 communes; court of appeal and episcopal seat at Amiens; the department takes its name from the river which waters it.
‘LETHARGICALLY,’ ONE FEELS like adding. For the Somme is a slow-moving river, winding its weed-choked way through a peat-bottomed valley below beech woods and bare chalk downland. The countryside, too, is slow-moving, under the gaze of the traveller who takes one of the long Roman roads which radiate north-east, east and south-east from Amiens. Low plateaux and ridges, separated by the shallow valleys of the Somme’s tributaries, the Aire, Ancre, Noye, Avre, Buce, succeed each other monotonously, devoid of hedges and almost of woodland, thickly populated, intensely cultivated. Between the Noye and the Somme itself, in the plain of Santerre, the land is completely flat and yields the most characteristic of the department’s crops, sugar beet, dull to contemplate, heavy to work, rich to harvest. In September the roads of the Santerre are slippery with mud (‘Attention! – Betteraves’) when the clay-smeared beet are hauled to the little refineries whose tall, single chimneys mark the villages of the plain; in October the refinery-owners summon their neighbours to shoot partridge and hare among the furrows and sit down in the evening a hundred strong to eat the bag; in November enormous ploughs emerge from the machinery sheds to be dragged on cables between stationary traction engines across the mile-wide fields. The pace of life on the Somme is as slow as its rivers, as regular as its natural features.
But as ploughing proceeds, little dumps of foreign objects appear along the verges of the roads. Rusty, misshapen, dirt-encrusted, these cones and globes reveal themselves, at a closer look, to be the fruit not of agriculture but of war; trench mortar bombs, howitzer shells, aerial torpedoes – eight-inch, seventy-fives, seventy-sevens, eighteen-pounders, 210mm, Jack Johnsons, coalboxes, whizz-bangs – veterans identify them in the language of sixty years ago with unhesitant certitude, though they approach the dumps with respectful caution. At the end of the ploughing season, bomb disposal officers of the French army arrive to remove the relics to a spot where they can be safely detonated. Occasionally an officer is killed. Even after sixty years, the fuses of these ‘duds’ and ‘blinds’ remain activated, the charges they contain explosive.
Bomb disposal officers are killed also in Belgium, along the banks of the Yser and on the low crescent of heights which ring Ypres to the east; and, on French soil, south of the Somme, in the vineyards of Champagne and in the wheatlands of Lorraine. But the dumps which accumulate on the Somme differ in two respects from those with which bomb disposal officers have to deal elsewhere. First, the heaps are bigger. The Somme was not the most heavily shelled of the Western Front battlefields. In terms of shells per square yard, that cachet belongs to Verdun; in duration of shelling it belongs to the heights of the Aisne and the Chemin des Dames; in remorselessness it belongs to the Ypres salient. But for a variety of reasons, dud shells do not resurface in anything like the same numbers on other battlefields as they do on the Somme. Around Verdun and in the Argonne, another heavily shelled sector, little of the ground is worked; as on the slopes of the Vosges, it was covered with forest before the war and has been replanted since. In the Champagne, historically the principal training ground of the French army, large areas have always been used for artillery practice, and the duds of the First World War, merely adding to the existing hazards, attract little attention. The high chalklands of Artois, up whose slopes the French, and later the British and Canadians, struggled towards the crests of Vimy and Notre Dame de Lorette, are now back again under pasture; while in Flanders, the glutinous soil swallows the jetsam, as it has swallowed the concrete pillboxes with which Hindenburg sought to fence the British and Belgians into the Ypres salient and the water-logged valleys of the Lys and Yser. It is the Somme, therefore, with its busy agriculture and light, friable soil, which most plentifully throws up the dangerous debris of the great offensives.
Most of this debris is British – and this is the second respect in which the Somme dumps differ from those accumulated north or southwards. For the Somme was, in a way true of no other battlefield of the First World War, British territory. Ypres, of course, became during the war almost the corner of a native field; and, with its British church, English-speaking pubs (‘Bass on draft’), English school for the children of the Commonwealth War Graves’ gardeners and plethora of county regimental memorials, remains so. But it was always a tiny battlefield into which Haig, even at the height of his offensive obsessions, found it difficult to squeeze more than half a dozen divisions for an attack. The British, moreover, won no victories at Ypres, except that curious victory of the spirit which, over half a century later, still plucks back the survivors of the Salient to stand in silence beneath the tomblike arches of the Menin Gate and hear the evening Last Post blown, or sit under the willows in the Ramparts cemetery, where lawns grow over the roof of the Lille Gate dressing-station and bodies carried from it lie ranked beneath the turf. The Somme, by contrast, offered an immensely long front of attack on which twenty divisions could assault side by side. And, for all the miseries suffered there, it was also a front which brought its triumphs. On it the British drove the first tanks into action, in the ruined village of Flers, on September 15th, 1916. Two years later, they organized before Amiens the first great armoured breakthrough of modern warfare. And earlier in the year of 1918 they had, after the terrifying and almost total collapse of one of their armies, brought to a halt near the city the greatest of Hindenburg’s ‘war-winning’ offensives. It was these battles, together with the long periods of garrison duty intervening between them, which made the Somme a British, rather than a French, Belgian or American sector. The Americans would eventually come to think of the Argonne, that awful wilderness of shredded woods and choked-up streams, as ‘their’ battleground, as did the Belgians the Yser, on which they were to wage a semi-aquatic war for nearly four years. The French, who had poured out their blood along each mile of the five hundred between Nieuport and Switzerland, considered half-a-dozen points on the Western Front as champs d’honneur particularly their own – Verdun, of course, but also the Chemin des Dames (it was for the vistas of the Aisne it offered that Louis XV had had built for his daughters the road which gave the ridge its name), Tahure and the Main de Massiges in Champagne, Les Eparges in the St Mihiel salient (later also the scene of an American offensive) and Sainte Marie Aux Mines and the Hartmannswillerkopf (le vieil Armand) in the high Vosges, over which Chasseurs alpins and Jäger squandered their special mountain-warfare skills during 1915. Mort-Homme, Côte 304, Neuville St-Vaast, Somme-Puy, Malmaison, Moulin de Laffaux – it was the struggles for such unregarded corners of the homeland as these which made them ‘French’ in a way they had not been before. In the same way it was the battles of 1916 and 1918 – Bazentin, Pozières, Morval, Thiepval, Transloy, Villers Bretonneux – which made the Somme ‘British’. But none more so than the first battle, the Battle of Albert, and its first day, July 1st, 1916.
The Somme, in 1916, was new territory for much of the British army. In mid-1915 a small sector north of the river had been taken over by the embryo Third Army, as part of the Allies’ agreed policy of reducing the length of front held by the French, but the bulk of the British Expeditionary Force had remained in Flanders. As its size increased, it had extended its front southwards, but only far enough to cross the wet levels of the River Lys into the dreary coalfields east of Lille, where during 1915 it fought a series of minor, murderous trench-to-trench battles – Neuve Chapelle, Aubers Ridge, Festubert, Givenchy – and mounted one major, miscarried offensive at Loos. All had been characterized by the extreme ferocity of the fighting and the miserable physical conditions which the terrain imposed. Between Ypres and Armentières, water is found everywhere close beneath the surface and much of the line had to be constructed of sandbag barricades instead of trenches. Almost everywhere, too, the Germans occupied what commanding heights there were: near Ypres, the Paschendaele and Messines ridges; in the coalfields, most of the slagheaps and, until they were destroyed, the pithead towers. Compelled to struggle for possession of the higher, drier ground, the British had driven their lines in many places almost to within conversational distance of the Germans’; at Spanbroekmoelen, south of Ypres, the trenches were separated by a single fence of ‘international’ wire, which each garrison mended from opposite sides under cover of darkness. But despite the heavy and continuous toll of losses – about 300 a day – which this physical intimacy and constant attack cost the British, Flanders had become a sort of home for the B.E.F. Behind the lines – and battalions left the trenches at regular and quite frequent intervals for ‘rest’ – the villages provided roofs, straw, beer, pommes frites, fields for football. As peasants learnt to profiteer, the army and churches erected canteen huts, where the beer was both cheaper and stronger, and tea, something the locals never got the hang of brewing, was on tap. Farther back, in the little Flemish market towns, Poperinghe – ‘Top, Bailleul, Béthune, cafés and restaurants thrived, collecting clienteles of young officers who would ride over in groups to celebrate a spell out of the line on comfortable chairs at well-laid tables. Other little calling places had begun to make a name: clubs where concert-parties, over from England or got up by divisions, performed; spiritual ports of call, like the famous Talbot House (Toc H, in the war’s phonetics) in Poperinghe where all visitors shed their rank; profane addresses which officers entered furtively or not at all. The geography of West Flanders, Nord and Pas de Calais, had thus, by the end of 1915, become extremely familiar to the B.E.F. Its network of roads, turnings, crossings (already much engineered and improved), was imprinted on the army’s mental map, and its place-names had been Tommified over a large area, not only those of the larger spots whose soldier-equivalents were well-known at home – Armenteers, Wipers (Ypres), Vlam (Vlamertinghe), Eetaps (Etaples) – but of many quite tiny features of purely local tactical importance. The Tommy’s names for a few of them had a wide currency – Plugstreet (Ploegsteert) Wood and Whitesheet (Wytschaete) – but most formed a private code: Tram Car Cottage, Battersea Farm, Glencorse Wood, Beggar’s Rest, Apple Villa, White Horse Cellars, Kansas Cross, Doll’s House. The origin of most of the names, bestowed during the B.E.F.’s moment of epic in October and November, 1914, had already been forgotten by the following summer. By the end of 1917, the places which they signified would themselves have been obliterated. But the names would still pass from mouth to mouth as new battalions relieved old among the slag-heaps, along the stream-bottoms, in the vanished woods.
The Somme, therefore, was country to be mistrusted by the divisions which came south to it in March 1916. These short sectors which had been held since the previous summer by the Third Army looked familiar to the new Fourth: the trenches were properly house-kept and laid out as per regulation, with continuous belts of wire in front, a parapet and a parados, traverses-those regular kinks in the line which prevented an attacker gaining possession of one stretch from shooting down its whole length, and a support and a reserve line at the proper distance – the one two hundred yards back, the other four hundred back again – connected to the front by communication trenches. Thus accommodated, the brigades of the Fourth Army could look forward to organizing a proper trench routine, rotating each of their four battalions between front, reserve and rest on a sixteen-day cycle. But the divisions of the Third, which, by a sideways move, inherited a sector vacated by the French, were at a loss. Their predecessors, by all the evidence, had not been conducting trench warfare at all, not at least as its rules were understood in the B.E.F. Flowers had been allowed to overgrow the parapets of the trenches – the 1/4th Ox and Bucks took over a ‘Marguerite Trench’ from the French – which in many places were not truly continuous, but organized as independent ‘positions’, comfortable to occupy, at least for a small garrison, with their little scrapes in the trench walls and wattle-shelters in the corners of the traverses, but ill-adapted for raiding or for solid battalion defence.
And the truth indeed was that the French had not been waging trench warfare on the Somme. For them, it was an ‘inactive’ sector which they were content to hold with the minimum of infantrymen in the front line, using their plentiful corps and divisional artilleries of seventy-five millimetre guns to warn off the Germans should they menace an attack. But the Germans opposite had never put them to the trouble. For their high command also was content to regard the Somme as a quiet sector, leaving it in the hands of reserve divisions which might be allowed an easy life as long as they improved their front – by digging and wiring – and kept the French on the right side of no-man’s-land. Some of the German divisions on the Somme had, in consequence, been there since September 1914 with the loss of scarcely a man, except among the contingents which they were occasionally obliged to detach when the Allies attacked in Flanders or Champagne.
The Plan
All this was about to be changed. Since December, 1915, the French and British had been planning a great offensive on the Western Front and the sector they had chosen for it was that ‘athwart the Somme’. This was not to be the first offensive seen in the west. Indeed the S-like trace of the Western front was itself the product of a series of offensives in 1914. The earliest, mounted by the French into Lorraine, had fixed the lower loop of the S along the line of the Vosges and the River Meurthe; the second, mounted by the Germans in conformity with the dead maestro Schlieffen’s plan, and hinging on Verdun, had planted the centre of the S on the Aisne – though it had hovered for a week on the Marne; the third, a running battle between French and Germans, known as the Race to the Sea and fought up the rungs of the parallel main railway lines of north-eastern France, across the departments of the Oise, Somme, Pas de Calais and Nord, had ultimately planted the upper loop of the S on the River Yser. There, in October and November, in the only gap of open front remaining in the west, the French, British, Belgians and Germans had worried the last gasps of life out of their hopes of quick victory. Henceforth, if they were to seek a decision, it would be found on the far side of the trench line.
But much of the terrain which the trench line crossed was unsuitable for decisive operations. North of Ypres, both sides were prisoners of the floods; south of Verdun the proximity of rivers, forests or mountains threatened a rapid check to any advance, even if it could be initiated; between the Oise and the Aisne, in the dead centre, steep river valleys likewise offered little prospect of breakthrough; and there were a number of other unpromising stretches – the valley of the Lys, south of Ypres, and the forest of the Argonne, west of Verdun. The narrowness of suitable attacking front left after these sectors had been subtracted from the whole mattered little to the Germans, for they, once fully persuaded of the failure of the ‘war-winning’ Schlieffen plan, were content to stand on the defensive in the west while they won victories over the Russians. But it mattered a great deal to the French, whose national honour was in pawn to the Germans, together with much of their national wealth; and to the British, who, as the numbers in their armies grew, needed a battlefield on which to make their strength – and their commitment to the common cause – felt.
By any sensible strategic reckoning, there were only three sectors where the lie of the land and the direction of the railways so ran as to favour an Allied attack; the Somme, Artois and the Champagne. During 1915 it was upon the last two that they concentrated their forces. Both offered high, dry, chalky going and a hinterland across which an advance might be carried at speed if the trench line could be broken. But it was less the nature of the terrain than their relationship to each other which recommended these battlefields to French high command. Grasping still after the decisive battle of which he had been cheated in 1914, Joffre insisted on seeing the Western Front as a ‘theatre of operations’ rather than the fortified position which it truly was, and its central section therefore as ‘major salient’. In that the front between Verdun and Ypres ran in a rough semi-circle, forming the upper loop of the whole S, a salient it was, with its northern root in Artois and its southern in Champagne. It was an illusion, however, soon to be demonstrated as such, that an attack on the major salient was the right strategy or that the conventional method of dealing with a salient – by simultaneous attacks at the roots – would work in the circumstances of 1915. There were many reasons why not. Some were to be glimpsed in the French spring offensive of 1915, known as the Second Battle of Artois, which failed to capture Vimy Ridge. More were to be revealed, and more fully, in the September battle, a truly joint offensive between the French, attacking in Champagne, and a pair of British and French armies, which attacked side by side in Artois; the French again failed to carry the Vimy position, the British just got possession of the village of Loos (having hoped to create the conditions for a cavalry breakthrough), while the major French offensive in Champagne – the last in which they assaulted behind colours and bands – dissipated itself in blood and misery on the slopes of Tahure and the Main de Massiges.
Allied strategy for 1916 required, therefore, a new offensive plan. Joffre decided, moreover, that it needed a new front. This was due in part to his growing recognition that a front which had been attacked was so ‘thickened up’ in the process – cauterized and criss-crossed with a scar-tissue of new and old trenches – that a renewal of the assault on the same spot carried a diminishing prospect of success; but in greater part to his desire to involve the British in a major offensive effort in 1916. In suspecting their disinclination to be involved, he did them an injustice; in supposing that their choice of location for an offensive might not serve his Grand Strategy, he was on to something. Haig, who had made his reputation by his defence of Ypres in late 1914, had, as soon as he assumed command of the B.E.F. in December, 1915, set his staff to plan for the next great British offensive to take place there again. In selecting the Somme front, which was where the French and British sectors touched, as the focus of Allied efforts for 1916, Joffre was at least to ensure that those efforts would be jointly directed towards the defeat of the German army on French soil and under his hand – even if the method by which it would be defeated was, as he was coming privately to accept, that of usure – attrition – rather than the breakthrough in which the British still hoped and believed.
Attrition is a game at which two can play. Both the British and French had too long and easily taken for granted that the German posture on the Western Front was a defensive one. It was almost as great a psychological as physical shock, therefore, when in mid-February 1916 the Germans opened a major and quite unexpected offensive at Verdun, the lower hinge of the Western Front. From the outset the French rightly grasped that its object was to impose upon them the necessity either of making a humiliating withdrawal or of bearing a prolonged butchery. The French settled for butchery; but from the date of the offensive’s outbreak, their discussions with the British lost their academic, almost reflective pace and took an urgency which became more and more desperate as the numbers of French lives lost at Verdun grew. Death or wounds had taken 90,000 Frenchmen by the end of March, only six weeks after the offensive had begun. In May, when Joffre came to visit Haig in his headquarters, it was calculated that losses would have risen to 200,000 by the end of that month. Haig conceded the need to fix an early date of the opening of the Somme offensive; he indicated the period from July 1 to August 15. At the mention of the later date, Joffre, extremely agitated, burst out that ‘the French army would cease to exist’ if nothing had been done by that date. On the spot, the two generals settled for July 1. The British would attack with a dozen divisions north of the river, the French with twenty to the south.
The Preparations
Haig’s planners now busied themselves with fixing the final details. Throughout the earlier part of the year, they had been creating behind the Somme front the infrastructure of roads, railway spurs, camps, hospitals, water pumping stations, supply dumps and transport parks without which a deliberate offensive could not be mounted in an industrial age. The most important end-product of this labour was the accumulation of artillery ammunition, of which 2,960,000 rounds had been dumped forward. (By way of comparison, Napoleon probably had about 20,000 rounds with his guns at Waterloo.) Consequently, the most important element of the attack plan was the artillery programme. It was divided into two. The first instalment was to be a week-long bombardment of the German line, concentrating on the trenches occupied by the garrison but also reaching back to ‘interdict’ – deny the use of – the approach routes to those trenches, where those routes could be reached. The second instalment was to be the barrage. This word, the meaning of which has since been smothered in English by the weight of historical allusion attaching to it, was new to the British in 1916. Borrowed from the French, who use it to signify both a turnpike barrier and a dam (whence it has been taken into English by another route), it literally has the force of meaning ‘preventing movement’. And such was the desired function of the tir de barrage; ‘barrage fire’ was a curtain of exploding shells which preceded the advance of the infantry, preventing the enemy infantry from moving from their positions of shelter to their positions of defence until it was too late to oppose the attackers’ advance. In strict artillery theory, the barrage, by carefully timed ‘lifts’, could take the body of infantry it was protecting clean through an enemy position without their suffering a single loss from enemy infantry fire.
The only theoretical limit on the protection the barrage could offer was imposed by the range of the guns firing it – which meant that beyond about six thousand yards from the gun-line, say five thousand from the front trench, the infantry could not count on the artillery’s fire reaching ground they wished to traverse. In practice ‘effective’ ranges were regarded as rather shorter – ‘effective’ having changed its meaning since Waterloo. There, as we saw, it meant ‘making an effect on the enemy’, something shot would not do at long range because it quickly lost its killing velocity and accuracy. By 1916, when better technology had improved velocity and accuracy ten-fold, and the bursting charge had made shells lethal even at extreme range, ‘effective’ fire really meant ‘observable’ fire, fire which fell within sight of an observation officer who could communicate with his battery and correct its guns’ deflection and elevation. He was expected to keep close behind the attacking infantry – he was also expected to be able to keep his telephone cable to his battery intact, a much more doubtful expectation – and the limit on the effectiveness of fire, therefore, was that imposed by his ability accurately to spot the fall of shot. If we estimate his effective range of vision at a thousand yards, and his distance from the leading infantry also at a thousand, we arrive at an ‘effective’ range for the barrage of about four thousand yards from the front trench.
This was almost exactly the maximum distance set for the advance of each of the infantry formations on July 1st, which is not surprising, for ‘objectives’ were arrived at by exactly these mathematics. On some divisional fronts, final objectives were closer to the British front line if the German front position was closer. On less than half the front, however, did objectives fall on the German second position, the siting of which the Germans had, of course, determined by the same calculations of artillery ranges which underlay the planning of the British attack. The British infantry were, therefore, being asked to commit themselves to an offensive of which the outcome, even if completely successful, would leave the Germans still largely in possession of a second and completely independent system of fortification untouched by the attack. Its capture would require the hauling forward of all the impedimenta of bombardment and the repetition of the opening assault on another day, at another hour. That they were not daunted by this prospect is explained in part by the briefing that the staff had given to the regimental officers, and the officers to their men: that the real work of destruction, both of the enemy’s defences and men, would have been done by the artillery before zero hour; that the enemy’s wire would have been scythed flat, his batteries battered into silence and his trench-garrisons entombed in their dug-outs; that the main task of the infantry would be merely to walk forward to the objectives which the officers had marked on their maps, moderating their pace to that of the barrage moving ahead of them; finally, that once arrived there, they had only to install themselves in the German reserve trenches to be in perfect safety. Had anyone yet coined the phrase, ‘Artillery conquers, infantry occupies’ it would have been on everyone’s lips. Or would it? For the better explanation of the army’s optimism was that it was a trusting army. It believed in the reassurances proffered by the staff who, to be fair, believed them also. It believed in the superiority of its own equipment over the Germans’. It believed in the dedication and fearlessness of its battalion officers – and was right so to believe. But it believed above all in itself.
The Army
The British Expeditionary Force of 1916 was one of the most remarkable and admirable military formations ever to have taken the field, and the Fourth and Third Armies, which were to attack the Somme, provided a perfect cross-section of the sort of units which composed it. Four of the thirteen attacking divisions were regular, were wholly or largely formed, that is, of long-service volunteer soldiers. The 4th Division demonstrated what type of formation this was. All its twelve battalions of fighting infantry were old-sweat units, two Irish, one Scottish, five Midland or North Country, two West Country, one East Anglian, one London; and, despite continuous action since the Battle of Mons in August 1914, many of their experienced pre-war officers and N.C.O.s still survived. The 7th and 8th Divisions were less completely regular, containing as each did a war-raised ‘Kitchener’ brigade (three brigades of four battalions made a division) but were distinctively regular in spirit. This was true, too, of the 29th Division, which contained two war-raised units – the so-called Public Schools Battalion and the Newfoundland Regiment – but was composed otherwise of the toughest old-sweat battalions, those which had been overseas on imperial garrison duty in August 1914. Three of the ‘Kitchener’ divisions also contained regular battalions, the 21st, 30th and 32nd, having one in each of its brigades; the rest of their infantry, like all that in the 18th, 31st, 34th and 36th Divisions, was ‘Kitchener’ or ‘New Army’. What made these battalions –97 out of the 143 destined for the attack – so worthy of note?
First, that they were formed of volunteers. The regular battalions were also raised by voluntary enlistment, but the impulsion which drove a pre-war civilian to join up for ‘seven and five’ – seven years with the colours, five on the reserve – was most often that of simple poverty. ‘I would rather bury you than see you in a red coat’ were the words his mother wrote to William Robertson, a ranker who became a field-marshal, on hearing of his enlistment, and they tell us all we need to know about what a respectable Victorian working-class family felt at a son joining the army. Almost any other sort of employment was thought preferable, for soldiering meant exile, low company, drunkenness or its danger, the surrender of all chance of marriage – the removal, in short, of every gentle or improving influence upon which the Victorian poor had been taught to set such store. It is against this background that we must review the extraordinary enthusiasm to enlist which seized the male population of the British Isles in the autumn of 1914 and provided the army, in a little under six months, with nearly two million volunteer soldiers.
Among the first hundred thousand – for administrative convenience, the volunteers were called for in batches of that number – many who joined up were without work, there being, for example, a serious slump in the building trade in the summer of 1914. Some might, therefore, have been eventually impelled into the army, while others perhaps used the pretext of a national emergency to camouflage a personal one and to justify the breaking of a taboo. But, from the outset, many surrendered well-paid, steady employment to join up, coming forward in such numbers that they overwhelmed the capacity of the army to clothe, arm and train them. Kitchener, hastily-appointed Secretary of State for War, had originally called for a single increment of a hundred thousand men to the strength of the regular army. He was, by the spring of 1915, to find himself with six of these ‘hundred thousands’, from which he formed five ‘New Armies’, each of six divisions. The two original ‘hundred thousands’ provided two series of six symmetrical divisions, reflecting and to a large extent corresponding with the regional division of the country: 9th and 15th were called Scottish, 10th and 16th Irish, 11th and 17th Northern, 12th and 18th Eastern, 13th and 19th Western and 14th and 20th Light (formed from Londoners and other southerners into battalions of the rifle and light infantry regiments). But the sheer weight of the recruiting flood soon washed away the very flimsy framework of organization within which the War Office tried to contain it. The facts of demography, too, worked against their scheme, for the population of the British Isles did not neatly divide into six. The great reserves of manpower were in the northern and midland cities and in London, and it was this pattern which began to tell in the third, fourth and subsequent ‘hundred thousands’. The men who had come forward in these waves chose their own titles for their units, in some cases their own officers, in almost every case their own comrades. These were the men who formed the ‘Pals’ Battalions’.
Perhaps no story of the First World War is as poignant as that of the Pals. It is a story of a spontaneous and genuinely popular mass movement which has no counterpart in the modern, English-speaking world and perhaps could have none outside its own time and place: a time of intense, almost mystical patriotism, and of the inarticulate elitism of an imperial power’s working class; a place of vigorous and buoyant urban life, rich in differences and in a sense of belonging – to work-places, to factories, to unions, to churches, chapels, charitable organizations, benefit clubs, Boy Scouts, Boys’ Brigades, Sunday Schools, cricket, football, rugby, skittle clubs, old boys’ societies, city offices, municipal departments, craft guilds – to any one of those hundreds of bodies from which the Edwardian Briton drew his security and sense of identity. This network of associations offered an emotional leverage on British male responses which the committees of ‘raisers’, middle-aged, and self-appointed in the first flush of enthusiasm for the war, were quick to manipulate, without perhaps realizing its power. First among these men was the Earl of Derby who, in his role as caudillo of the commercial north-east, called in late August 1914 on the young men of Liverpool’s business offices to raise a battalion for the New Army, promising that he had Kitchener’s guarantee that those who ‘joined together should serve together’. The numbers for the battalion were found at the first recruiting rally, and the overflow provided two others. The clerks of the White Star shipping company formed up as one platoon, those of Cunard as another, the Cotton Exchange staff, banks, insurance companies, warehouses contributing other contingents, so that between Friday, August 28th and Tuesday, September 3rd a whole brigade of four infantry battalions – four thousand young men – had been found. They called themselves the ist, 2nd, 3rd and 4th City of Liverpool Battalions; later the War Office would allot them the more official tide of 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th Battalions, King’s (Liverpool) Regiment, thus accommodating them within the conventional regimental structure of the peace-time army, and designate them the 89th Brigade of the 30th Division. But they would continue to think of themselves as the Liverpool Pals.
And the Pals idea at once caught hold of the imagination of communities much smaller, less self-confident, less commercially dominant than Liverpool. Accrington, the little East Lancashire cotton town, and Grimsby, the North Sea fishing port, shortly produced their Pals, Llandudno and Blaenaw Festiniog, the Welsh holiday resorts another, the London slum boroughs of Shoreditch, Islington, West Ham and Bermondsey theirs. Artillery brigades were raised in Camberwell, Wearside, Burnley, Lee Green, Lytham St Anne’s; Royal Engineer field companies in Tottenham, Cambridge, Barnsley, Ripon, and units arose with sub-titles like North-east Railway, 1st Football, Church Lads, 1st Public Works, Empire, Arts and Crafts, Forest of Dean Pioneers, Bankers, British Empire League, Miners. Miners, who numbered 1.2 million in 1914, about six per cent of the employed population, and whose places of work were concentrated almost exclusively in the West Midlands, South Wales, the North-East and the Scottish Lowlands, provided a disproportionately large number of the recruits and of the units they would eventually form. So many were physically stunted that at first they failed the army’s height requirement; but being otherwise robust were later formed into special ‘Bantam’ units, for which the height requirement was reduced to between 5′ and 5′ 3″. The spectacle of these uniformed midgets in training touched the lowest strain of sentimentality in Hun-hating journalists, while many of the recruits, sharing nothing with the miners but their lack of stature, turned out poor fighting material and their units with them. But these were the exception. In physique, in subordination, in motivation, in readiness for self-sacrifice, the soldiers of the Kitchener armies, ‘citizen soldiers’ as the propaganda of the period, for once getting its categories right, called them, were unsurpassed, and were matched in quality only by the magnificent volunteer contingents provided by the white Dominions, and by the Ersatz Corps of German university and high-school students who had paid the price of going untrained to war in the Kindermord1 at Ypres in October and November 1914.
The Kindermord, had the Kitchener soldiers grasped its import, offered them an awful warning, for the Ersatz Corps, which outnumbered the tiny B.E.F. of 1914, had been beaten by the superior military technique of war-hardened soldiers. The Kitchener battalions had on formation, and for many months afterwards, no knowledge of military technique whatsoever. Indeed ‘battalions’, which implies an irreducible minimum of military organization, is a misnomer. Some ‘battalions’ entered into military existence when a train load of a thousand volunteers was tipped out on to a rural railway platform in front of a single officer who had been designated to command it. Few of these battalions, beyond those of the first two ‘hundred thousands’, were allotted more than three officers and three regular N.C.O.s, and those were often second-raters – retired Indian cavalrymen, militia colonels, disabled pensioners. Occasionally the choice was more promising (though ‘choice’ of course was sharply limited by the need to keep every fit and able officer in France) and the more intelligent of these instant commanding officers would send the men off in small groups for a few minutes to elect their own junior leaders, or would call for those with some experience of supervising others to accept probationary rank. Egalitarian though the mood of the Kitchener armies very distinctively was, appeals of this sort generally produced candidates, often ones whose authority was readily accepted by their fellows and could eventually be confirmed.
But although this method yielded N.C.O.s, it did not do much to officer the new armies. The War Office was unwilling to grant commissions unless aspirants could prove their suitability, and although it devolved the power to adjudicate on to the local ‘raisers’, it and they shared common criteria of what ‘suitable’ meant. Officers had to be gentlemen. But just as the distribution of manpower failed to mesh with the regimental organization of the British army, so too did the social with the human geography of the country. Britain in 1914 was as sharply Two Nations as it had been seventy years before, so that throughout the industrial North, the West Midlands, South Wales and Lowland Scotland existed populous and productive communities almost wholly without a professional stratum and so without an officer class. Young men with the necessary qualifications – possession of the Certificate A or B granted by an Officer Training Corps was usually stipulated, though education at one of the public or better grammar schools which ran an O.T.C. was in practice often found sufficient2 – were concentrated in the south and west and in half a dozen major cities. Thus there came about, during the first two years of the First World War, one of the most curious social confrontations in British history and, in its long-term political implications, one of the most significant. It was almost always a meeting of strangers. It was sometimes a meeting of near foreigners. John Masters, in his description of his joining the 4th Gurkha Rifles of the old British Indian Army in the nineteen-thirties, has marvellously evoked the mutual incomprehension, good-humoured but absolute, which took hold of a platoon and its new officer, fresh from England, when first they met. Something very similar fell upon the Kitchener Armies in the winter of 1914 when nicely raised young men from West Country vicarages or South Coast watering-places came face to face with forty Durham miners, Yorkshire furnacemen, Clydeside riveters, and the two sides found that they could scarcely understand each other’s speech. It was only the ardent desire on the one hand to teach, to encourage, to be accepted, on the other to learn and to be led which made intercourse between them possible. In this process of discovery, both of each other and of the military life, many of the amateur officers were to conceive an affection and concern for the disadvantaged which would eventually fuel that transformation of middle-class attitudes to the poor which has been the most important social trend in twentieth-century Britain.3 Many of the Kitchener Tommies were to perceive in their officers’ display of fellow-feeling an authenticity which would make attendance on that transformation tolerable. But by what strange communion did these feelings transmit themselves! Siegfried Sassoon has described how his own life was changed by the expression of total trust and self-surrender visible in the faces of his men, looking up at him as they squatted cross-legged, while he inspected their feet after a route march.
Inspecting sore feet was one of those rituals of the regular army into which the Kitchener officers were earliest initiated, partly because its dotty dissimilarity from anything they had known in civilian life convinced their seniors that it was the right thing to make the subalterns do – as indeed it was in those days of unmechanical warfare, when tactical mobility depended upon marching endurance and untended blisters could cripple a whole battalion – and partly because route-marching was, in the first months of their existence, almost the sole form of training of which the Kitchener divisions could get their fill. For many months rifles, even uniforms were lacking, so that the Pals’ battalions could neither learn the trade of soldiers, nor simulate their appearance. Only by endless drilling and marching in formation were these thousands of unblooded volunteers, still clad in civilian tweed, or a little later in postman’s serge, of which 1915 yielded a strange surplus, able to remind roadside spectators, at times even themselves, that they were votaries of the Great Sacrifice. Many divisions received sufficient rifles to issue one to every man only within weeks of going to France in the autumn of 1915; and the equipments of the artillery, whose management was a great deal more complicated, were even slower to arrive. At least three divisions which were to attack on July 1st, 1916, came to the Western Front in a state of training which must be described as quite deficient. The 30th, 32nd and 34th Divisions (all belonging to the fourth ‘hundred thousand’ – K4 in the jargon of the period) had been raised only in December 1914, been allotted the meagrest cadre of experienced officers and N.G.O.s, had received their proper complement of weapons as late as the autumn of 1915 and yet were all shipped overseas between November 1915 and January 1916. The promise of tragedy which loomed about these bands of uniformed innocents was further heightened by reason of their narrowly territorial recruitment; what had been a consolation for the pangs of parting from home – that they were all Pals or Chums together from the same close network of little city terraces or steep-stacked rows of miners’ cottages-threatened home with a catastrophe of heartbreak the closer they neared a real encounter with the enemy. Grave enough in the case of the 30th, with its three Liverpool or Manchester brigades, the threat bore even more heavily on the 34th, containing not only the so-called Tyneside Irish and Tyneside Scottish Brigades – eight thousand young men all domiciled in or around Newcastle-on-Tyne – but also a Pioneer battalion, the 18th Northumberland Fusiliers, raised by the Newcastle and Gateshead Chamber of Commerce from the shop assistants of the city: the notion of a regiment of Kippses and Mr Pollys fine-tunes the poignancy of the Pals idea.
From this it might be thought that the composition of a division not yet mentioned – the 36th-was potentially tragic; it was the most close-knit of all the Kitchener formations, its infantry having been raised wholly in Ulster (Ulster was the divisional subtitle). Its very existence, however, testified to the extreme militancy, and living military tradition, of the Protestant people from which it exclusively sprang. Half-Catholic though the nine counties of Ulster were, there were no Catholics in the 36th. Indeed its parent body-the Ulster Volunteer Force – had been raised well before the outbreak of the war, as a weapon of Protestant opposition to the grant of Irish Home – ‘Rome’ – Rule; and its leaders’ offer to the British Government of its most able-bodied members as soldiers had come as a considerable relief to Westminster in the autumn of 1914, when the kingdom had seemed threatened by an Irish civil as well as a foreign war.
Completing the composition of the army which was to attack on the Somme were a number of formations whose foundation also antedated 1914, though by much longer than the U.V.F.’s. These were the Territorial Force divisions – the 46th North Midland, 48th South Midland, 49th West Riding and 56th London-whose existence recalled an earlier, mid-Victorian craze for amateur soldiering, brought on by a panic scare that Louis Napoleon’s navy threatened the impregnability of the white cliffs and sustained by a simple bourgeois pleasure in the wearing of uniforms and the bandying-about of military titles. These Volunteers (the Ulstermen had pinched their emotive title) had eventually become an accepted, if slightly comic feature of the Victorian social fabric – accepted by the respectable classes in a way the regulars were not, because they aspired after the military virtues without indulging in the military vices, found comical because their aspirations generally fell a little short of the mark. Some of the Territorial battalions, however, particularly the London ones, had latterly become very good, drawing on a stock of well-educated, games-playing young men to supply their ranks; Conan Doyle has Sherlock Holmes characterize a stockbroker’s clerk who appears in one of his cases as ‘representative of the type found in one of our better London Volunteer regiments’, probably meaning the London Rifle Brigade or Queen Victoria’s Rifles, both in 1916 forming part of the 56th Division which would attack at Gommecourt. And after the reorganization of 1908, even the more rustic Volunteer units had been brought to a standard of training nearer that of the regulars. At that date, indeed, and on swapping their title of Volunteers for that of Territorials, they had lost their old battalion numbers and been hitched on to the series of the regular county regiments. In consequence, a roll-call of battalions in the 46th (North Midland) Division, to take one example, made it sound like a segment of the regular army: it contained the 5th and 6th Battalions, South Staffordshire Regiment, 5th and 6th North Staffordshires, 4th and 5th Lincolns, 4th and 5th Leicesters, and 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th Sherwood Foresters (the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment). But in human terms, each of these battalions represented a voluntary, part-time, peacetime effort at soldiering by the menfolk of one or another midland town, rural or industrial: Walsall, Wolverhampton, Burton, Hanley, Leicester, Loughborough, Lincoln, Grimsby, Newark, Nottingham, Derby, Chesterfield; and in practice their domestication was even more intimate, many of them having their component companies located in a suburb or outlying township, where the drill hall was as much part of the fabric as the nonconformist chapel – and run almost as soberly – and some having platoons centred on a single village. The same went for the artillery, engineers and services of the division, the 46th having its batteries at Louth, Boston, the Lincolnshire market town, Stoke-on-Trent (Arnold Bennett country), West Bromwich, one of Birmingham’s drearier appendages, and Leek (whither Winston Churchill had not, trade union legend to the contrary, sent troops to cow the miners in 1910). Its engineer field companies were located at Smethwick, another charmless outlier of Birmingham, and Cannock, a tiny country town, overwhelmed by its surrounding coalmines, on the edge of the magnificent countryside of the Chase.
In a more diffuse and traditional manner than the Kitchener divisions, therefore, those of the Territorial Force were a military embodiment of the regions from which they hailed. By the summer of 1916, however, many of their originals were invalided or dead. For, following the destruction of the regular Expeditionary Force in the 1914 battles, it was the Territorials who, arriving in France in early 1915, had held the line until Kitchener’s men could arrive. By the spring of 1916 a regular battalion like the 2nd Royal Welch Fusiliers (that extraordinary battalion of poets, wartime home both of Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves) still had left about 250 of the men who had accompanied it to France eighteen months before, demonstrating a drain of about ten soldiers a week – sometimes more, of course, sometimes less. The Territorials, though ‘out’ less long, had suffered a similar total loss, for they had started with weaker battalions and had had to detach men as cadres to their ‘second line’, on which new battalions were formed. In almost no battalion among those earmarked to attack on July 1st, therefore, had more than a quarter of the men, of whatever rank, memories of peace-time soldiering. Some of the regulars, by pulling in their Reservists and Special Reservists, could still field an almost complete turn-out of long service men. But among the remainder there was only a very little to choose, in terms of collective military experience, between the first and last joined.
The Tactics
Awareness of this lack of experience was strong at General and Fourth Army Headquarters, where the staffs had, in consequence, framed plans of stark simplicity for the infantry. The Fourth Army’s eleven front-line divisions, of which six had not previously been in battle, were, on the cessation of the artillery preparation, and following behind its barrage fire, to leave their trenches and walk forward, on a front of about fifteen miles, for a mile and a half. In the centre of the front, a walk of a little less than that distance would give them possession of the German second line of entrenchments; on the northern sector, the walk to the German second position was a good two miles; on the southern sector the German second position was judged to be too far back for it to be taken in a single day and the objectives were accordingly set somewhat closer. Next to the British on the southern sector a French force, of which the insatiable demands of the Verdun battle progressively reduced the size until on July 1st it numbered thirteen divisions, was to attack up both banks of the River Somme, behind a great weight of artillery. French small-unit tactics, perfected painfully over two years of warfare, laid emphasis on the advance of small groups by rushes, one meanwhile supporting another by fire – the sort of tactics which were to become commonplace in the Second World War. This sophistication of traditional ‘fire and movement’ was known to the British but was thought by the staff to be too difficult to be taught to the Kitchener divisions. They may well have been right. But the alternative tactical order they laid down for them was oversimplified: divisions were to attack on fronts of about a mile, generally with two brigades ‘up’ and one in reserve. What this meant, in terms of soldiers on the ground, was that two battalions each of a thousand men, forming the leading wave of the brigade, would leave their front trenches, using scaling-ladders to climb the parapet, extend their soldiers in four lines, a company to each, the men two or three yards apart, the lines about fifty to a hundred yards behind each other, and advance to the German wire. This they would expect to find flat, or at least widely gapped, and, passing through, they would then jump down into the German trenches, shoot, bomb or bayonet any who opposed them, and take possession. Later the reserve waves would pass through and advance to capture the German second position by similar methods.
The manœuvre was to be done slowly and deliberately, for the men were to be laden with about sixty pounds of equipment, their re-supply with food and ammunition during the battle being one of the things the staff could not guarantee. In the circumstances, it did indeed seem that success would depend upon what the artillery could do for the infantry, both before the advance began and once it was under way.
The Bombardment
The artillery fire plan was as elaborate as the infantry tactical scheme was simple. Artillery now comprised a great variety of weapons, firing several different sorts of ammunition: field artillery, the lightest and most plentiful variety, composed of 18-pounder guns and 4·5-inch howitzers, which fired small shrapnel or high explosive or (more rarely) gas shells out to a range of about six thousand yards; medium artillery – 60-pounder and 4·7- inch or 6-inch guns which fired high explosive shells out to ten thousand yards; and a variety of heavy howitzers, 6-, 8-, 9-2-, 12- and 15-inch calibre which dropped 100- to 1400-pound shells from a high angle at ranges between five and eleven thousand yards. In addition, the infantry brigades controlled their own ‘trench mortars’, simple smooth-bore tubes which lobbed 2-inch, 3-inch or 4-inch bombs in a very steep trajectory from one trench to another across no-man’s-land.
Range, weight of shell and trajectory determined what the different tasks of these weapons should be. Trench mortars, having the shortest range and firing a projectile without any penetrative power, were turned against nearby surface targets, the enemy’s trenches, which they were intended to collapse, and his wire, which they were expected to help cut. Wire-cutting was indeed the most fundamental of the artillery’s duties, for should the German entanglements remain intact on the morning of Z-Day (the day of the attack), the infantry advance would terminate on the far side of no-man’s-land. The belts were very thick. Accordingly the 18-pounders of the divisional field artilleries were also assigned almost exclusively to wire-cutting – though their fire, with the shrapnel shell of the period and its slow-acting fuse, tended to waste itself in the ground under the entanglements (instead of bursting on ‘graze’ against the wire). Some of the 18-pounders’ fire was also allocated, however, to ‘counter-battery’ – firing, that is, at the estimatedpositions of the enemy’s guns, in the hope of knocking them out before the infantry had to advance through the barrage which those could put down on to the British parapet and into no-man’s-land. What little gas shell was available was to be chiefly reserved for last-minute counter-battery fire, the British artillerymen understanding how difficult their German opposite numbers would find it to work guns while wearing gas-masks.
Howitzers and the heavier guns had the task of material destruction – of communication trenches, approach roads, railway spurs, of anything which aided the movement of men and supplies into the trenches which were to be attacked, but above all of strongpoints and machine-gun posts. These were of different sorts. In several places, notably where the German front crossed the site of a former village, the defences were notably stronger than in the open fields between. For although the Germans had excavated thirty-foot-deep dug-outs at regular intervals all along their front, which were proof against a direct hit by any weight of shell, and had thus assured that their trench garrisons would be alive even at the end of a prolonged British bombardment, these ‘field’ positions could not be given, without enormous extra labour, the complex illogicality presented to an attacker by the ruin of an inhabited area. In some spots, like the Leipzig Salient between the devastated villages of Thiepval and Pozières, sporadic local attack and counter-attack had produced a maze of trenches as impenetrable as any ruin; and elsewhere, as at the Schwaben Redoubt, the Germans had thought it worth devoting the necessary spadework to building an artificial fortress-entrenchment. But the villages were the most important revetments of the German line; and the most important ingredient in the Germans’ scheme of defence for these strongpoints was the fire of machine-guns. It was to the destruction of their emplacements, or the entombment of their crews in their positions of shelter, that the British heavy artillery was to devote its bombardment during the six days of ‘preparation’.
The machine-gun was to be described by Major-General J. F. C. Fuller, one of the great enragés of military theory produced by the war, as ‘concentrated essence of infantry’, by which he meant his readers to grasp that its invention put into the hands of one man the fire-power formerly wielded by forty. Given that a good rifleman could fire only fifteen shots a minute to a machine-gunner’s six hundred, the point is well made. But, as Fuller would no doubt have conceded if taxed, a machine-gun team did not simply represent the equivalent of so many infantrymen compressed into a small compass. Infantrymen, however well-trained and well-armed, however resolute, however ready to kill, remain erratic agents of death. Unless centrally directed, they will choose, perhaps badly, their own targets, will open and cease fire individually, will be put off their aim by the enemy’s return of fire, will be distracted by the wounding of those near them, will yield to fear or excitement, will fire high, low or wide. It was to overcome influences and tendencies of this sort – as well as to avert the danger of accident in closely-packed ranks – that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century armies had put such effort into perfecting volley fire by square, line and column. The result was to make an early nineteenth-century – Waterloo – infantry regiment arguably more dangerous to approach than a late nineteenth-century – Boer War – one. For though the latter had better weapons than the former, and ones which fired to a much greater range, these technical advantages were, if not cancelled out, certainly much offset by the dispersion of the soldiers which the very improvement of firearms itself enjoined – dispersion meaning lack of control, which in its turn results in poor musketry. Hence the wonder with which the machine-gun was viewed when Maxim first made it a practicable weapon of war. For it appeared to have put back into the hands of the regimental commander the means to inflict multiple and simultaneous wounding by the giving of a single word of command. But the appearance of the machine-gun was, of course, very much more than a reversion to a former order of things. For the most important thing about a machine-gun is that it is a machine, and one of quite an advanced type, similar in some respects to a high-precision lathe, in others to an automatic press. Like a lathe, it requires to be set up, so that it will operate within desired and predetermined limits; this was done on the Maxim gun, common to all armies of 1914–18, by adjusting the angle of the barrel relative to its fixed firing platform, and tightening or loosening its traversing screw. Then, like an automatic press, it would, when actuated by a simple trigger, begin and continue to perform its functions with the minimum of human attention, supplying its own power and only requiring a steady supply of raw material and a little routine maintenance to operate efficiently throughout a working shift. The machine-gunner is best thought of, in short, as a sort of machine-minder, whose principal task was to feed ammunition belts into the breech, something which could be done while the gun was in full operation, top up the fluid in the cooling jacket, and traverse the gun from left to right and back again within the limits set by its firing platform. Traversing was achieved by a technique known, in the British army, as the ‘two inch tap’: by constant practice, the machine-gunner learned to hit the side of the breech with the palm of his hand just hard enough to move the muzzle exactly two inches against the resistance of the traversing screw. A succession of ‘two inch taps’ first on one side of the breech until the stop was reached, then on the other, would keep in the air a stream of bullets so dense that no one could walk upright across the front of the machine-gunner’s position without being hit – given, of course, that the gunner had set his machine to fire low and that the ground was devoid of cover. The appearance of the machine-gun, therefore, had not so much disciplined the act of killing – which was what seventeenth-century drill had done – as mechanized or industrialized it.
It was this automatic and inhuman lethality of the machine-gun which determined that the posts from which it would operate must be the principal target of the heavy artillery between June 25th and 30th. Unfortunately for the British infantry, the heavy howitzer of 1916 was a piece of technology very much less developed towards perfection, relative to its potential, than was the machine-gun. The desirable characteristics of the machine-gun, besides those of functional efficiency, were portability, concealability and compactness. The Maxim met the first fairly, the other two very well. The desirable characteristics of the heavy howitzer were pin-point precision and intense concussive effect. These neither the 6, 8 or 9·2-inch howitzer achieved (the larger calibres were too few in number to matter). Their shells had an aiming error of at least twenty-five yards and an explosive power insufficient to collapse the very deep dug-outs – ‘mined’ dug-outs, the British called them, for they were driven by mining technique thirty feet below the surface – in which the machine-gunners sheltered, with their weapons, during a bombardment. Thus the British could not destroy the kernel of a German strongpoint. The best they could hope to do was to trap the crews below ground by choking the entrance shaft with spoil from the collapsed trench; but to hit the shaft, unless by luck, required either an altogether more revealing sort of air photograph than the Royal Flying Corps’ cameras could supply or else constant, life-wasting raiding across no-man’s-land to locate precisely where the dug-out entrances lay.
If we look, then, at the preliminaries to the attack of July 1st as a struggle between competing technologies, between the manifest power of the British artillery and the latent power of the German machine-guns, it will be seen clearly as a struggle the British waged on unequal terms – and terms which they failed to reverse, despite achieving the appearance of terrible devastation. The bombardment opened on June 24th. It was intended to last five days, but a postponement of Z-Day extended it to seven. Over the period, about 1,500,000 shells from the stocks which had been dumped were fired – 138,000 on June 24th, 375,000 on June 30th. Much the greater number – about a million – were 18-pounder shrapnel shells; the 6-inch howitzers fired about 80,000, the 8 and 9·2 inch about 50,000 each. These are impressive totals. To achieve them the artillery crews had to labour, humping shells or heaving to re-align their ponderous weapons (the 8-inch howitzer weighed thirteen tons), hour after hour throughout the day and for long periods of the night. At the receiving end, the noise, shock-waves and destructive effect were extremely unpleasant. At first the Germans in the trenches opposite thought the bombardment heralded an attack and stood to arms in their dug-outs. Then, as the shelling continued, waxing and waning in strength, they realized that they were in for a long ordeal and settled down to bear it as best they could.
During June 25 … the fire of the British … batteries increased, and whereas on the previous day nine-tenths of the fire had been shrapnel or from guns of small calibre [shrapnel was disregarded because its scatter of man-killing pellets was of very little effect against entrenchments] the heavy batteries seemed now in the majority. Their shells crashed into the German trenches, the ground shook and the dug-outs tottered. Here and there the sides of a trench fell in, completely blocking it. Masses of earth came tumbling into the deep dug-outs, obstructing all entrances [which of course faced away from the direction of the shelling] to many of them. By evening some sectors of the German front-line were already unrecognizable and had become crater-fields.4
The British next began to mix gas with their shelling, using primitive projectors and the prevailing wind-stream to carry it across no-man’s-land.
In the early hours [of June 26] clouds of chlorine gas … reached the German position [near Fricourt] and, being heavier than air, filled every crevice in the ground. The dense fumes crept like live things down the steps of the deep dug-outs, filling them with poison until sprayers negatived their effect … during the afternoon aerial torpedoes, fired from heavy mortars in the British front-line, made their first appearance. Coming down almost perpendicularly from a great height, these monsters bored deep into the ground and then burst. [This reference is almost certainly not to mortar bombs but to the shells of the super-heavy howitzer, fortunately for the Germans very few in number.] Tons of earth and great blocks of chalk and rock were hurled into the air, leaving craters, some twelve feet deep and fifteen feet in diameter. Only deep dug-outs of great strength could stand the shock … The Germans, who up till now had endured the inferno almost with indifference, began to feel alarmed. Every nerve was strained as they sat listening to the devilish noise and waited for the dull thud of the next torpedo as it buried itself in the ground, and then the devastating explosion. [The similar experience of listening to the Krupp 420mm siege-howitzers ‘walking’ their shells up to the target had driven men hysterical inside the Liège forts in August, 1914.] The concussion put out the candles and acetylene lights in the deepest dug-outs. The walls rocked like the sides of a ship and the darkness was filled with smoke and gas fumes … The 27th and 28th June brought a similar picture of continuous devastation … The bombardment continued to appear without method, an intense and apparently wild shelling, then carefully observed heavy artillery fire by individual batteries, then trench-mortar bombs and aerial torpedoes or gas attacks, or again a sudden tornado of shells, with occasional periods of complete quiet.
June 30th was a repetition of the previous six days. The German front defences no longer existed as such … [But] in spite of the devastation and chaos on the surface, the defenders in those of the deep dug-outs still intact (the majority) had … survived the ordeal. For seven days and nights they had sat on the long wooden benches or on the wire beds in the evil-smelling dug-outs some twenty feet and more below ground. The incessant noise and the need for constant watchfulness had allowed them little sleep, and ever-present, too, had been the fear that their dug-outs might at any time become a living tomb from which escape would be impossible. Warm food had seldom reached them … so that they had had to live on [iron rations].
But they were alive.
At 6.30 a.m., however, [on July 1st] a bombardment of an intensity as yet unparalleled suddenly burst out again along the whole front. At first it was most severe in the centre, about Thiepval and Beaumont, but it spread quickly over the entire line from north of the Ancre to south of the Somme. For the next hour continuous lines of great fountains of earth, rocks, smoke and debris, played constantly into the air … The giant explosions of the heaviest shells were the only distinguishable noises in the continuous thunder of the bombardment and short, regular intervals of their bursts gave it certain rhythm. All trace of the front-trench system was now lost, and, with only a few exceptions, all the telephone cables connecting it with the rear lines and batteries were destroyed, in spite of the six feet of depth at which they had been laid. Through the long periscopes held up out of the dug-outs could be seen a mass of steel helmets above the British parapet … The Germans in their dug-outs, each with a beltful of hand-grenades, therefore waited ready, rifle in hand, for the bombardment to lift from the front trench to the rear defences. It was of vital importance not to lose a second in reaching the open before the British infantry could arrive at the dug-out entrances.
The battle was about to begin. And its first, and indeed decisive act was to be the ‘race for the parapet’ – a race which for the British ran from their own front trench to the other side of no-man’s-land, for the Germans from the bottom to the top of their dug-out steps. Whoever first arrived at the German parapet would live. The side which lost the race would die, either bombed in the recesses of the earth or shot on the surface in front of the trench. Every British effort had been directed to ensuring that the Germans lost the race – that they would indeed lack the runners to make it a contest. But, as we have seen, the majority of the German trench garrisons still lived at zero hour on Z-Day. How had the British artillery effort been expended to such little purpose?
The greater part of the answer is revealed by isolating the proportion of active ingredient in the British bombardment; that is, of explosive delivered to the German-occupied area. The weight of shells transported to the British guns was about 21,000 tons, excluding propellant (the explosive needed to drive the shell up the barrel at the moment of firing). It had taken the efforts of about fifty thousand gunners (almost the number of Wellington’s army at Waterloo), working for seven days, to load this weight into their pieces and fire it at the enemy – or, more precisely, into the area, 25,000 by 2,000 yards square, which the British infantry were to attack. In crude terms, this meant that each 2,500 square yards had received a ton of shells; or, if numbers of shells are used for the calculation-and about 1,500,000, had been fired – that each 1000 square yards had received 30 shells. However, about a million of the shells were shrapnel, fired by the 18-pounder field guns of the divisional artilleries, and these could do very little damage to earthworks, since they were filled only with light steel balls, and only a little more to wire, though it was their alleged wire-cutting capability which justified the firing of the enormous number used. In fact, the 18-pounders were set to firing shrapnel because the ammunition factories in England could not yet produce high-explosive shell for them in any quantity, though almost everyone in the B.E.F. from G.H.Q. officer to simple gunner had now come to realize that it was high explosive alone which did serious damage to an entrenched enemy.
Discounting the shrapnel, therefore, we are left with the output of the howitzers and heavy guns – about half a million shells of 12,000 tons weight. The lightest and most plentifully expended shell was that of the 4·5-inch field howitzers of the divisional artilleries, which weighed 35 pounds; the heaviest, that of the 15-inch howitzers, which weighed 1,400 pounds – but of which there was a strictly limited ration, there being only six of these monster guns on the battlefield. Nevertheless, their contribution to the bombardment – about 1,500 shells, weighing a thousand tons – is impressive, and all the more so if we recall that Napoleon had with him at Waterloo only about a hundred tons of artillery projectile in all. Comparisons between the artillery efforts of 1815 and 1916 are pointless, however, for Napoleon’s gunners had had the fairly simple task of firing solid shot from close range at dense and immobile masses of soldiers upon whom a hit meant a kill; Haig’s gunners, by contrast, could not see their target and could not be sure that, even if they hit it, their fire would have a lethal effect. That this should be so was due to the very small proportion of explosive contained within the casing of the shell. The 1,400-pound shell of the 15-inch howitzer, for example, contained 200 pounds of explosive (Ammatol, a mixture of TNT and Ammonium Nitrate); the 35-pound shell of the 4.5-inch howitzer contained only four pounds ten ounces. The explanation of this disparity between total weight of shell and weight of filling was twofold: the stresses to which the shell was subjected during firing required that it have a very strong, and therefore heavy, casing, if it were not to disintegrate inside the gun with disastrous effect; while the purpose of the shell, as conceived by its designers, was to produce a large number of steel splinters, travelling at man-killing speed, as a by-blow of its explosion. For that reason, most shells were fused to explode on impact, their detonation producing those enormous fountains of earth and smoke which are the staple feature of First World War battlescapes.
It is these fountains which give the game away. Out of the 12,000 tons weight of shell delivered on to the German-occupied area, only about nine hundred tons represented high-explosive. And the greater part of that small explosive load was dissipated in the air, flinging upwards, to be sure, a visually impressive mass of surface material and an aurally terrifying shower of steel splinters, but transmitting a proportionately quite trifling concussion downwards towards the hiding places of the German trench garrisons. Each ten square yards had received only a pound of high explosive, or each square mile about thirty tons. Twenty-eight years later, the Allied air forces would put down on German positions in Normandy, and in minutes not days, something like eight hundred tons of bombs to the square mile, most of that tonnage consisting of high-explosive, for free-falling bombs, being unsubjected to stress, can be given the thinnest and lightest of cases. Today, NATO tactical doctrine would regard the Somme position as a suitable target for several small nuclear warheads, each of which would yield many thousand tons of TNT equivalent to the square mile. But some of the defenders, if properly dug in under overhead cover, would still be expected to survive, as many German soldiers who cowered under the aerial preparation for Operations Goodwood and Cobra in July 1944, survived to man their weapons against the British and American tank columns which emerged through the dust of the bombing.
We can see now, therefore, that the great Somme bombardment, for all its sound and fury, was inadequate to the task those who planned it expected of it. The shells which the British guns had fired at the German trenches, like those which a month earlier had broken up on the armoured skins of the German battleships at Jutland, were the wrong sort of projectile for the job, and often badly made. And while the British naval gunners had been able to see, and knew how to hit, their targets, the British field and garrison gunners, many of them amateurs, had largely to guess at where their real targets, the German machine-gun crews, were hidden, and then very often lacked the skill to put a shell where they wanted it to fall. Hence, despite the precision of the fire plan, that haphazard cratering of the battlefield, sometimes on, sometimes beyond, sometimes short of the German trench line and wire entanglements, which all observers of the Somme front mention.
The Final Preliminaries
The infantry, fortunately, remained largely unaware of the random and unsatisfactory result of the shelling which had filled their ears with sound for the last week, during every hour of the day and many of the nights. There was a good deal of individual apprehension. ‘It was the Division’s first battle’, wrote the historian of the 18th, ‘and the solemnity of the occasion affected everyone.’ Private Gilbert Hall, of the 1st Barnsley Pals (13th York and Lancs) was not feeling quite himself and had got a headache from the bombardment. Capt E. C. T. Minet, machine-gun officer of the 11th Royal Fusiliers, felt himself ‘sweating at zero hour. But that, I suppose, was nervous excitement.’ Private Frank Hawkings, of Queen Victoria’s Rifles, had found that since June 29th ‘the suspense very trying and everyone … very restless.’ But the long notice of the battle which everyone who was to be in it had been given – a new development in warfare and a function of the complex preparation which battles of the industrial age require – had allowed men the chance to make what personal accommodation with their fears they could. Most had written home, made out their wills, shaken hands with their pals. Many had gone to church. Each battalion of the B.E.F., the army of a church-going age and nation, had its own chaplain of the appropriate denomination, and they had held services behind the lines a day or two beforehand. Second-Lieutenant John Engall, of the 16th London Regiment, wrote home ‘the day before the most important of my life … I took my Communion yesterday with dozens of others who are going over tomorrow and never have I attended a more impressive service. I placed my body in God’s keeping and I am going into battle with His name on my lips, full of confidence and trusting implicitly in Him.’ Like so many other subalterns of the London division, Engall was to die outside Gommecourt. His explicit piety, which would have jarred with most of Wellington’s ensigns, came as naturally to him as to them their stylish indifference. But it would not necessarily have surprised them; the attendance at (Anglican) Communion of ‘the dozens of others’ – private soldiers of his regiment – most certainly would have done. The irreligiosity of their private soldiers was part and parcel of an altogether rougher persona than even the most hardened old-sweat regiments of 1914 could show.
It was a help, too, in calming fears that the last hours before zero were filled for most infantry soldiers with a carefully timetabled programme of activity. The attacking battalions, which were out of the line, had to march up to the trenches from the villages where they had been billeted, first along the roads, then in the communication trenches which covered the last mile. On the way the men accumulated a growing load of kit. Starting with two hundred rounds of ammunition and two days’ rations, they successively picked up new empty sandbags (to fortify the positions they were to take), a wiring stake (for the same purpose), grenades, shovels, rockets and sometimes pigeon baskets, the two last items to help their officers communicate with the rear once they had passed beyond cablehead in the front trench. All this took a great deal of time, and the columns had also to press forward against a flow of men coming down the trenches from the battalions which were being relieved. When they arrived at their jumping-off places, the men were glad to huddle under a blanket or greatcoat on the floor of the trench and sleep.
Most awoke early, to find a light rain falling through white morning mist. In places it lingered even after the bombardment had struck up at 6.25 a.m. for the regular morning session, so that Lieutenant Chetwynd-Stapleton, on air patrol above the front, saw ‘a bank of low cloud’ on which ‘one could see ripples … from the terrific bombardment that was taking place below. It looked like a large lake of mist, with thousands of stones being thrown into it.’ Across the greater breadth of the front, however, the mist quickly cleared, giving way to bright sunshine from a brilliant cloudless sky. Into it little plumes of smoke rose here and there from the British front where men were furtively cooking breakfast. Orders were for soldiers to be fed with food sent from the rear, and in the best organized battalions it arrived, prompt and hot. Lieutenant-Colonel Crozier, commanding the 9th Royal Irish Rifles (the West Belfast battalion of the Ulster Volunteer Force) congratulated his cook-sergeant on having bacon rashers, fried bread, jam and tea ready for his riflemen, and a mixture of cold tea and lemon to go into their water-bottles for the trip across no-man’s-land. Officers were being brought hot water in which to shave, and were tidying their uniforms, still conspicuously different from the soldiers’, unless they belonged to battalions in which it was not thought bad form to don rough Tommy serge. Major Jack, commanding a company of the 2nd Cameronians, put on his silver spurs for the occasion, and his soldier servant gave him ‘a final brush’. Few, if any, were to wear swords (though even temporary officers were still buying swords on commissioning) but all carried sticks, polished blackthorn with a silver band in the Irish regiments, malacca canes or ashplants with a curved handle, of the sort sold by seaside tobacconists, in others. Some carried nothing else, not even a revolver, thinking it an officer’s role to lead and direct, not to kill – the need for which, in any case, they believed would have been nullified by the bombardment.
Between 6.30 and 7.30 a.m., the noise of the bombardment reached a level not yet touched, as weapons of every calibre and sort put down their final ration of shells on the German front trenches. Hawkings, of Queen Victoria’s Rifles, had been watching a lark climb into the sky opposite Gommecourt, when the artillery, which had hitherto been firing spasmodically,
suddenly blazed out in one colossal roar. The dull booms of the heavy guns in the rear could just be discerned amidst the sharper and incessant cracks of the 18-pounders and 4·7s that were closer to the line. There seemed to be a continual stream of shells rumbling and whining overhead on their way to the enemy positions, where the succession of explosions added to the general noise. Fifteen-inch howitzer and 9.2 shells were falling in Gommecourt Wood, whole trees were uprooted and flung into the air, and eventually the wood was in flames. The landscape seemed to be blotted out by drifting smoke; but as part of our scheme was to set up a smoke screen we commenced throwing out smoke bombs.
Under the weight of this cannonade, the Germans crouched invisible in their dug-outs, waiting for the moment it should lift as the signal to race up exit shafts. Meanwhile the soldiers of the 1st Somerset Light Infantry sat on the parapet of their trench opposite, laughing and cheering at the sight of the detonations.
Some other soldiers were also already out of their trenches, where the last thing almost everyone had received was a strong tot of rum – Navy rum, and extremely alcoholic. In the 11th Suffolks, two men who had got the teetotallers’ share drank themselves insensible and could not be got on to their feet again; and J. F. C. Fuller, investigating a confusion in the Sherwood Forester Brigade, was told that the whole of the leading wave was drunk. He thought the story an exaggeration – which it almost certainly was – but, knowing that ‘in many cases men deliberately avoided eating before a battle, for fear of being shot through a full stomach’ and discovering that ‘through some error’ the first line got the rum ration intended for the second as well as their own, he concluded that ‘many of the men in the front line must have been drunk well before zero hour.’ A strong tot of rum, whatever its functional effect, must have been particularly comforting to the men in those divisions whose commanders had decided to take them out of the trench to lie down in no-man’s-land before zero – the 8th, 36th, 46th and 56th and part of the 32nd.
The signal for these men to stand up and advance, for those in the trenches to climb their scaling ladders and leap over the parapet into no-man’s-land, was to be the shrill of the platoon officers’ whistles, blown when their synchronized watches showed 7.30 a.m. In four places, however – Mametz on the 7th Division’s front, Fricourt (21st Division), La Boiselle (34th Division), and Beaumont Hamel (29th Division) – the signal, about ten minutes ahead of zero, was to be the detonation of eight enormous mines which had been tunnelled under the German trenches and filled with dynamite.
The Battle
Despite the immense growth of complexity of the machinery and business of war which had taken place in western armies since 1815, the Battle of the Somme was to be in many ways a simpler event than Waterloo – not, indeed, in terms of the strains of management it threw on commanders and their staffs, but in the range and nature of the encounters between different categories of armed groups which took place on the ground. At Waterloo we counted seven different sorts of encounters: artillery versus artillery, infantry and cavalry, cavalry versus cavalry and infantry; infantry versus infantry; and single combat. Several of these could or did not occur on the Somme. The horse, for example, had disappeared from the battlefield, though to the regret of almost every soldier – even infantry officers speak lovingly of their horses – and temporary work in the transport section of infantry regiments was eagerly sought after by the men, who seemed to find in caring for animals an outlet for the gentler emotions to which they could give no expression among their fellows. Haig had had three cavalry divisions brought up to the Somme front, but they were neither expected to, nor did they, play any part on July 1st, or any other day in 1916. Single combat, too, had ceased to be an option, for soldiers on a bullet-lashed battlefield could neither assume the posture nor risk the exposure-time necessary for the exchange of blows, even if haphazard encounter brought them together. The nearest thing to single combat in trench warfare (‘him or me’ bayonet thrusting excepted), was perhaps the game of ‘bombing up the traverses’, of which the most striking feature, so characteristic of the First World War, was that one did not see one’s enemy. Thus there were only three sorts of encounter possible on the field of the Somme: artillery versus artillery; artillery versus infantry; and infantry versus infantry – though, if we treat machine-gunners as a separate category, we also get infantry versus machine-gunners and artillery versus machine-gunners.
We have already seen how much or little success artillery had had in attacking infantry and machine-gunners, and in attacking other artillery. Many of the German batteries had had guns disabled and crews killed during the preliminary bombardment. But enough remained to put down spoiling bombardments on the British front trenches at the moment of the attack – a company of the Queen Victoria’s Rifles, crowded into their assembly trenches, were struck by a sudden stream of shells at about 7 a.m. and had forty men killed or wounded in a few minutes – and to fire standing barrages into no-mans’- land the instant they got the signal that the British had left their trenches. These sorts of encounter apart, how did the infantry fare, on both sides, once the British had left their trenches to advance to the assault?
Infantry versus Machine-gunners
Several survivors have left accounts of the first moments of the attack. Queen Victoria’s Rifles, a leading battalion of 56th London Division in VII Corps’ diversionary attack on the northern flank of Fourth Army, had about five hundred yards of no-man’s-land to cross; Royal Engineer companies laid smoke from dischargers to cover their advance. Some time after seven o’clock, the Germans ‘began spraying our parapets with machine-gun bullets, but sharp to the minute of zero’ (7.25 a.m. for this division) ‘we erected our ladders and climbed out into the open. Shells were bursting everywhere and through the drifting smoke in front of us we could see the enemy’s first line from which grey figures emerged … We moved forward in long lines, stumbling through the mass of shell-holes, wire and wreckage, and behind us more waves appeared.’ Towards the centre of the Fourth Army’s front, the 9th Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, of the 36th Ulster Division, were in the leading wave. Their commanding officer, Ricardo,
stood on the parapet between the two centre exits to wish them luck … They got going without delay, no fuss, no running, no shouting, everything solid and thorough – just like the men themselves [these were farming people from County Tyrone]. Here and there a boy would wave his hand to me as I shouted good luck … through my megaphone. And all had a cheery face. Most were carrying loads. Fancy advancing against heavy fire with a big roll of barbed wire on your shoulder!
Describing a second wave attack, in an account which holds good for the first, Gilbert Hall of the 1st Barnsley Pals (13th York and Lancasters, 31st Division), heard his officer blow his whistle ‘and C Company climbed over the parapet and moved forward to be confronted with … a long grassy slope rising gently to a series of low crests about six hundred yards in front. The German trenches were clearly visible, three lines of fortifications with sand-bagged parapets, enabled by the slope of the ground to fire over each other into the advancing British infantry. In front of the enemy lines lay thick belts of uncut wire, breached by a few narrow gaps.’ Towards that wire the Barnsley Pals set off, as up and down the line at zero did sixty thousand other infantrymen. In some battalions, the men were able to walk upright, with arms sloped or ported, as they had been expecting. In others they were soon bent forward, like men walking into a strong wind and rain, their bayonets fixed and their rifles horizontal. ‘Troops always, in my experience’, wrote Lord Chandos, whose observation this is, ‘unconsciously assume this crouching position when advancing against heavy fire.’
Most soldiers were encountering heavy fire within seconds of leaving their trenches. The 10th West Yorks, attacking towards the ruined village of Fricourt in the little valley of the River Ancre, had its two follow-up companies caught in the open by German machine-gunners who emerged from their dug-outs after the leading waves had passed over the top and onward. They were ‘practically annihilated and lay shot down in their waves’. In the neighbouring 34th Division, the 15th and 16th Royal Scots, two Edinburgh Pals’ Battalions containing a high proportion of Mancunians, were caught in flank by machine-guns firing from the ruins of La Boiselle and lost several hundred men in a few minutes, though the survivors marched on to enter the German lines. Their neighbouring battalions, the 10th Lincolns and 11th Suffolks (the Grimsby Chums and the Cambridge Battalion) were caught by the same flanking fire; of those who pressed on to the German trenches, some, to quote the official history ‘were burnt to death by flame throwers as [they] reached the [German] parapet’; others were caught again by machine-gun fire as they entered the German position. An artillery officer who walked across later came on ‘line after line of dead men lying where they had fallen’. Behind the Edinburghs, the four Tyneside Irish battalions of the 103rd Brigade underwent a bizarre and pointless massacre. The 34th Division’s commander had decided to move all twelve of his battalions simultaneously towards the German front, the 101st and 102nd Brigades from the front trench, the 103rd from the support line (called the Tara-Usna Line, in a little re-entrant known to the brigade as the Avoca Valley – all three names allusions to Irish beauty spots celebrated by Yeats and the Irish literary nationalists). This decision gave the last brigade a mile of open ground to cover before it reached its own front line, a safe enough passage if the enemy’s machine-guns had been extinguished, otherwise a funeral march. A sergeant of the 3rd Tyneside Irish (26th Northumberland Fusiliers), describes how it was: ‘I could see, away to my left and right, long lines of men. Then I heard the “patter, patter” of machine-guns in the distance. By the time I’d gone another ten yards there seemed to be only a few men left around me; by the time I had gone twenty yards, I seemed to be on my own. Then I was hit myself.’ Not all went down so soon. A few heroic souls pressed on to the British front line, crossed no-man’s-land and entered the German trenches. But the brigade was destroyed; one of its battalions had lost over six hundred men killed or wounded, another five hundred; the brigadier and two battalion commanders had been hit, a third lay dead.5 Militarily, the advance had achieved nothing. Most of the bodies lay on territory British before the battle had begun.
In the neighbouring 32nd Division, the 16th Northumberland Fusiliers (Newcastle Commercials) and the 15th Lancashire Fusiliers (1st Salford Pals) were also hit by machine-gun fire from Thiepval as they got out of their trenches, the Newcastle Commercials following a football kicked by a well-known north country player. Several waves were cut down at once and the commanding officers ordered the untouched companies to stay in their trenches. In the swampy valley of the Ancre, several battalions of the Ulster Division were enfiladed by German machine-guns as the men tried to cross no-man’s-land, there four hundred yards wide. Casualties were worst in the 9th Royal Irish Fusiliers (the Armagh, Monaghan and Cavan battalion of the U.V.F.), 532 officers and men going down as rush after rush towards the wire – orthodox tactics learnt on Irish hillsides in make-believe battles four years before – was stopped by bursts of bullets; losses in two others were almost as heavy. In the regular 29th Division on the Ulstermen’s left, several battalions suffered the worst of First World War experiences: to advance across no-man’s-land under heavy fire only to find the enemy’s wire uncut (it was uncut at many places elsewhere also) and to be machine-gunned down while searching for a way through. Among them were the 1st Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, the same Inniskillings who had stood in square to be cannonaded throughout the afternoon near the crossroads at Waterloo a hundred and one years before. Opposite Beaumont Hamel, fired on by German machine-gunners who had emerged from the recesses of Y Ravine, into which the Division’s amateur gunners had tried but failed to drop a shell during the bombardment, 568 Inniskillings became casualties in a few minutes, of whom 246 died. Shortly afterwards the only battalion from the Empire to take part in the Somme attack, the 1st Newfoundland Regiment, raised exclusively from native-born Newfoundlanders, tried to find a way where the Inniskillings had found none and in the attempt lost more men killed, wounded or missing-710, including all the officers – than any other battalion was to do on July 1st (though the 10th West Yorks had just lost exactly the same number opposite Fricourt, on the 21st Division’s front). Finally, on the 46th (North Midland) Division’s front, at the extreme northern edge of the battlefield, the 1/6th North Staffords and the 1/6th South Staffords, Territorial battalions from Wolverhampton and Hanley, each had their leading companies caught by fire opposite uncut wire, on which most who arrived there were shot or bombed by the defenders.
Infantry versus Infantry
Perhaps twenty battalions of the attacking force, out of sixty committed to the first wave, had thus been disabled in no-man’s-land by machine-gun fire, to which they had been unable to reply and whose source they had generally been unable to identify. A number had also suffered casualties from German barrage fire – true barrage fire, in that it took the form of a continuous fall of shells along a predetermined line in no-man’s-land – laid by guns which had either escaped destruction by the British batteries or had remained ‘masked’ (present but silent, and so undetectable), or else had arrived on the Somme front towards the conclusion of the bombardment – an event which had given the German high command all the notice to reinforce any general could require. The barrage had been particularly heavy on VIII Corps’ front, perhaps because its gunners were notably less well-trained even than the rest in that underskilled army; it was there that there was most uncut wire, additional proof of incompetent gunnery.
But for the battalions which had got through, the worst, in a collective sense, was now over, for entry into the German positions meant that the German gunners could no longer put down on them a barrage, their own troops being mixed up with the attackers, while the attackers themselves could take advantage of the Germans’ own trenches to shelter from the German infantry’s bombs and bullets. In practice, things were less simple and far more dangerous than this thumbnail analysis suggests, for the British could not remain in the German trenches they had reached, having objectives to reach which lay much deeper within German trenches, yet had to remain to fight for a while if they were not to be attacked in the rear when they pushed on. The Germans, moreover, had enough of their telephone cable network intact sometimes to be able to inform their batteries which trenches were in British hands, and so to be able to call down fire on them. The British had no such link with their artillery, the telephone lines they had trailed across no-man’s-land having almost without exception, and to no one’s surprise, been cut. As a result, and to complicate the pattern of activity in those battalions which had entered the German front line, the attackers were under an obligation, both to consolidate – clear the captured trench of any resisting Germans – and to ‘follow the barrage’ – to walk off whither the next curtain of shellfire played on the second or third line of German trenches or on an intervening ‘shell-hole position’; some divisional artilleries had allowed for as many as six of these ‘lifts’.
Following a shrapnel barrage was, for all the tumult produced, not in itself a dangerous thing to do, given accurate gunnery, for the cast of shrapnel is forward, only the occasional base-plate whining back to inflict injury on the infantry behind. By late 1917 British infantrymen had learnt, and were glad, to walk as close as twenty-five yards in the rear of a boiling, roaring cloud of explosive and dust, accepting that it was safer to court death from the barrage than to hang back and perhaps be killed by a German whom the shells had spared and one’s own tardiness allowed the time to pop up from his dug-out. In July 1916, however, few gunners knew how to make a barrage ‘creep’ at a regular walking pace across a piece of enemy-held territory and, prudently, few infantrymen would risk approaching too close to a barrage line until they saw it lift and move to the next target. The consequence was that the advance, even when it worked to plan, took the form of a series of discontinuous and quite literally breathless jerks forward, the lift of the barrage to the next objective being the signal for the waiting infantry to leave their positions of shel
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