Stellar wrote:When you are forced to basically integrate millions of men into armed forces of only around 1 million i don't see anything surprising in the situation as described by Ringo even if he did not employ the device of rejuv planning ( to get the right officers in the right places as units are formed) gone terribly wrong.
The problem is, that while it's generally accepted that a draftee army will be of lesser overall quality than a all volunteer force; a draft army can be very high quality -- 75% or so of the effectiveness of a volunteer force -- it all depends on how you treat your draftees -- if you treat them as expendabul ammunition to be expended with a minimum of training, then overall their quality will not be good -- look at the Red Army of 1942 as it struggled to replace it's colossal losses in 1941 with new men while also having to fight off the German 1942 Summer Offensive.
By 1943, the situation for the Soviets wasn't as dire as it was in 1941-42, so they were able to spend more time on training the men, and additionally, by this time, the junior officers who had survived 1941-1942 were now moving into lower grade command positions, and the middle grade command positions which had been decimated by the Stalinist purges of the late 1930s were finally being filled with experienced officers.
Comrade Stas has pointed out that in many cases of the higher grade command positions, the people who were purged were replaced with their subordinates; so the loss at the higher level wasn't *that* bad, e.g. a General of the Army was purged and replaced with a Colonel General, who at least had some staff courses and experience.
However, at the middle grade level; a whole military generation of leaders was wiped out and their junior subordinates promoted up in grade.
To put things in context, while someone fresh out of Officer Candidate School (90 day wonder) can minimally command a platoon, and in extreme situations, a severely depleted company; they can't jump right up to battalion/brigade command (Major/Colonel) without several years of experience at both the company level, and then a few more years as a battalion/brigade staff officer.
In Ringo's Posleenverse, we've had five years of time to work all this out; so if we inducted for example 1 million Second Lieutenants in 2000, they'd be Captains by 2004; and would have a year of time to learn how to handle a Company before the landings.
The same would occur for other grades in the Army -- e.g. Captains would be Majors or LT Colonels by the time Landing occured.
What did the American draft army accomplish in Vietnam after years and years of slowly building up forces?
The problem in Vietnam was that we were not allowed to fight the war the way the Service Chiefs wanted to -- instead of launching them at the source of the infestation -- North Vietnam, we simply puttered around South Vietnam for nearly a decade -- taking a hill, and then abandoning it to the enemy the next day.
What did the American armed forces of '11' million accomplish against the Germany armed forces in Normandy? Not much after three years of being able to build up forces in a safe continental base as far as my reading goes.
A good reference is
Second Front NOW! - 1943 by Walter Scott Dunn, Jr.
Basically, during 1942, the US developed a method to make shake and bake divisions.
1.) A Parent Division was selected for the new division to be raised.
2.) 160 Officers and 1,200 men were selected from the parent division and sent to schools and trained up for their new assignment. A month before the division was activicated, 450 more officers were sent and the cadre assembled.
Two weeks after the division was formally activicated, the division had received enough of it's 13,000~ recruits to begin basic training. Seventeen weeks later, basic training concluded; and three months of training with regiments. This was followed by three months training as a division.
A final two months of combined arms training with aircraft and tanks was conducted, and at the conclusion of this, the division was considered combat-ready.
During most of the training period, the TO&E of a unit was about 50% of allowances; which was enough for training, since you could swap tanks between units or halftracks, etc.
The book then describes the program of the first three mass produced division (77th, 82nd, 90th), and details the 77th's Program.
77th Infantry Division Milestones
Authorization: 25 January 1942
Divisional Commander Named: 10 February 1942
Division Ordered Activated: 14 February 1942
First Cadre Arrival: 18 to 25 February 1942 (59 Officers came from the War Department Pool, and 113 from the First Army)
Commanding General Arrives: 25 February 1942
Parent Divisions Give up Men: 25 February 1942 (8th and 30th Divisions give up 1,400 Enlisted and NCOs)
Second Cadre Arrival: 3 to 5 March 1942 (452 officers from war department pool, mostly reservists who had taken a six week summer camp during college).
First Civilians Drafted: Mid March 1942
First Troop Trains Arrive: 25 March 1942
Division Formally Activated: 25 March 1942
Official Training Program Begins: 7 April 1942
Last Recruits Arrive: 21 April 1942
First Firing of Weapons: Late May 1942
All men have fired individual weapons: June 1942
Men Taken Away For Cadre: July 1942 (provided 200 officers and 1,200 men for the 94th Division).
Men Taken Away for Cadre II: Late Summer 1942 (Small groups sent for cadre of 99th and 100th Divisions)
Men Taken Away for OCS: During the Summer of 1942; 1,000 men went away for OCS school.
Three-day Field Exercises by Infantry Battalions: August 1942
Divisional Artillery Trained: September 1942 (Sent to Fort Sill)
Division begins training as complete force: Mid-November 1942
Division sent to Desert Training Center in California: 28 January 1943
Division Ready for Combat: April 1943
Division Sent for Amphibious Landing Training 29 September 1943
Division sent to Staging Camp for Overseas Movement 14 March 1944
Basically, by that point it had been training for 26 (!) months in preparation for combat.
German 65th Infantry Division Milestones
Cadre Arrives July 1942. (22 Officers, 42 NCOs, and 193 EM)
Divisional Manpower Arrives 7 July to 15 July 1942.
Division Formally Activicated 15 July 1942
Division Forced to give up Cadre 1 August 1942: (15th Army orders them to surrender 6,993 men out of 8,837 privates for cadres in other units)
New Men Arrive to replace Cadre 3,255 new recruits arrive; of which 500 were Poles who spoke little or no German.
Division Forced to Give up Cadre: November 1942/December 1942 (1,000 fit men were forced to be sent to 39th Division in excahnge for 600 men with frostbite.
Division Forced to Give up Cadre: January/February 1943 (800 fit men were forced to be sent to 39th Division in excahnge for 600 men with 3rd degree frostbite.
Division Forced to Give up Cadre: 19 February 1943: (10% of divisional leadership sent to the 17th Luftwaffe Field Division in exchange for Privates.)
Division Forced to Give up Cadre: 20 February 1943: (8% of divisional combat troops sent to 44th Division, which was being reformed after being destroyed in Stalingrad. In exchange for these trained troops, raw recruits were received.)
Division Forced to Give up Cadre: March 1943 (900 out of 5,300 combat-fit men sent to 39th Division)
Division Forced to Give up Cadre: April 1943 (220 fit men sent to 39th Division, and 680 to the 44th Division. Only 100 recruits and 500 noncombat fit men were received from the 44th Division in return.
Division Gives up Useless Men: 6 June 1943 (932 non fit men transferred out to form cadres for Fortress Divisions; and 450 non-fit men transferred to 19th Luftwaffe Field Division; and 866 frostbitten men sent to the 265th, 348th, 711th, and 712th divisions).
Half of Divisional Major Unit Commanders Relieved: June 1943 (and replaced with physically fit men from other division.)
Additionally, while, the US division was training, training some more, and training some more for various combat roles, the German division was busy doing coastal guard duties, such as constructing coastal gun batteries, trenches, anti-landing areas, instead of training for combat.
You can also see how the US division only gets cadres pulled from it at the beginning, the German division is constantly raided for men; forcing the division to have to start over again to train brand new recruits from scratch.
So while for example, the 9th Panzer Division may get the A++ quality personnel to recover after Kursk during the spring of 1944; the 695th Infantry Division gets the D and F grade personnel. In contrast, the average U.S. division gets B- personnel.
Sure; it's lower quality than a crack German division like the Leibstandardte Adolf Hitler, but light years ahead of the average German Division.
The big problem was that the terrain in Normandy favored the defender, you could set up ambuscades and such with a single anti-tank gun that could knock out a platoon of tanks in no time, and then hold up an entire battalion or whatnot for an entire day, because there's no way to manouver around the anti-tank gun, because the way around the gun position is filled by several other hedgerow complexes, each of which has to be reduced individually.
I have only started reading book four now so perhaps i have not gotten to the point where the darheel is blamed for that failure
I believe later in the series, it's revealed that much of the early failure of the U.S. forces and other national armies in the initial posleen invasion, was because of Darheel shapeshifters who infiltrated the militaries/political systems and messed with them, like changing orders to put noted incompetents in charge of major units, messing with transfer orders, etc etc.
Of course, the SS are somehow magically immune to this :rolleyes:
And that has never involved mobilizing even ten or twenty million into the armed forces which is but a small fraction of the 80 -100 million Americans who are ( and where then) in the age group 16-40.
In World War II; the US Population was 132 million; and we did the following:
6.3 million volunteered
17.9 million were examined by the draft boards (of which 6.4 million were rejected)
11.5 million were drafted.
For a total of 17.8~ million called to the colors, or 13% of the US population. Today's U.S. population is about 300~ million, so we could draft about 30 million (10% of the population); without any adverse effects.
Please note i'm lowering the percentage we can draft because our societies require a lot more technical knowhow to keep running than they did in WWII.
Non of the wars you describe can in my opinion be used as example as in non of them was there ever the aim to mobilize tens of million to bear arms inside 4-5 years.
Considering we did mobilize 17.8~ million people to fight in WWII...
But the big problem with the entire thing was the whole rejuv process.
In any army, there is a tendency to "forget" things from the last war -- because the people who fought it and learned the hard lessons are dead or too old to join up.
But if you can take a 85 year old guy who landed at Omaha Beach and give him the body of a 21 year old; he's not going to put up with half the bullshit he sees; and he will suggest ways to fix errors that he knows happens from combat experience. Same thing would happen with the Korean War and Vietnam War vets.
"Son, you're telling me -- someone who landed at Omaha Beach for chrissake -- that I can't use harsh language or motivate the recruits physically? Do you even know what it takes to make people who get out of that murder zone?!?!!"
But somehow only the SS take advantage of this...
We must not have been reading the same books as i distinctly remember two entire corps being slaughtered during the initial landings for following orders as best they could with large formations fighting and dying in place or staging the best fighting retreat they considered possible( that being the most complex situation troops can be faced with).
You forgot the entire parts of units mutinying and Mighty Mite killing soldiers to keep their fellows in line; and of course, the entire assbackwardness of the battle.
If the Posleen can't even interecept ballistic weapons with their lasers -- something which would have been revealed by any halfway competent envoy sent to the Galactics.
Can you imagine the Joint Chiefs of Staff being briefed by the Galactics and being told that they can't access any records of Posleen combat, or that such and such records are classified?
So the result is the Posleen land near a major urban center, rampage through the place for a few days, and then get crushed under Steel Rain from tens of thousands of guns firing kilotons of artillery shells. We could easily recreate the Berlin Barriage which literally caused wind patterns to shift from all the heat generated by tens of thousands of guns firing at once.
Sure and the best trained pilots of world war one using the best planes of world war 1 would still get slaughtered by the best trained pilots and best planes of world war two.
That's something that bugs me. All we get from the Galactics are vague promises of "help", and a few battalions of super advanced power armor suits which have to be created by indowy indivudally willing
each molecule in the armor into place?
Why didn't anyone go:
"Hey, you know that super awesome armor that's only (insert impossibly tiny thickness) which can allow a powered infantryman to survive or at least deflect a Posleen weapon? Can you guys not make us the entire suit of armor?
That's just too complicated for mass production.
Why not just make huge slabs of armor that we can then incorporate in our own fighting vehicles?"
indowiwy stare at the General for a moment and then do a collective facepalm
Because the problem is on a scale never before imagined. After four years of war ( start of book three) the US has suffered 45 million military casualties
None of which would have occured in a plausible environment.
If we can convince typical suburbanites to place suicide bombs into their houses so they're not eaten by the Posleen; it's quite easy to produce millions of kiloton scale tactical nukes that can be fired by 120mm guns, and issue them to the tank units; and advance under a hail of mushroom clouds wiping out posleen hordes while their return fire bounces off the super thick galactic armor we ordered to replace the depleted uranium inserts in the original Abrams Armor.
