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Рубрики WWII; Современность; Версия для печати

Товарищи! Начал тут переводить оспрейку

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Короче замечался и понял, что получается лабуда. Було: "PEOPLE WAXES AND WANES according to the worth of its army: the
army lives or dies on its infantry.' Such was the extreme point of
view expressed in the German recruiting booklet Offizier Im
Grossdeutschen Heer in 1942. Nevertheless, it was true that despite massive
technological advances made between 1939 and 1945, success was still
confirmed by the infantry: the men who finally seized the enemy ground
and occupied it. Less obviously, in weaponry and tactics the infantry
made great strides during World War II. As the British instructor Capt
Tom Winteringham pointed out in 1943, with the authority of a veteran
of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War:
'Infantry, in this period of the Blitzkrieg, is an arm which fights tanks
and planes as well as men. It can only do so if it is given new weapons:
explosives, anti-tank mines and grenades, antiaircraft
and anti-tank guns. It is at the same time
given field guns, directly under the control of the
infantry or regimental commanders, because
owing to the rapidity of the modern battle there is
no longer time for separate arms in separate
organizations to function together. In this way an
infantry brigade or regiment becomes a unit
of all arms, and even smaller units become selfcontained
"little armies on their own". This
process develops in the direction indicated by the
words "combat team"; any part of a fighting force
at any time tends to become a team of several
arms closely integrated together.'
In the first book of this two-part study we
examined the basic infantry building blocks
(squads or sections, and platoons) in the main
armies of the European war - those of Germany,
the British Commonwealth and the United States1.
In this second half we look at the operations of
companies and battalions, with their supporting
infantry weapons - machine guns and mortars;
and at the interactions between infantry and
armour - the critical shift from apparent infantry
dominance to tank superiority, and, with the aid
of new lightweight anti-tank weapons, the struggle
of the infantry to regain its former place.
1 Elite 105, World War II Infantry Tactics: Squad and Platoon
COMPANY & BATTALION
France, 1939: men of the Royal
Warwickshires are posed
manning a camouflaged front
line trench, bayonets fixed,
while the company commander
prepares a message. The
continuous trench line,
reminiscent of World War I,
is a textbook example of the
defences recommended in
Infantry Training (1937);
such elaboration would be
unusual later in the war.
(War Office Official)
According to the US manual Infantry Battalion of 1944:
T h e battalion is the basic tactical unit of Infantry. It usually operates
as an element of the infantry regiment. Its mission is assigned by the
regimental commander, and its actions are coordinated with those of
other units of the regiment. Exceptionally the battalion may be
detached from the regiment to perform an independent mission.'
In this, US and German practice were essentially similar. In the
British system, single battalions of different regiments were mixed
together to form brigades; even so, regimental tradition was strong,
and as Lt Alistair Borthwick of 5th Seaforths put it: 'The individuality
of battalions is not, as might be imagined, a sentimental fiction: in
war they can consume twice their weight in recruits and remain
unmistakably themselves.'
The battalion required a huge amount of organization. Merely to
document the equipment of a 1941 British battalion needed a booklet
of 49 pages. Such a list was bewildering in its detail and complexity,
including everything from 'Cellular drawers, short (summer only)', 31
pairs of which were in the safekeeping of the headquarters, through to
the seven 'Kettles, camp, oval 12-quart' which were usually 'left at base'.
The cobblers' materials alone filled a page, and in addition to 141b of
hobnails listed over a thousand individual pieces, tools, and spares.
Actually doing anything required a further flood of paper. The assault
crossing of a single dyke in Holland - Operation 'Guy Fawkes' in
November 1944 - required five closely typed pages of 'Battalion
Operation Order'. Such brevity was only achieved by means of so
many abbreviations and codewords as to make the whole virtually
unintelligible to the uninitiated.
German tactical doctrine
After early successes, it was the Germans who set the tactical agenda. This
being the case, it is remarkable how incompletely German methods have
been described for the English-speaking readership. Contemporary
translations such as German Infantry in Action: Minor Tactics, and the
1940 Handbook, give only
partial summaries. Farrer-
Hockley's groundbreaking
work omitted crucial
elements, while Gajkowski
looks primarily at the
squad, working back from
an incomplete US wartime
translation.
In all branches of the
Wehrmacht or armed forces,
traditionally the 'school of
the nation*, theory and
staff work were strong. The
foundation of the German
approach to infantry tactics
was the pre-war service
regulation HDV 300/1, the Truppenfuhrung or 'troop leading'. Punningly
referred to as the Tante Frieda ('Aunt Frieda'), this was primarily the work
of Generaloberst Ludwig Beck. The thinking outlined in its introduction
underpinned all other tactical doctrine."