C017567658747-1
**Top Secret
Cross-timeline Military Doctrine**
Executive Summary
Herein lies a historical survey of the development of the ‘Unified Military Doctrine’ in counterpart timeline Q1901A. Q1901A diverged from our history following the survival of Pres. McKinley, leading to a series of catastrophes that culminated in a Bolshevik-style revolution in 1933. At present, the alternate America is an economic and military great power, allied with two near-peer powers. While at present cross-timeline traffic is limited and clandestine, it is deemed prudent to prepare for the possible threat of large-scale movements of men and materiel.
The survey begins with an excursus on the rapid formation of the Red Army in the aftermath of their civil war. The development of the U.M.D. as the doctrine of total war in an industrial, mechanised context in their WW2, which saw the deployment of troops on mass scale against Nazi Germany on the Eastern Front, continues to shape expectations of peer conflict in the atomic age.
Col. [REDACTED] , retired.
I: U.M.D. In the Interwar
Understanding the origins of the U.M.D is necessary for comprehending the development of the Red Army. The term “Unified Military Doctrine” as known both in our timeline and this one was crystalized by Mikhail Vasilyevich Frunze, a Soviet revolutionary, politician, army officer and military theorist. The term itself refers to attempts starting from tsarist officers at developing one comprehensive military doctrine that envisaged broad preparation on part of the country and the people for a forthcoming war. For our purposes, we shall focus on Frunze’s presentation at the 1922 11th Party Congress, since while Frunze’s position regarding U.M.D. continued to evolve, in our timeline he would die in 1925 from chloroform poisoning during surgery for a chronic ulcer, while in the counterpart timeline he did survive, but his contributions would be limited from his time in the wilderness following a successful surgery.
According to Frunze, U.M.D. is ultimately the total commitment of a nation’s population and resources, which thus necessitated preparation and planning. In order for this to be achieved, the military must be “unified from top to bottom by a community of views both on the character of military tasks themselves and on the means of their solution.” This would seem the standard for total war, but the important difference from conventional understanding is the emphasis on categorizing technical and political components within the doctrine. The technical component is composed of issues surrounding training, organization, and methods of solving combat problems, all of which would be standard for any military. However the political side is subdivided into the character of military problems (class conflict) and the relationship of the armed forces to the general system of State life.
It must be emphasized that the U.M.D. is the doctrine of Marxist revolution, and thus of a self-conceived ‘class-state’. The international red army claims the allegiance, realized or not, of the global working-class. It must be understood that the declared policy of Marx and Engels was one of enmity toward the “military machine,” the military caste, and the military State. Stemming from this were two themes: the nature of the proletarian way of war, and the total integration and subordination of all aspects of power to the State. Karl Marx had said “the offense is the best form of defense,” and this can be extended into understanding that offensive operations for the benefit of the working class were essential. In addition, total integration of the means of power in the Socialist State meant that there is no line between military and political affairs, nor a line between class and state. The boundaries of the state are thus ambiguous. The doctrine extends the scope of political-industrial activity deep into the enemy’s rear area, through political front organizations. In this regard, mechanized total war becomes the highest expression of class conflict.
In Q1901A, aside from serving as the state doctrine in the Soviet Union, the U.M.D. gained a number of exponents among the cadre of U.S. Army officers that would constitute the nucleus of the revolutionary fifth column. In the eruption of civil war, the political questions came immediately to the fore, first with the task of uniting the diverse contingents of anti-putsch forces, and subsuming it to the revolutionary state.
The W.F.R.A. emerged from the civil war as a young army, cleared of both the deadwood as well as accumulated wisdom of the existing officer class. Pre-revolution officers of suspect political loyalties were winnowed out. The new army disdained the officer-enlisted divide as a relic of the ancien régime, but nonetheless recognized, like Frunze, that complete equality within the ranks would destroy the army. The dialectical synthesis from this contradiction was a military establishment committed to a program of comprehensive military, political, and technical education, where the line between civilian and soldier was consciously blurred.
Though it has taken various institutional forms in the U.A.S.R.’s history, the constant has been systems of universal military education and service, without respect to race or sex, a process that begins even in compulsory education. The levée en masse exists both as an ideological canard as well as a system for facilitating mass military mobilization. In a sense, the U.A.S.R was able to achieve the Marxist notion of a class army of toilers far more than the Soviet Union itself.
The period between 1935 and 1940 in Q1901A constituted the largest peacetime military mobilization in American history. Unprecedented in size, scope, and urgency, it dwarfed the reactive military preparation that began in our timeline under President Roosevelt’s Army Chief of Staff GA George C. Marshall. The revolutionary state was not content to be drawn into world affairs reluctantly; this proactive development of the war machine renders the U.A.S.R. the ‘failed instigator’ of that timeline’s WW2, with Germany managing to beat them off the starting line.
The transformation of the U.A.S.R. military was a mirror of the program of our timeline’s Marshall, although many of the results were the same.
It must be said at the outset that the victorious W.F.R.A. shot a great deal of the existing officer corps of the U.S. Army, including Marshall. Though in all instances, it insisted that this was not for treason, since a bourgeois officer could not be expected to hold loyalty to the workers’ state, the result was the same. Even of those that joined anti-putsch forces, many faced forced retirement in the new order. While not on the same scale as Stalin’s purges, the large majority of the inherited general officers of Q1901A’s much larger WW1 involvement were forced out by whatever means.
While we might at the outset assume such a campaign would be disastrous, it is directly mirrored in Marshall’s own project as Chief of Staff to retire or reassign most of the senior officer corps. The regenerative aspects of clearing out the deadwood in both cases seem to have outweighed the loss of accumulated military experience. The W.F.R.A. also benefited from the direct applied experience in the civil war, distilling its own avant-garde military establishment from Army defectors such as Patton and Grant, and from political leaders who turned their own prior military experience into the basis for new military careers in the revolutionary state like Haywood.
In our own timeline, the military was consistently behind the curve of events, owing to the long American skepticism of standing armies and the deep undercurrent of isolationism. Roosevelt and Marshall faced stern opposition to upsetting the cart, even by those who recognized the absolute imperative of preparing the nation to be dragged into another European conflict.
Perhaps the greatest example of this contrast was no other than George Smith Patton Jr. In our timeline, he was perhaps the biggest beneficiary of Marshall: Then 54 years old (placing him in the at-risk for retirement category) and still a colonel, he came under the Purge Board’s review, but his youthful energy and charisma won him a reprieve; in Louisiana, assigned as a tank commander, Patton brilliantly demonstrated his knack for tactical innovation and adaptability that would soon make him a battlefield legend. Marshall personally chose him to lead the Army’s Third Division.
The Patton of Q1901A turned these same virtues towards vicious ends; disillusioned in WW1, he turned towards communism as a redeemer for the fruitless bloodshed of the Western Front. He would remain in the Army, ally to MacArthur during his progressive period, all the while sabotaging efforts to clear the Army of communists and their sympathizers. His elan earned him prominence in the civil war, leading the Red cause during the decisive campaign to capture Washington, and situating himself as bold battlefield general of the new order.
Perhaps the greatest difference was the approach to manpower. While both in our timeline and in Q1901A many of the draftees were malnourished and otherwise suffering under the difficult circumstances common in the Great Depression, there was a great difference in attitude towards serving in the military. In our timeline, many were not happy about their new status, especially when posted to remote bases, where they were bored and homesick. Some threatened to desert if the original one-year period of service was extended. In addition, in getting the Army ready for war, Marshall had to contend with the problems of drinking, prostitution, boredom, and disorder. The challenge for Marshall was solving immense structural problems with one hand while building a citizen army full of esprit de corps with the other. Marshall never lost sight of the necessity for good morale if this unprecedented expansion was going to succeed. He also knew that this new army could not be disciplined by fear and intimidation but only through respect—a lesson he had learned from both the Army and his work with men of the Civilian Conservation Corps, who had needed to be convinced rather than coerced.
By contrast, the W.F.R.A. balanced the immense sacrifice it demanded from the rank and file through the moral and educational elevation of the soldiery. Through the long march of the Great Depression and the civil war, the Workers’ Party had instilled a sense of grand destiny to military service. They would be ‘storming the gates of heaven’. Service was not an unfortunate civic duty to be endured, but rather the highest calling of life. Through the unification of political and military education, the soldier was indoctrinated into the Communist political mission, entrusted with a great degree of latitude within it, and held responsible for failures.
This is an interesting contrast, considering our timeline’s Marshall’s goal when he took over as head of Fort Benning’s Infantry Training School: “We must get down to essentials and expunge the bunk.” While many point to this and accuse our current politicians and military leaders of deciding to get away from the essentials and add in a lot of “bunk” with policies such as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), our Marshall had to bring in creature comforts and other such “bunk” in order to motivate the draftees. This is very reminiscent of current priorities of spending on lobster tails, steak, ice cream machines, and new Apple devices to keep the staff happy. On the other hand, Q1901A has been able to improve military readiness and quality of the troops while still expanding the potential manpower. One might ask which is in accordance with merit-based, color-blind policies.
The W.F.R.A.’s enthusiasm for conscription places it most at odds with our conventional military thinking. The draft has long been a convenient explainer of American military setbacks after WW2. And while there can certainly be no defending the particular way that Selective Service operated, it must be noted that the W.F.R.A. is able to continually obtain levels of discipline and sacrifice from conscripts that we have long considered impossible.
While the average conscript of the W.F.R.A. is not at the same level of skill or discipline as the professional volunteers of our military, this must be balanced against the truly awesome manpower depth, with a reserve component a full twenty times the size of the current U.S. Armed Forces reserve.
II: Comparison between WFRA and 90 Division Gamble
During our World War II (WW2), Marshall took a bold and calculated risk when committing to the so-called “90 Division Gamble.” Many during and since the war have debated whether the decision was as wise as it was courageous, even without the benefit of hindsight.
To summarize: During the early stages of the war, the “cutting edge”-in divisions-needed to win the war were high. It ranged from 213 divisions in the fall of 1941 to 334 divisions envisioned by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in early 1942. Marshall would decide to commit to a cap of 90 divisions. This came from the acceptance of the fact that the single greatest tangible asset the United States brought to the coalition in World War II was the productive capacity of its industry. From the very beginning, American manpower calculations were closely correlated with the needs of the war industry. As such, once the factories, Navy (4 million) and Army Air Forces (2 million) took their slice of the manpower pie, the Army Ground Forces were left with some 2.5 million men, which would be approximately 89 divisions after subtracting support personnel.
The decision constituted a clear acknowledgment by senior Army leadership that their claims upon the nation’s available manpower were inherently finite. The adoption of the 90-division troop basis reflected an effort to reconcile three principal determinants of modern warfare—strategy, industrial production, and manpower—within a practicable framework. It embodied a deliberately limited, though highly efficient, ground combat force, consistent with the broader national requirement to function simultaneously as the “arsenal of democracy” in support of a global coalition, without imposing excessive strain upon the domestic war economy or the civilian standard of living.
In subsequent postwar strategic discourse, critics who have characterized the American emphasis on concentration of force and decisive power projection as unduly narrow or inflexible have frequently failed to account for the decisive constraint imposed by manpower ceilings. It is unlikely that the United States could have achieved success with a 90-division ground force absent the sustained and effective engagement of Soviet and other Allied land forces. Similarly, the effectiveness of the American ground combat element was contingent upon the parallel development of a substantial and capable strategic air arm. The deliberate limitation placed upon Army ground forces, in favor of expanding air power, not only shaped wartime force structure but also accelerated the movement advocating for an autonomous air service.
On the other hand, Q1901A’s W.F.R.A had to work under a different calculus. While the nation had some additional 20 million population due to unrestricted immigration from Asia and the inclusion of Caribbean protectorates (Haiti, Dominican Republic, Panama, Nicaragua), the industrial capacity was not quite up to our United States. In between different socioeconomic factors, destruction during the revolution, and diminished technological and human capital access in the post-revolution era, one can assume that even with reconstruction, industrial capacity was at most about 80% of the United States.
This material reality, combined with the Unified Military Doctrine, meant that the W.F.R.A. approach to war was significantly different from the United States Army. Quick victory of the revolution notwithstanding, future war would be a long and cruel contest that would subject to trial all of the economic and political bases of the belligerent sides, and as such the strategy of future war would not be one of lightning fast, decisive blows, but one of attrition. As such, total mobilization of the population in combat, supported by streamlined and simplified logistics to overcome the relative lack of industry, became the focus on W.F.R.A. The civilian population was subjected to a level of austerity and rationing equivalent to the U.K. in our timeline, an island nation under the threat of blockade.
This is different from the comparatively haphazard mobilization of the Soviet Union both in our timeline and Q1901A; W.F.R.A. leadership had developed a sober assessment of the sacrifices the next war would require, and had planned in detail for this outcome. Though they expected the war to begin at the hour of their choosing, they were nonetheless prepared to rationally conserve and mobilize industrial resources, placing just over 200 divisions in active service at peak.
III: [REDACTED]
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque faucibus ex sapien vitae pellentesque sem placerat. In id cursus mi pretium tellus duis convallis. Tempus leo eu aenean sed diam urna tempor. The ideological campaign to elevate women into combat roles occurred without respect to the efficacy of the project, and with callous disregard for the abuse that female soldiers faced for their intrusion into the military fraternity. Pulvinar vivamus fringilla lacus nec metus bibendum egestas. Iaculis massa nisl malesuada lacinia integer nunc posuere. Ut hendrerit semper vel class aptent taciti sociosqu. Ad litora torquent per conubia nostra inceptos himenaeos.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque faucibus ex sapien vitae pellentesque sem placerat. In id cursus mi pretium tellus duis convallis. Tempus leo eu aenean sed diam urna tempor. Pulvinar vivamus fringilla lacus nec metus bibendum egestas. Iaculis massa nisl malesuada lacinia integer nunc posuere. Despite our reservations with the haste of this project, it would be a mistake to regard female soldiers and officers in the W.F.R.A. as anything other than the genuine article, and even a cursory examination of the military records of their seventy year experiment show no reason, in and of itself, to suppose that female soldiers cannot be lethal warfighters. Ut hendrerit semper vel class aptent taciti sociosqu. Ad litora torquent per conubia nostra inceptos himenaeos.
Nevertheless, it must be said that the W.F.R.A. suffered no serious consequences from rapid racial integration. It began at the outset as a fully racially integrated army, and brooked neither favoritism nor political correctness even as Black officers occupied high positions of leadership, while simultaneously punishing racist indiscipline among the rank and file. It was never a ‘D.E.I. Army’, despite the terms association with Marxism. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque faucibus ex sapien vitae pellentesque sem placerat. In id cursus mi pretium tellus duis convallis. Tempus leo eu aenean sed diam urna tempor. Pulvinar vivamus fringilla lacus nec metus bibendum egestas. Iaculis massa nisl malesuada lacinia integer nunc posuere. Ut hendrerit semper vel class aptent taciti sociosqu. Ad litora torquent per conubia nostra inceptos himenaeos. In short, Marxists in power will not tolerate the methods they use to subvert others.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque faucibus ex sapien vitae pellentesque sem placerat. The Stapel does not have the Pentagon’s luxury of selectivity towards the intellectual and fitness standards of its recruits. The obesity rate is more broadly comparable to the R.O.K. or the P.R.C., so reaching the minimum is perhaps easier, but the combat loads placed on our volunteers would simply not be possible. This is not a moralistic judgment, but a reflection of W.F.R.A. public physical fitness data. In id cursus mi pretium tellus duis convallis. Tempus leo eu aenean sed diam urna tempor. Pulvinar vivamus fringilla lacus nec metus bibendum egestas. Iaculis massa nisl malesuada lacinia integer nunc posuere. Ut hendrerit semper vel class aptent taciti sociosqu. Ad litora torquent per conubia nostra inceptos himenaeos. Accepting what they cannot change, commanders in the uniformly mechanized ground forces accept lower individual carry of equipment, ammunition, and supplies, with the balance shifted towards trucks.
In the ‘every man a stormtrooper’ mentality of the W.F.R.A., the soldier will willingly face enemy fire without a plate carrier, but will not tolerate being treated as a pack mule. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque faucibus ex sapien vitae pellentesque sem placerat. In id cursus mi pretium tellus duis convallis. Tempus leo eu aenean sed diam urna tempor. Pulvinar vivamus fringilla lacus nec metus bibendum egestas. Iaculis massa nisl malesuada lacinia integer nunc posuere. Ut hendrerit semper vel class aptent taciti sociosqu. Ad litora torquent per conubia nostra inceptos himenaeos.
The doctrinal impulse to aggression in the U.M.D. should not be read as an impulse to human wave attacks. Owing to the longer presence on the WW1 Western Front, there is instead a deep appreciation of infantry infiltration tactics that was inherited by the W.F.R.A. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque faucibus ex sapien vitae pellentesque sem placerat. In id cursus mi pretium tellus duis convallis. Tempus leo eu aenean sed diam urna tempor. In WW2, artillery fires were no less sophisticated than our own, parallelling developments of time-on-target fires and the VT fuze. Pulvinar vivamus fringilla lacus nec metus bibendum egestas. Iaculis massa nisl malesuada lacinia integer nunc posuere. Ut hendrerit semper vel class aptent taciti sociosqu. Ad litora torquent per conubia nostra inceptos himenaeos. W.F.R.A. artillery in WW2 may not have reached the number of tubes per km of front or length and volume of fires as the U.S. Army, but would follow with deadly certainty a decisive assault by infantry and armor.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque faucibus ex sapien vitae pellentesque sem placerat. In id cursus mi pretium tellus duis convallis. Tempus leo eu aenean sed diam urna tempor. vivamus fringilla lacus nec metus bibendum egestas. Iaculis massa nisl malesuada lacinia integer nunc posuere. Ut hendrerit semper vel class aptent taciti sociosqu. Ad litora torquent per conubia nostra inceptos himeneo Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque faucibus ex sapien vitae pellentesque sem placerat. In id cursus mi pretium tellus duis convallis. Tempus leo eu aenean sed diam urna tempor. Pulvinar vivamus fringilla lacus nec metus bibendum egestas. Iaculis massa nisl malesuada lacinia integer nunc posuere. Ut hendrerit semper vel class aptent taciti sociosqu. Ad litora torquent per conubia nostra inceptos himenaeos.. a pattern the Germans considered indicative of “the poor and timid leadership of the Americans”, to quote GEN Hermann Balck. In Normandy, Allied Forces were consistently stymied by delaying tactics, courtesy of GEN Kurt von der Chevallerie, a veteran of the fighting around Kiev.
Waffen-SS Gruppenfuhrer Max Simon likewise saw the American tactics as “cautious and systematic:”: “The tactics of the Americans were based on the idea of breaking down a wall by taking out one brick at a time,” he said, adding, “Had you made such attacks…on the eastern front, where our anti-tank guns were echeloned in depth, all your tanks would have been destroyed.”
As discussed in Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipiscing elit. W.F.R.A. experience fighting alongside the Russians on the Eastern Front cultivated Napoleon’s basic tenets of activité and vitesse to a level of bloody-minded resolve that borders on callous. But on such scales of battle, delay meant death. Whether it was ordering an attack to continue across a minefield when engineers failed to arrive, or pushing headlong into the prepared strongpoints of the enemy, they favored violence of action. The natural accompaniment was the development of the philosophy of mission-command.
Everyone has a plan until he gets punched in the face. The record of the Q1901A demonstrates a history of facing periods of shattered communications, tremendous losses, constant retreating, and practically no air support. Officers and the command hierarchy adapted or died, no less than the Germans did in our own time.
IV: Stalingrad and Mature U.M.D.
Q1901A’s Second Battle of Stalingrad serves as an analog to both our timeline’s Battle of Kursk as well as Operation Bagration in terms of functioning as both a decisive ‘turning point’ of the war as well as representing the maturation of the Soviet and American armies as a fighting force. It exists in the cultural memory with the same overpowering salience as the Normandy Invasion, an event which represents the fulcrum between the old world being destroyed and the new one being born.
This is not to say that they were easy victories by any means; in fact, it is perhaps most instructive to compare the struggle of the W.F.R.A. on the Eastern Front to the harrowing campaigns conducted by the Marines in our Pacific War. A knock-down, drag-out fight between the great peer mechanized armies fought along a six-hundred kilometer frontier, a Chosin Reservoir writ-large, scorching in the July sun instead of freezing in the dead of winter.
German strategic aims in their offensive operation focused on the reduction of the heavily fortified Stalingrad salient, requiring a breakthrough through heavily echeloned Red Army defenses. Once the enemy was successfully invested into a cauldron west of Stalingrad proper, the spearheads would force the Volga and render east bank positions indefensible. Only once this Herculean effort was achieved could attention once again shift south to support the flagging Caucasus campaign and link up with Turkish allies.
Based on our own preliminary assessments of the disposition of forces involved, we cannot conclude whether or not the Germans’ maximalist aims were possible or not. The battle was waged with deadly seriousness by both sides, consuming so much of the reserves in men, equipment, munitions, and logistical support that the whole front was effectively paralyzed during the peak of operations. All eyes were on Stalingrad.
German, Axis French, Romanian, and Hungarian lives were spent accordingly. Soviet and American divisions in the path of the German schwerpunkt were ground into a fine paste. Here, one can truly appreciate the awesome scale of Q1901A’s Germany’s war economy. Nearly eight thousand Axis tanks were assembled for the offensive, almost half of them the Panther-equivalent Pzkpfw 50, supported by sixteen thousand guns and heavy mortars
(See Figure 3.4 for a full correlation of forces)
With the scale of the battle now understood, we turn to the heart of the matter of how military force was wielded to support the aims of the State. Focus must be given to the mechanized forces, responsible for most of the dynamics of action. With the I SS-Panzerkorps at the tip of the spear, the First Panzer Army commanded by Marshal Rommel takes the lion’s share of the glory and the shame in the analysis of the battle.
After Rommel’s army crashes through the final defensive belt and charges onwards to destiny, Patton’s Steppe Front mobilizes to interdict, sending forward an “operational maneuver group” consisting of the 2nd Guards Mechanized Army (formerly Patton’s own Separate Mechanized Army). In a game of speed chess played out on the Volga steppe, the war’s most infamous meeting engagement begins in the blistering heat of July.
To make sense of the distinction between the superficially similar German Kampfgruppe and the W.F.R.A. battalion battle group, we must begin by understanding the different structure of a typical German Panzer division compared to a W.F.R.A. tank division. The Panzer division was assembled from separate, largely homogenous regiments: one Panzer regiment consisting of three battalions, and two Panzergrenadier regiments of three battalions each, all supported by a self-propelled artillery regiment.
On a granular tactical level, missions are accomplished through the formation of ad hoc kampfgruppe, combining available armor, infantry, artillery, and other supporting assets in varying ratios. Because training occurs on the basis of these groups, inter-branch cooperation is possible but not systematized.
By contrast, a W.F.R.A. tank division in 1943 had evolved into a six-legged division, with three tank regiments accompanied by a motor rifle regiment, an artillery regiment, and an anti-air regiment. The principle tank and infantry regiments are themselves not homogenous; a tank regiment consists of three tank battalions and a motor rifle battalion, with a motor rifle regiment consisting of the inverse, three motor rifle regiments and a tank regiment.
Battalion battle groups are formed on the march or on mission by the exchange or attachment of companies to the battalion, a practice with roots stretching back to the Civil War, with the nascent Red Army operating on a highly granular level, made possible by the availability of readily militarized civilian trucks and radios. This allowed for a much higher level of networked combined arms than was possible into the 1950s for our world. This did not necessarily mean Q1901A was more capable or technologically advanced; rather, it showed the flexibility necessary to make things work with relatively limited material resources and higher training and motivation.
The ‘meeting engagement’, which is to say the clash between opposing forces both in an offensive or marching posture, has developed a special importance in the U.M.D. through the influence of battles like the one at Grachi. Though not the first nor the last, it was certainly the most spectacular, with both adversaries fighting at the near top of their game. Unlike in our own timeline, where German elan developed a mythic quality due to spectacular feats of maneuver into the enemy rear in Poland and in France, for most of the war the Germans faced peer adversaries with similar interest in the development of mechanized forces. Inevitably, these two forces would meet, parrying one another’s spearheads with tanks.
The synergy of U.M.D. in contrast to the ad hoc nature of the kampfgruppe was in full display. While it had taken dutiful experimentation to overcome the difficulties of synergistic training, once the battalion battle group emerged as a coherent unit, a hand composed of dextrous fingers, the W.F.R.A. could now outmatch the Germans consistently in tactical engagements. Tanks maneuvered alongside tracked infantry carriers, mutually supporting on attack and defense, while highly mobile tank destroyers could ‘jab’ enemy kampfgruppe, stuttering their own maneuvers while increasing their comrade’s own freedom of action.
On the other hand, the Germans did have a slightly more advanced officer corps, but the segmented nature of their training meant that they were not able to bring forth the full potential of their forces. In particular, the constant minor altercations and miscommunication among different branches meant the Germans were slower to react to the nimbler W.F.R.A. This might not have been an issue in our timeline when facing the Soviet Red Army, but the limitations were laid bare against the American hivemind. Rommel would take note of this contrast, reportedly mummering “The Ami Schweinehund must have read my second book.” This would become the basis for purges and eventual absorption of the Wehrmacht by the Waffen-SS.
Losses in men and material at Grachi were horrific. Despite the SS divisions taking the highest losses in the fight, they also credibly demonstrated they also inflicted the most severe casualties against the Americans, including highly valorous actions where a regiment of the 5th SS Panzer Division “Silberne Legion” took the rear guard action, and, owing to their status as American exiles, were denied quarter and fought to the last man.
Despite losing the battle and being forced to fight a deadly fighting retreat all the way back to the initial line-of-contact, Rommel’s frank assessment of the battle, coupled with his personal connections to Hitler allowed him to preside over the “court of military honor” that followed, one that would result in the blame being laid at the insufficiently Nazified Wehrmacht, which would be rapidly reduced to the auxiliary force of the motor/mechanized Waffen-SS. In particular, “the esprit de corps shown by the opposing side is proof that the spiritual can overcome the material” was one of the core takeaways.
And while the turn to the triumph of the will might have been just toxic confirmation bias, it certainly did empower the Germans to resist as stubbornly as they did for the remainder of the war, even as the tides turned steeper and steeper against them. Furthermore, it forced the Germans to work on battlefield networking which did improve coordination, thus improving performance to the disadvantage of their enemies.
Author’s Note : You will just have to imagine the accumulated Xeroxing artifacts and coffee stains on this document. *[WPA]: Works Progress Administration *[NBI]: National Bureau of Investigation
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