The Danger Zone (DZ)

To deploy all resources as well as possible, to put every man and screw in their proper place, a highly centralized organization and vast amounts of detailed information were needed. Information being superabundant, mechanical means to process it were needed. Business machines being available, any- and everything had to be shaped in such a way as to enable them to process this information as effic...

According to Martin Creveld, in his book  Fighting Power , comparing the fighting performance of Americans in the European Theatre of Operations with the Germans he wrote: The time has now come to examine a constituent of fighting power that, perhaps more than any other, decides the outcome of wars: leadership. An enormous literature exists to show that, in the words of Kurt Lang, "it is what...

Four brave men who do not know each other, wrote Ardant du Picq in his Etudes de Combat, will hesitate to attack a lion; four less brave men, but knowing and trusting each other, will do so resolutely. The point of the tale is this: of all the organizational problems an army has to solve, that of how best to merge replacements into existing units so as to ensure the cohesion of the whole is one of...

Private Donald Schoo of the 80th Infantry Division recalled seeing one of his buddies, named Steehhourst, take a hit from an 88 that blew off his right hand. ‘He was crying and running around yelling, Tm going home! Thank you God, I'm going home!' Steehhourst was lucky, at least according to the standards of the men of the Bulge and specifically to Sergeant Richard Wallace of the 90th Divi...

In his book,  The War Between the Generals , David Irving wrote about an important meeting, that few people know about, at the time that the Battle of the Bulge was at its height in December 1944/ January 1945: In Washington, after lunch on December 27, Stimson walked back to the War Department and slipped into Marshall's office for a long private talk about an unthinkable possibility: what if...

British observers of the US Army in action in North Africa, Italy and North-West Europe sometimes had the impression that they were watching a Hollywood production of `A Triumph of the Will'. They could never be certain what had been achieved and was real and what was a stage set, a Potemkin village for the benefit of `American Public Opinion'. The press made George Patton into a character...

Patton, typically, once exclaimed that intelligence and possible enemy intentions never worried him: it was what he was about to do to the enemy that mattered. wrote Dominick Graham and Shelford Bidwell in  Coalitions, Politicians and Generals. Did this sum up the way the Americans conducted the war in Europe? What had brought about this way of waging war? If Patton literally meant it, did it refl...

The Americans did not give a great deal of thought to morale, in the sense of fighting spirit. Generals in all armies as a matter of faith and national pride believe that their soldiers are naturally endowed with courage. The younger American soldier was buoyed up by his national self-confidence, and the older by the memories of a war which for them had ended quickly in a glorious victory for Amer...

Four brave men who do not know each other, wrote Ardant du Picq in his Etudes de Combat, will hesitate to attack a lion; four less brave men, but knowing and trusting each other, will do so resolutely. The point of the tale is this: of all the organizational problems an army has to solve, that of how best to merge replacements into existing units so as to ensure the cohesion of the whole is one of...

Bradley's distaste for Lee, which he expressed frequently, was never explained. Bradley left behind two autobiographies, one co-written with Clay Blair. In neither does he mention Lee by name . wrote Hank H Cox in his biography of General JCH Lee,  The General Who Wore Six Stars . Without naming names Bradley had praised to the heavens what Lee had accomplished in the Battle of the Bulge, not...

On 24 December Bradley gave a press briefing in which he announced that he had foreseen the possibility of the enemy's attack in the Ardennes six weeks before the battle, and that for this reason had sited no American dumps of ammunition or petrol east of the Meuse! wrote Nigel Hamilton in his book on Monty,  The Battles of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery . If that was true that was the most...

In World War I, one of the great miracles happened on 24th August 1914, just weeks after the war began, to save the British Army from disaster – the Angels of Mons. Judging from Dunkirk, the British Army frequently needed a lot of divine intervention to save it. The Historic UK website gives this account of the miracle, which I’ve taken the liberty to edit for dramatic effect. This is the story it...

In November, Major General Harold R. Bull, Eisenhower's G-3, had traveled to Washington at the head of a special mission to present the European Theater's emergency appeal for action to ease the persistent ammunition shortage. … Though Washington had remained consistently skeptical of Eisenhower's and his subordinates' laments, Moses's statistics were so compelling and unassail...

Montgomery would have been staggered had he listened in at Lutes' final interview with Bedell Smith, who told him: `No one can say supply has failed. At the front it is OK.' Wrote Graham Dominick and Shelford Bidwell in their book  Coalitions, Politicians and Generals . The Americans were concealing from the British what their true situation was, and that was not nothing because it was tho...

Bradley, Patton and Hodges had rattled the cages of Somervell’s command in Washington about what they said were failures by General Lee’s ComZ to issue their armies with adequate supplies of ammunition. This was now blowing up in the press in the United States, and was getting dangerously close to putting Eisenhower’s job on the line – not the intended result. Bedell Smith first got rid of one of...

On 9 March 1942 the US Army underwent its greatest organisational change. It implemented the wishes of General Marshall, the Army’s Chief of Staff. It was to give order to and clean up and simplify the command structure of the American Army at the very top. Only 3 men would report directly to Marshall. Lesley J. McNair was made the head of the Army Ground Forces. Henry Arnold was made the head of...

… if it became known that American logistics and American strategy had been instrumental in bringing the autumn campaign to a standstill and, what was more, prolonging the war, a political row would ensue just at the time of the presidential elections. … Back in Washington, when  [Marshall]  had set in train the investigation into logistics in the European Theatre of Operations … , he sent a signa...

The Normandy invasion was without doubt the most ambitious amphibious operation in military history, involving thousands of ships ferrying hundreds of thousands of men across a treacherous water passage against a hostile shore. There were serious concerns that it would be a disaster, and the logistics were the key element. Lee handled it superbly. Once the invasion of France was launched there was...

After Aurand  [Colonel Henry S Aurand – a consultant to the US Army world logistic supply supremo, General Brehon Somervell]  had delivered his report and taken command of the Normandy Base Section in December, he recorded that he despatched a train of PX (Post Exchange) goods for the front. A platoon of infantry, part at the rear and part at the front, was to ensure that at long halts and in shun...

Carlo d’Este, in his biography of Eisenhower wrote: The only air plan that existed for Overlord in January 1944 vaguely proposed minimal measures for air support during a two-to-three-week period before D-Day in order to knock out coastal defenses and soften the way for the invasion force. When first briefed on air operations in January 1944, Eisenhower and Spaatz were shocked by Leigh-Mallory&#39...

In 1944/1945 General JCH Lee, was the Supremo of supply in the European Theatre of Operations under both Eisenhower, as the theatre commander, and under the great overlord of American logistics, General Brehon Somervell, who sat directly, alongside the Army commander and the Army Air Force commanders, under General Marshall, the Chief of Staff. There was no more a controversial figure in Eisenhowe...

Logistics is the ball and chain of armoured warfare  said General Heinz Guderian – and that was definitely a topic that he was qualified to speak on. Tag words: Logistics; General Heinz Guderian; Somervell; John Kennedy Ohl; Supplying the Troops; General Brehon Somervell; ETO; European Theater of Operations; SOS; Service of Supplies; Russell Wegley; Eisenhower’s Lieutenants; General JCH Lee; Gener...

The formidable Nazi war machine was powerless to stop the build up in Britain of Allied troops shipped from the USA and Canada. But in early 1943 Doenitz was winning the Battle of the Atlantic against that other, essential, component that those troops needed, being transported in very vulnerable slow or just plain vulnerable, fast merchant ships. As Paul Kennedy wrote in his book  Engineers of Vic...

To manage the buildup and subsequent supply of the American troops being shipped to Europe for the planned invasion of Hitler’s Festung Europa, Fortress Europe, Hank H Cox, in his biography of General JCH Lee,  The General Who Wore Six Stars , wrote: The Allied governments had determined that Germany would be their top priority. After Germany was defeated, they would make Japan their primary focus...

For the most part the popular historians have been even harder on  [General JCH Lee than the men who served with him] . Stephen E. Ambrose wrote in Citizen Soldiers that Lee was "the biggest jerk" in the European theater of operations. Hank H Cox, in his biography of Lee,  The General Who Wore Six Stars , gave himself the task of answering this key question when he wrote Lee’s biography: The bigge...