The German Peacetime Army of 1941

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Bruce Ivar Gudmundsson

Jan 03, 2023

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The Tactical Notebook

The German Peacetime Army of 1941 (Part I)

After the fall of France, many, if not most, people in senior positions in the German government believed that the war which had begun in September of 1939 was about to end. More specifically, they believed that the British Empire would make peace with the Axis powers, that the United States would remain neutral, and that the Soviet Union would continu…

2 years ago · Bruce I. Gudmundsson

The Tactical Notebook

The German Peacetime Army of 1941 (Part II)

General Fromm and General Halder agreed that the type of infantry battalion that had fought in Poland, the Low Countries, and France should be replaced by a marginally larger unit made up of companies that were, at once, slightly smaller in size and somewhat simpler in structure. In order to do this, the machine gun company of the wartime battalion wou…

2 years ago · 1 like · Bruce I. Gudmundsson

The Tactical Notebook

The German Peacetime Army of 1941 (Part III)

In his design for the infantry regiment of the peacetime army of (what he thought might be) the near future, General Fromm proposed the addition of three independent companies: a motorized machine gun company, an assault gun company, and an infantry pioneer company. At the same time, he argued for the motorization of the existing infantry gun company a…

2 years ago · Bruce I. Gudmundsson

The Tactical Notebook

The German Peacetime Army of 1941 (Part IV)

During the first year of the Second World Wars, the officers commanding German infantry regiments possessed a reconnaissance platoon. In the more fortunate of these regiments (those of the first or second mobilization "waves”), the scouts of these units were mounted on horseback. In most infantry regiments, however, the men of the regimental reconnais…

2 years ago · Bruce I. Gudmundsson

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